August Recommendations

The Steve Jobs archive has been an utter treat over the last year. Most notable is the collection of Steve's own words it published—edited by Leslie Berlin—Make Something Wonderful. The archive recently shared a recording of Steve's speech at the Aspen Design Institute in 1983. They included an accompanying editorial and an introduction by Jony Ive, but the video on its own is available here.

Steve traveled to Aspen to speak to an audience of designers who'd scarcely used a computer, let alone owned their one, and urged them to consider the coming importance of the device. Apple had just released the Lisa and was secretly working on a new computer called the Macintosh. His central message: these devices are the future whether or not you're ready, but they can be ugly, impersonal, and lousy, or they can be beautiful, intuitive, and great. So why don't they join Apple in making them great?

It's hard to believe how clearly Steve saw what was coming, from the evolution of the PC's form factor toward something that could fit in your hands to the notion that someday we might be able to ask Aristotle a question by way of these devices. Better yet, the talk is an empathetic invitation: there is no sense that some in the audience shouldn't be able to "get it" or that this stuff had to be inaccessible. Steve was the simplest, most persuasive, and best communicator I've experienced.

One long conversation with Vampire Weekend's frontman split into two parts. I particularly enjoyed part 2, but the entire podcast is excellent.

A deep dive into process, inspiration, tinkering, collaborators, writing, your relationship to who you used to be, richness through simplicity, and more. It's made even better by bits of Ezra playing songs on guitar and talking through them—especially this segment on one of my favorite songs, 'This Life' (through 20:47).

There's a section where Ezra speaks about spirituality. I enjoyed his reflection on his spiritual worldview by way of 'Ya Hey' on the other side of a decade:

“At the time I thought it doesn’t make any sense, nobody could live that way… just ‘I am that I am’… it doesn’t make sense.

But now I look back on it and I think well, if it didn’t make sense, why did I care?

There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense and you can let it go. You know what I mean? A lot of things don’t make sense but you can let it go. There was clearly something drawing me in about it.

A human being trying to have a conversation with the infinite and saying how can it be that with all this change and these things… that you’re just out there saying I am that I am? How can you live that way?

The person asking that question is… confused and angry and looking for something deeper. So when I think about that song now, I see it differently.”

I previously wrote about another wonderful piece of Henrik's called Looking for Alice. Both essays are about discovery: How do you intuitively move forward in the world—regardless of how specific the outcome—in an authentic way? Most advice is general in an unhelpful way. I think the problem with generalized advice is that life isn't about reaching generalized outcomes. It's about getting to very specific outcomes that work because they are a fit for you. This is true when it comes to something very specific (who am I going to marry?) and something very vague (how should I design my life?).

Henrik's writing emphasizes a radically personal approach to these questions. In this essay, he relies on Christopher Alexander's concepts of unfolding and form-context-fit to explain how to move incrementally through life. He suggests leaning forward and getting continuous feedback from the context—put another way, contact with reality—rather than succumbing to grand visions and greener grass:

"The opposite of an unfolding is a vision. A vision springs, not from a careful understanding of a context, but from a fantasy: if you could just make it into another context your problems will go away."

Before reading this profile, I knew almost nothing about Palantir Founder and CEO Alex Karp—although his viral interview clip from the spring suggested he was a bit unconventional. This piece is about as entertaining as a profile comes. It was nice to read about a wildly intelligent, pro-technology leader who seems to defy political and tribal conventions—at least when it comes to which sets of beliefs are supposed to be paired. E.g. a left-leaning democrat donor who relates to shooting guns as "art" and argues strongly for the relative moral superiority of America—both in a theoretical sense and a we-actually-have-to-defend-the-world-against-bad-guys sense.

“I always think it’s hard because where the critics are right is what we do is morally complex. If you’re supporting the West with products that are used at war, you can’t pretend that there’s a simple answer.”

Does he have any qualms about what his company does?

“I’d have many more qualms if I thought our adversaries were committed to anything like the rule of law,” he said, adding: “A lot of this does come down to, do you think America is a beacon of good or not? I think a lot of the critics, what they actually believe is America is not a force for good.” His feeling is this: “Without being Pollyannaish, idiotic or pretending like any country’s been perfect or there’s not injustice, at the margin, would you want a world where America is stronger, healthy and more powerful, or not?”

Perhaps I'm drinking the kool-aid from an effective profile and (portrayed to be) strangely charismatic leader who wants to surveil the world. I am not well-read enough to have a strong political view on whether Palantir has been a net positive for the world or an enabler of shameless war crimes.[1] But this piece is appealing to me because of all the apparent narrative contradictions. Frankly, my limited exposure to headlines over the years made me assume that Alex Karp and Peter Thiel would be far-right ideological twins. The fact that they are not—and that they remain close friends and collaborators—suggests that there may be hope yet for our ability to work together toward a world where individual sovereignty and freedom win out.

Most powerful people are surely more interesting and less predictable than headlines make them out to be. But Karp's apparent originality shines particularly brightly.

An aside—I think this bit of sales advice from Peter Thiel is particularly smart:

Mr. Thiel explained: “In some ways, Alex doesn’t look like a salesperson from central casting you would send to the C.I.A. The formulation I always have is that if you’re trying to sell something to somebody, the basic paradox is you have to be just like them, so they can trust you — but you have to be very different from them so that they think you have something they don’t have.”

1. I suspect several of you, including friends of mine, may have strong views here—or even be frustrated by my combination of ignorance and interpretation of this profile and its political topics. If I can ask for some kindness, please feel free to tell me why or how I should update my view. Better yet, I welcome a nudge on where to start on a path to deeper understanding.