Topic
innovation
- The Exploration Instinct
Latest Res Extensa , on our natural genetic wiring to explore, and its biological benefits of asymmetric bets:
- How Shellac is Made
I'm in the process of building some cabinets, and yesterday I was working on the drawers. I decided to use shellac as the finish for the drawer interiors. Never used it before, but heard that it applies easy, cures fa…
- The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, Annotated
Whether intentional or not, Marc Andreessen's latest piece is the canon of the e/acc (effective accelerationist) movement. The visual that comes to mind for me is "the world if" meme made real. The desire to build, to…
- Outcomes Don't Look Like We Predict
Just because we set an objective doesn't mean we'll reach it. At least not in the specific form we imagine. When we do finally reach a destination that's descriptively similar to the objective we thought we were after…
- Monthly Reading, August 2023
This post appeared in issue #36 of my newsletter, Res Extensa, where I write about the intersection of product design, bottoms-up systems, innovation, and what we can learn from the history of technology. I'd love it…
- Lessons from the Invention of the Thermometer
This piece from Anton Howes gets at one of the key insights about how innovation works: it doesn't happen through sudden bursts of insight from thin air — it requires the combination of the right simmering ingredients…
- BigThink's Progress Issue
Online magazine BigThink has just published a full issue dedicated to progress studies. Lots of great stuff here from noteworthy folks like Tyler Cowen, Hannah Ritchie, Kevin Kelly, and many more.
- Steve Jobs on Ideas vs. Products
A lot of Steve Jobs content is hagiography at this point, but this clip is fantastic: There's an enormous delta between idea and execution. Someone can take a great idea and squander it. Or conversely, someone could t…
- Exapting Technologies
New forms of technology tend not to materialize from thin air. The nature of innovation takes existing known technologies and remixes, extends, and co-opts them to create novelty. Gordon Brander refers to it in this p…
- Software and Entropy
Marc Andreessen was recently interviewed by Noah Smith in his newsletter. It's a great post-pandemic update to Marc's views on technology (spoiler: he's still as optimistic as ever), following a year after his "Time t…
- Weekend Reading: Non-Experts, Non-Linear Innovation, and We Were Builders
👨‍💻 The Rise of the Non-Expert Expert Vicki Boykis on the impossibility of true breadth and depth of technical expertise: What used to distinguish senior people from junior people was the depth of knowledge they had…
- Why Did It Take So Long to Invent X?
Jason Crawford is maintaining this list on Roots of Progress, an archive of inventions that seemingly could've been uncovered earlier than they were, based on what precursor knowledge would've been required. This one…
- Cultures That Build
Mark Andreessen's piece from a couple months back drove a flood of response, both in support and disagreement. This piece from Tanner Greer agrees with Andreessen's sentiments in general, but more interestingly dives…
- Innovation and Human Nature
In this piece from a few years ago, historian Anton Howes wrote about about what drives innovation. Is it part of human nature to pursue innovation? Or is it not a naturally occurring phenomenon? He makes the case tha…