The Electric Typewriter
Great articles and essays by the world's best journalists and writers.by Venkat Rao
Gollum is both employee and consumer. A prosumer locked in a death embrace with a product. He is a raving fan.
by Venkat Rao
To understand any chapter in the story of humanity, it is not enough to ask, what is the plot? and what were the archetypes of the day? We must also ask, what were they smoking?
by Venkat Rao
We’re reaching a technological complexity threshold where hacking is going to be the main mechanism for the further evolution of civilization.
by Venkat Rao
The Office is not a random series of cynical gags aimed at momentarily alleviating the existential despair of low-level grunts. It is a fully realized theory of management that falsifies 83.8% of the business section of the bookstore.
by Venkat Rao
It is a sort of grim privilege for the generations living today to watch the slow demise of such a spectacularly effective intellectual construct. The Age of Corporations is coming to an end. The traditional corporation won’t vanish, but it will cease to be the center of gravity of economic life in another generation or two. They will live on as religion does today, as weakened ghosts of more vital institutions from centuries ago.
by Venkat Rao
For all you futurists out there who are stuck in a mental rut asking yourself, what’s the next big thing? the next big thing is almost certainly not going to be a thing at all. It’s going to be a material. So the right question is what’s the next new material?
by Venkat Rao
On a 10-point scale where good vs. evil is a 4 in terms of difficulty, I’d rate scarcity versus abundance at 8.5.
by Venkat Rao
You need relevant experience to get a good job, you need a good job to get relevant experience. Or just fake it till you make it.
by Venkat Rao (via @jkleske)
Sure, we can all see the small clues all around us: cellphones, laptops, Facebook, Prius cars on the street. Yet, somehow, the future always seems like something that is going to happen rather than something that is happening.
