Many people my age or older half-joke about wishing to be younger. Wishing to be young is a coward’s wish. People who wish to be younger would squander that miracle. They’re wasting the time they have now pretending they’d make better use of a different now.
Wise words from Scott Berkun on getting old(er).
BRYCE DOT VC: If You Want to See How We'll Live In the Future...
…”look at how rich people are living today”.
Was said as a passing comment in a recent conversation. But I couldn’t let it just pass.
Think about it.
When you imagine Gordon Gecko from the movie Wall St. what image do you have in mind? Mine is the one of the poster boy of wealth clutching…
Really great insight.
Another place to look is the automobile industry - if you want to know what features the Accords/Camrys will have in a few years, look at today’s Mercedes S-Class.
We can look at things like this and ask - is this worth scaling and can it scale?
A potential keyboard for really small screens.
As the details fade, the stories - what we remember of them - become more interesting as the rough edges smooth out. My memories are better than the reality. Not only is that ok, it sustains me as I get older.
What I discovered is that if you care about other people first, even business people cannot help but care back. Of course, it is theoretically possible that someone cannot reciprocate empathy, and in that case my approach will not lead to a deal. But I haven’t found anyone like that yet, and I wouldn’t want to work with them if I did.
In retrospect, Flowers believes that “the most sophisticated thing designers ever do is decide what to design.” Telling students in an introductory class to design “something” thus challenged them with the most complex task they could face. It’s much more reasonable, he says, to get them to think about “how do you solve this problem—rather than what is the problem.
Thank you Timehop for resurfacing this profile of MIT professor Woodie Flowers.
My bag’s making faces at me… #anthropomorphism
Going beyond empathy is imperative for designers. At its best, our discipline allows people to understand, debate, and acknowledge our differences, but also work for the greater good. Isn’t this an imperative for the larger world?
http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/march-april-2013/confessions-of-a-human-centered-designer
Jodi was a professor of mine at CMU, and appreciate the perspective that empathy is important, but it doesn’t end there - it’s just the start.
Modern science was only invented 400 years ago, and it is a good example of what social thinking can do with a high threshold. Science requires a society because even people who are trying to be good thinkers love their own thoughts and theories — much of the debugging has to be done by others.
