The Technium

Sourced Quotes, 21


Some people call VR “the last medium” because any subsequent medium can be invented inside of VR, using software alone. Looking back, the movie and TV screens we use today will be seen as an intermediate step between the invention of electricity and the invention of VR. Kids will think it’s funny that their ancestors used to stare at glowing rectangles hoping to suspend disbelief. — Chris Dixon, Virtual Reality, cdixon Blog, January 24, 2015

I’ve developed over time a simple rule. I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person. And it’s a pretty good test. — Mark Zuckerberg, Mobile World Congress Q&A, Barcelona, March 4, 2015

[T]o never confront the possibility of getting lost is to live in a state of perpetual dislocation. If you never have to worry about not knowing where you are, then you never have to know where you are. — Nick Carr, The Glass Cage; Maps, mind and memory, January 27, 2015.

Saying that you’re aiming for x% of a $ybn industry is unambitious — great companies change the y, not the x. — Benedict Evans, “Ways to think about market size,” February 28, 2015

Premium branded phones are the culmination of decades of research in wireless technology, computing, materials, and design. Shitphones are the culmination of decades of research in wireless technology, computing, materials, and design — minus a year or two. — John Herrman, Shitphone: A Love Story, Medium, March 9, 2015.

While individuals get our empathy and sympathy, institutions seldom do. The “we’re in this together” spirit of [science fiction] films from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s later gave way to a reflex shared by left and right, that villainy is associated with organization. Even when they aren’t portrayed as evil, bureaucrats are stupid and public officials short-sighted. Only the clever bravado of a solitary hero (or at most a small team) will make a difference in resolving the grand crisis at hand. – David Brin “Our Favorite Cliche: A world filled with idiots.” 2013.

You cannot get people this smart to work this hard just for money. — Bono, The Shape of Things to Come, New Yorker, February 23, 2015

Meta-design is much more difficult than design; it’s easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it. — Donald Knuth, The Metafont Book, 1986.

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket. — Nikola Tesla, When Woman is Boss, Colliers, January 30, 1926

Is this the future of the user interface?

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