🎞️ Beyond the Machine Extras
Frank Chimero put together a talk called Beyond the Machine. The talk is great and you should check it out, but Frank also shared scraps that didn't make the final cut, and there's some great stuff in there.
This, in particular, had me nodding my head:
I think part of the dismay and boredom with technology these days comes down to how few products (software or hardware) seem to have a coherent point of view. In fact, success aside, I think that’s part of what we miss most about the Jobs-era of Apple. There was a sense of vision and authorship rather than inevitability, and a focus that extended beyond incrementalism and scale. There were hits and misses, iPhones and cube computers, iPods and iPod socks.
For some types of work, it’s better to navigate by one’s own internal sense of rightness rather than by external signals. We tend to call this “vision,” but that word has been evicted of meaning these days, more often suggesting one’s ability to predict consensus instead of their ability to create from conviction. Real creative work begins from the inside. It is an act of contribution, not competition. One instrument doesn’t cancel out the others, one album doesn’t erase the last. [...]
Perhaps the technology industry might be a more genuinely innovative place if we could eschew the tools, the hype, and the money for a moment and actually listen to what is stirring inside of us.
Yes, please.