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Video games, movies and books What's the structure of your project? Here are three paradigms to consider: Video game development is expensive and risky because you're on two frontiers at once....

None of it is important (and all of it is) Steinbeck points out that the stars shine in the sky, regardless of the drama here on Earth....

Art is a verb If a machine makes a painting that no one ever sees, it might be well-crafted or match some objective form of beauty, but it's not art....

Nü Tennis Every day, about 16,000,000 hours of tennis are played. The percentage of that devoted to tournament play approaches zero....

Marketing clerks Bookkeepers do important work. But a bookkeeper is not the head of accounting. Marketers are responsible for anything the organization does that touches the market....

The nature of launch day No one cares about it as much as the person who's planning it. Some folks waited in line for the first iPhone, but not many....

Every day, about 16,000,000 hours of tennis are played. The percentage of that devoted to tournament play approaches zero. So why is informal tennis built on a zero-sum model? In a game, every shot is designed to have the opponent fail. The goal is to have your opponent miss the ball, hit it into the net, or simply wear them out.

Bookkeepers do important work. But a bookkeeper is not the head of accounting. Marketers are responsible for anything the organization does that touches the market. But many people with 'marketer' in their title simply go to meetings and do tasks after the real work of marketing is already done. Some tech companies have hundreds of people in their marketing department. Most of them are simply playing catch up, because the engineers are making all the powerful and leveraged marketing decisions. Who is making the difficult decisions on your team? That's the person who's actually in charge of marketing.

What's the structure of your project? Here are three paradigms to consider: Video game development is expensive and risky because you're on two frontiers at once. The tech frontier, trying to do something with hardware that hasn't been done before, and the game mechanics frontier, perfecting and polishing new forms of interaction that last. So Myst and Tetris and Doom... classics we talk about decades later.

Steinbeck points out that the stars shine in the sky, regardless of the drama here on Earth. Perspective fools us into believing that our point of view is primary, but it's not difficult to imagine a more distant (or closer) one that would change everything. The service at table 7 might not matter much to the waiter, but it matters a great deal to the elderly couple celebrating a positive medical diagnosis.

If a machine makes a painting that no one ever sees, it might be well-crafted or match some objective form of beauty, but it's not art. Art changes the creator and the viewer. Art requires participation. Art is a verb. Decoration is important. Beauty matters. But decoration and beauty are insufficient to create art. Music, images, tastes and words become art when a transformation happens. "What is the change you seek to make?" The answer to that question can inform our work. No change, no art.

No one cares about it as much as the person who's planning it. Some folks waited in line for the first iPhone, but not many. It's tempting to try to bend the curve and put the 'grand' into 'grand' opening. But that usually creates disappointment. In any population, only a few folks get satisfaction out of going first. The focused work of launch day, then, isn't to maximize turnout.

The relentless math of the long tail There are more than a million podcasts. The good news is that it's easy to start one....

Degrees of freedom When tech shows up, it offers a shortcut and convenience. You can use Google Maps to direct you somewhere without paying much attention to the surroundings....

The troll button There have always been trolls. Hecklers, jesters, and class clowns. The troll lives under the bridge and invents nonsense grievances in order to get attention....

There are more than a million podcasts. The good news is that it's easy to start one. The top 1% of all podcasts account for 99% of all downloads. That means that if your goal is reach, the long tail isn't going to help much. The short head, even in a medium as wide open as this, dominates consumption. Lots of podcasts to choose from, but most people don't choose.

When culture pushes us to measure things that don't matter to us, our values are captured. Once the metrics turn a profit for corporations and those in power, they are amplified, and almost overnight, begin to matter to us, even if they run contrary to what we originally set out to do or become. We're easily seduced by scoreboards, competition and dark patterns.

When tech shows up, it offers a shortcut and convenience. You can use Google Maps to direct you somewhere without paying much attention to the surroundings. You can use Claude to write your marketing copy and get a better-than-mediocre result the first try. You can look for a gift on Amazon, pick the first match, and be pretty sure it'll do the job.

There have always been trolls. Hecklers, jesters, and class clowns. The troll lives under the bridge and invents nonsense grievances in order to get attention. But, until recently, there wasn't much of a business model to support this career choice. It's said that William Randolph Hearst started a war to sell newspapers, but few people owned newspapers... Social media changes this.