What happens when a society with a penchant for the cosmetic meets a medium dominated by it? “The medium is the…
People Don’t Buy Products, They Buy Better Versions of Themselves
What Apple, Samsung, and Starbucks learned from Pepsi The year was 1957, and Pepsi — like many of the youth at that…
Is Optimization Ruining Innovation?
Platforms are making us complacent. Here’s why. In a 2017 article titled “Definite Optimism as Human Capital,” writer Dan Wang made a compelling…
The End of Authenticity
A tourist in search of something increasingly hard to find. Since being in Amsterdam, I’ve felt out of place, which must…
Musings on Facebook
Strategy credits and unintended consequences abound! As many analysts have argued, Facebook’s forced self-regulation will only entrench their incumbent position…
The Consumptive Mirror
Want to know what you are? Hint: it’s what you consume. “As William James observed, we must reflect that, when we…
An Economy of Desire
What economic theory says about the internet’s effect on society “Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley…
Pulling Back the Curtain
What startup aesthetic can tell us about our future and the implications of the Internet. The offices of the startups…
The Power of the Unseen
And the awesomeness of overcoming survivorship bias. During World War II, the American military enlisted the help of the Statistical…
The Death of the Deliberate
The other night, I got an ad on Facebook for a therapist. Credit: The New York Times It wasn’t the first…
