The Peter Principle says that workers are promoted through the ranks until they reach a position they are incompetent in. Essentially, this is because promotions are based on meeting a standard, something that is often suddenly recognized by a manager. In all probability, performance will decline slightly after this deservedly-noticed peak, making it look like…more
Here are some disappointing things I’ve noticed recently: Value of a stock is related to how much people want to buy a stock, not how good or nice the company is. Google may have issues with this. Doing well on tests means that you are good at taking tests, not necessarily that you are smart….more
For some reason, I have the most brilliant friends. Let me make this clear. I myself am not brilliant. Lucky, yes. Right place, right time kinda’ guy, you bet. But brilliance has never been my forte. Steven Johnson writes about his visit to an MRI lab for a brain scan. When the results come in,…more
Everyone laughs at the scene in Tom Sawyer when Tom convinces his friends to paint the fence for him by telling them that it’s a lot of fun. But deep down, we don’t really expect something like that to work, a belief that is changing for me as I explore the way design is used…more
One of the design challenges I’ve thought about recently is redesiging the interface for personal computers. For years, we’ve worked on computers using the “desktop” metaphor, invented by Douglas Englebart, refined by Xerox, and made popular by Apple and Microsoft. The change I am pondering is moving the computer interface in the direction that web…more
Forbes has an interesting article this month that explores the vast quantity of information our society produces (furled). In 2002 it is estimated that the world created about 5 exabytes of data. For comparison, one exabyte is what a digitized copy of all words ever spoken by human beings would take to store–in one year,…more
This article on how “aesthetics recede as behavior becomes more important”, a view put forth by Bill Moggridge, a founder of IDEO, points to an important emerging trend in the design world. The work of Naoto Fukasawa, a Japanese designer most famous for his “Without Thought” series, highlights a growing trend in product design toward…more
For a while now I’ve been interested in the place of language in faith–how important it is to say the right things, how the vocabulary you have allows you to believe different things. But for much longer, I’ve been concerned with how faith is spoken, especially the vows we take. “If a man . ….more