GET EXCITED AND MAKE THINGS
Don’t keep calm and carry on
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Monthly Archives: April 2013
Together, we can find a cure
If Social Media is evil, how can you fix it?
This is the question I try to answer.
The Inn is a laboratory. Its goal is to architect an alternate reality that shows how the world could be if it didn’t take that fork in the road that flushed it down the Social poop chute.
It’s not too late. Together, we can find a cure.
I can’t help myself
The smart thing to do is build small. Build simple.
That’s what everyone says you should do.
But I see an alien and beautiful world that I wish others could see too.
If it’s too simple, it might not make sense.
But I must make it simple.
Because you can’t pray these balls into flight
Otto Lilienthal – The Father of Flight
Otto studied birds. He had a dream that man could fly. He threw himself off hills to chase his dream.
Only science could lift those brass balls into the air.
He made gliders long before he knew how. He crashed many times before he finally understood. He died long before he was understood.
He proved to the Wright Brothers that you could.
He died 36 hours after a 49 ft crash. His last words to his brother Gustav were, “Sacrifices must be made.”
Otto Lilienthal was the Father of Flight.
It’s a little rough around the edges…
The scary adventure of a worldbuilder
Failure is the daily reality of a worldbuilder.
Can you be both Specific and Generic?
People’s desires have evolved from generic to specific.
We’ve come a long way from the mass-industrial age where one-size fits all, to an on-demand bespoke economy, where people demand a perfect fit.
We used to have national TV. Now we have YouTube.
There used to be one TV per house. Now we have screens in our pockets. Many now watch the pocket screen while watching TV, while using the computer.
We used to have national newspapers. Now we have billions of blogs and Social hubs.
Bottle of supplements with identical chemical ingredients – one says vision supplements for Golfers; another says vision supplements for Recreational Pilots.
Can a generic architecture cater to specific — even fanatic — tastes?
I don’t know. This goes against everything I know is right. But I need to try.
Careers page is up!
Finally! I published the first cut of our Careers page.
As we’re reopening again for our Centennial, we will need to recruit cast members again. I would love to re-hire many of our old hands, but as usual, most of them are nowhere to be found.
God I need an assistant.
We’ve got a lot of work left to do.
When things get iffy, rise up the hierarchy
In optimization, a tool for battling complexity is Divide and Conquer.
When a big problem is too tough, break it down into a smaller problem. Still too tough? Break it down smaller still.
What’s the problem with the information age? Too much information.
Imagine trying to organize a massive record collection, wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling. Will you sort it alphabetically by album title? I doubt it. You might sort it by artist. You might sort it by genre. You might sort it by how often you play it.
In general, you create categories — bins — to place them in.
The Internet has grown up, but the tools to manage the information haven’t kept up. Look around – a catch-all “music” bucket is worthless.
Our tastes are too deep and different. Even with categories, they don’t do much better than one large genre. In reality, even each genre fractures into slivers of fanatics.
Sadly, the information world is still flat. They still expect you to reach for things as if you’re looking up the title of the record you want.
Flat doesn’t cut it anymore. We have too much information to access it flat.
It’s getting too crowded. Too messy. So what’s the next step? Hierarchy.
Good cannot exist without Evil
The Inn needs Evil. There has to be a common enemy.
There will be a Monster in the House to force people to band together.
Without Evil, there will be no Good.
How do you like my new face?
Welcome to the Inn 🙂
We’ll be reopening soon to celebrate this new century.