product

  • Before we truly master something novel (which means, before we can effectively limit its indeterminate significance to something predictable, even irrelevant) we imagine what it might be. Our imaginative representations actually constitute our initial adaptations. Our fantasies comprise part of the structure that we use to inhibit our responses to the apriori significance of the unknown (even as such fantasies facilitate generation of more detailed and concrete information).

    There is no reason to presuppose that we have been able to explicitly comprehend this capacity, in part because it actually seems to serve as a necessary or axiomatic precondition for the ability to comprehend, explicitly.

    — Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson

  • According to Kurzweil, “the Singularity is near,” it’s inevitable, and all we have to do is prepare ourselves to accept it.

    But no matter how many trends can be traced, the future won’t happen on its own. What the Singularity would look like matters less than the stark choice we face today between the two most likely scenarios: nothing or something. It’s up to us. We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.

    Whether we achieve the Singularity on a cosmic scale is perhaps less important than whether we seize the unique opportunities we have to do new things in our own working lives. Everything important to us — the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment — is singular. Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better — to go from 0 to 1.

    The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.

    — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

  • Fundamentally, there is no reason why pleasure, excitement, profound well-being and simple joy at being alive could not become the natural, default state of mind for all who desire it. – Nick Bostrom

    Though it is so often accompanied by descriptions of futuristic gadgets, body augmentation, and distant concerns, the Transhumanist vision provides a reminder that humanity can be far greater than it is today. The human condition is a work in progress. An early and very rough draft of what could be a masterpiece. And the evolution of society begins with the evolution of the individual mind.

    This evolution cannot be left to chance. It must be the result of deliberate design conducted by each person and directed toward the highest values within them. The software framework and the principles of psychitecture are basic psychotechnologies which, if provided and instilled in each individual, could radically advance our evolution.

    — Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture by Ryan A. Bush

  • If a company wants to raise the bar for the product organization, they need to think differently about product. Instead of looking at product as just a part of the technology organization (or worse, the IT organization), they need to think about product as the organization. I am not talking about power structure or even org structure. I am talking about how product needs to be the value driver of the organization as opposed to just a feature factory for the rest of the organization.

    As I engage with these types of organizations, another lesson I’ve learned is that, if the executive team isn’t on board with this product operating model, the chances of successful transformation are slim.

    — EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products (Silicon Valley Product Group) by Marty Cagan

  • I strongly believe in the promise of technology, when directed toward the right ends, to lead to a genuinely better world for all. But I would estimate that ninety-nine percent of technologies created today only create new addictions. They “improve” our lives only in the sense that they become our new baseline of expectation, ultimately creating new barriers to contentment.

    There are technologies, like medicine, which truly improve life for people. But most of the technologies which can actually serve this end effectively are psychotechnologies. We need tools and methods for cultivating robust well-being and self-mastery. We need to find and provide the keys to the kind of flourishing which is less dependent on external things, not more dependent on them.

    If we want to truly improve the world, we need to train people to build systematically better minds – our emphasis on “making people happy” needs to shift to “making happy people.”

    — Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture by Ryan A. Bush

No more stories or excerpts.