October 2013

Bike shop innovation

[Was manned flight a victory for rapid prototyping?]( http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/) > You can credit the development of manned aircraft not to the Wright brothers’ glider flights at Kitty Hawk but to the six-foot wind tunnel they built for themselves in their bicycle shop using scrap metal and recycled wheel spokes. While their competitors were testing wing…more

Speculative spending

> It’s actually very difficult to spend meaningful amounts of money, relative to Google’s scale, on things that are speculative. – [Larry Page](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/10/17/larry-page-google-should-be-thinking-even-bigger-with-its-rd/) One of my favorite Larry moments was when he used to regularly ask the whole company to work on artificial intelligence [and no one would do it](http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/29/magazines/fortune/larry_page_change_the_world.fortune/index2.htm): > My own experience within…more

Make of yourself a work of art

During World War II, Henry Miller wrote an interesting essay called “Art and the Future”. [This article on it](http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/07/henry-miller-of-art-and-the-future/) piqued my curiosity enough to track down a print copy–my first physical book purchase in a while–and jot down a few quotes. On the purpose of art: > To put it quite simply, art is only…more

The split-brain notebook

[Mark Parker’s sketchbook](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019090/innovation-by-design/nikes-5-lessons-on-innovation-by-design) is pretty cool…one page for each side of the brain.

No small ideas

> This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It’s not just ‘What if’ – it’s ‘My God; what if’ – in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming. – [Philip K. Dick](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/136554-i-want-to-write-about-people-i-love-and-put)