There are some works so luminous that they fill us with shame for the meager life to which we are resigned, that they implore us to lead another, wiser, fuller life; works so powerful that they give us strength, and force us to new undertakings. A book can play this role.
It is understandable that design wants a seat at the table in corporate decision-making. But designers need to find ways to provide value to clients without devaluing themselves. If we believe in the value of design for business, we need to be honest about the complexity, creativity, and uncertainty involved in great design. This means not cheapening design by reducing it to a mechanical process. It means casting a critical eye on ‘the research.’ It means accepting that the most important information is not always quantifiable.
You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
think about what the tools of the future might look like and then imagine what they can build using these non-existent technologies
The designer shouldn’t think of a simple dichotomy between errors and correct behavior; rather, the entire interaction should be treated as a cooperative endeavor between person and machine, one in which misconceptions can arise on either side.
…a personable diplomat who is equally at home in a high-level conference with the president and in a technical discussion with the operator of an eight-thousand-ton press.
The advancement of the arts from year to year taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.
A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.
When belief and opinion are suspended, the mind has nowhere to rest. We are free to begin a radically other kind of questioning.
This is a philosophical question: when people program — i.e. decide on which set of possible options they should make available — they express a philosophy about what operations are important in the world. If the philosophy they express is on anything like the level of breathtaking stupidity that the games they play and the internet conversations they have are, then we are completely sunk. We are victims of their limitations. It’s as though we’re using a language that has lots of words like ‘cool’ and ‘surf’ but not one for ‘organism’ or ‘evolve’ or ‘synergy’.
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
There is strong archaeological evidence to show that with the birth of human consciousness there was born, like a twin, the impulse to transcend it.
Hard it is on earth…
Ax-time, sword-time…
Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls
Nor ever shall men each other spare.
I have never been able to understand what he meant by his life…. Why was he so disappointed with everybody else? Why was he so interested in the river and the woods…? Something peculiar here I judge.
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