Greetings from Taipei, where I'll be living for the next three months. Let me know if you'll be in Asia!
#1 Usonia: Interesting podcast episode about Frank Lloyd Wright, who boldly declared himself "the greatest architect." More interesting was the story of him helping a family build a house for $5,000 ($85k in today's money) which Wright framed as something that any family should be able to afford. Wright view of the ideal version of the US was that it "would be a nation of modest but comfortable, well-made and beautiful homes for the working- and middle-classes."
I do wonder if we will ever return to a world in which housing is not seen as an investment and instead just a basic cost of life. Seems hard to believe based on the current status quo and baked in regulations and laws. Anyone seen any perspective on this?
#2 I, Consultant: Former podcast guest Tom Critchlow wrote this beautiful post on the identity crisis of the self-employed professional.
"Who do you do?"
I'm not sure, I'll tell you tomorrow at the end of the day.
#3 Status Games: Eugene Wei argues that the digital world is shaped around out desire for status-seeking games.
He argues that someone like me performs "proof of work" (this newsletter) in exchange for status.
He also offers a potential argument for why AI may never take over (at least in social-oriented applications) because of the lack of "proof of work":
Conversely, let's look at something like Prisma, a photo filter app which tried to pivot to become a social network. Prisma surged in popularity upon launch by making it trivial to turn one of your photos into a fine art painting with one of its many neural-network-powered filters.
It worked well. Too well.
Since almost any photo could, with one-click, be turned into a gorgeous painting, no single photo really stands out. The star is the filter, not the user, and so it didn't really make sense to follow any one person over any other person. Without that element of skill, no framework for a status game or skill-based network existed. It was a utility that failed at becoming a Status as a Service business.
This essay is damn long and I'm still trying to make my way through it, so you might enjoy the tweetstorm instead. Perhaps more reflections next week.
#4 Work Sucks!?: I published my reaction to all these work sucks articles in my other newsletter this week, which I've been running on substack.
Wondering if you'd like that simplified format better for boundless reads? Let me know
#5 Quote: A quote because I moved in a new apartment in Taipei this week and didn't have much time to read:
If you prefer fiction to nonfiction, or if you often enjoy conversations about people you don’t know, you are probably above average on empathizing...If you are good at reading maps and instruction manuals, or if you enjoy figuring out how machines work, you are probably above average on systemizing.
- The Righteous Mind
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