👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week’s remarkable stories at the intersection of technology, business, design, and culture.
Three articles and three podcasts wrestled from this week's algorithmic feeds and click-bait chum. No fluff, just stuff⚡️
📚 Reading
🤓 Asad Madni and the Life-Saving Sensor:
“I told the engineers that we can’t have anything in there other than what is absolutely needed. And some balked—too used to working on complex designs, they weren’t interested in doing a simple design. I tried to explain to them that what I was asking them to do was more difficult than the complex things they’ve done.” But he still lost some high-level design engineers.
15-minute read by Peter Adams in IEEE Spectrum
🤯 If we’re all so busy, why isn’t anything getting done?
Meetings cannot go beyond 30 minutes. Meetings for one-way information sharing must be canceled in favor of other mechanisms such as a memo, podcast, or vlog. Two-way information sharing during meetings is limited by having attendees review materials in advance, replacing presentations with Q&As
10-minute read by McKinsey
🦸🏻♀️ Finding Heroes In A Messy Digital World:
Indeed, the design of the digital platforms that structure our social lives facilitates binary thinking. We are encouraged to see people and events in all-or-nothing terms: friend, follow, like, heart. If technology-inflected solitarist identity makes it difficult or impossible to identify and admire heroes, saints and sages, then it will be difficult or impossible for us to learn how to live well in the digital age.
9-minute read by Tim Gorichanaz in Noēma
🎧 Listening
🤖 Metaverse millionaires:
In the real world, we know where the ads are. They are in squares: windows, billboards, there are magazines. We know those squares are advertisements [..] Now imagine a metaverse environment where you're walking around fully embedded in 3D. You don't know where the ads are. Think how good the AIs are gonna get to modify the room you're in to sell you something in a way you don't notice.
48 minutes with Philip Rosedale on Danny in the Valley
🧙♀️ The myths and magic of innovation:
I think strategy today is more often the exposed rationalization of tactical choices that are made [..] I think we have to realize that increasingly, we cannot rely on sage advice or historical expertise to predict the future. We need to be able to think about the future differently, and that means that strategy becomes different.
39 minutes with Bill Fischer on Lancefield on the Line
🍿 Streaming in Crisis:
As there has been this very steady influx of Hollywood people into Netflix, it's hard for it not to start operating and feeling like another Hollywood company. Netflix felt like a special place to a lot of people for a long time. There was a good and bad to that, and now it feels a bit more normal like a big company.
59 minutes with Lucas Shaw with Eric Newcomer
🎁 One More Thing
Ron will take to the stage at an evening celebrating all things future creative and media, along with some exceptional guests. It’ll be in London on June 16th, and you could join us there 🙏
If you can’t make it that evening but are in London, we would love to meet up. Just let us know over the email address below 💌
📬 Suggestions?
Please send tips, comments, and ideas for the next issue by replying to this email. Or, send them directly to hello@futuring-architectures.com 🙏