Have we lost track of what an app is? It’s a thing on your phone that does a thing. Or did once. Putting aside conspiracy theories about apps invading personal space by perusing all data once installed, I still wonder if we really understand their nature, or natures. Everything in life happens via app. We make restaurant reservations, order new… Read More »What’s an App?
I’ve recently learned about a few novel approaches to making money. They’ve emerged from the union of established business models and the internet, facilitating sometimes dubious transactions at the speed of electrons flying down a fibre-optic cable. Many involve buying things other people will want later, or in a different format, selling them at a premium to the original price, and… Read More »Unusual Ways to Make Money
As a creative, I feel I should do the best I can to support my fellow creatives, but find myself wondering what’s the best way to do this. Creatives generate their own content, their art: visual, written, musical, tangible, untangible, informative or entertaining, and many other things. I indulge in YouTube videos about DIY, fashion, and cats, recipes from many… Read More »Betwixt and Between Creators and their Platforms.
Two bits of insight crossed my brain simultaneously (from some form of electronic communication, of course): 1. With social media, we contact about the same number of people who care about us as we did prior to social media, but encounter far more people, most of whom don’t know who we are. 2. The creative capacity of AI will put… Read More »Could AI Make Social more Human?
Is a world without property utopian or dystopian? Both sci-fi and academic1 projections, or maybe hallucinations, of a property-less world exist. Going propertyless could be the new way of sustaining our physical environment. It could throw off the shackles of capitalism to work in a new harmony with fellow citizens of the planet. Or perhaps it’s a way the overlords of… Read More »Why both More Property and Less Property are Good.
After a three part series on what entrepreneurship shouldn’t do, it’s time to get upbeat and think about the glorious possibilities of a new life, i.e. what entrepreneurship is the answer. Wee-haw! This is going to be fun: imagining a wonderful world brought to us by entrepreneurship1, starting with the past. So many things could be listed under the heading… Read More »When Entrepreneurship is the Answer. Part 1: looking back.
After considering if entrepreneurship should do all the things it might to make life easier for people, and looking at some examples when great entrepreneurial ideas solved a problem but ultimately created more, I’m wondering if there is a third category of ‘things entrepreneurship shouldn’t do, even if it can’. This question was inspired by emerging products that don’t seem… Read More »Should Entrepreneurship be the Answer to Everything? part 3
Aside from the philosophical question of whether entrepreneurship should deliver on every human whim, there are also circumstances where it seemed to start out well and end badly. A genuine need was addressed, making people’s lives better, but downstream impacts cause new problems. Entrepreneurship shouldn’t cause problems for entrepreneurship to solve1. When I say entrepreneurship, I mean the eco-system of unrelated creative… Read More »Should Entrepreneurship be the answer to Everything, Part 2
A lesson from the textbooks: Entrepreneurship can solve many problems. Creative, innovative approaches to meet unmet needs or solve unsolved problems should result in business success because people are provided with things they want and need. But people don’t always want what’s best for them. Think: donuts, lounging around, fossil fuels, alcoholic beverages, toxic relationships, too much social media, deep… Read More »Should Entrepreneurship be the Answer to Everything? part 1
I once wrote a paper “What does it mean, to trust a machine?”. The title rhymed and the paper was an academic waffle about how humans would place a certain amount of confidence in AI in a way that was more like the way you trusted your coworker to do certain things than you trusted your toaster to do certain… Read More »What does it mean, to love a machine?