Aesthetics and Technology

The Peter Principle

‘in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.’ ‘in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties’ and ‘work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.’ “The Peter Principle,” Laurence J. Peter

The Shirky Principle

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Clay Shirky

Is Renting the New Buying?

The case for renting is made in two new books—What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, and The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, by Lisa Gansky—that were recently reviewed in The Economist. The auto industry illustrates the trend. Zipcar famously disrupted the standard car rental model by [...]

Inspiration is for Amateurs

Inspiration is for amateurs–the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will–through work–bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a [...]