“When robots and automation do our most basic work, making it relatively easy for us to be fed, clothed, and sheltered, then we are free to ask, ‘What are humans for?’” – Kevin Kelly
[Some fun insights in this writeup](http://www.fastcocreate.com/3023518/designing-a-future-of-comfort-color-and-gorgeous-gadgets-in-her) of the production design for [_Her_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6p6MfLBxc):
> “We kept asking ourselves, ‘What is his new desktop going to look like when he puts the new (Samantha) software in? Finally, Spike came to this brilliant realization, saying, ‘There’s a reason we haven’t figured this out, because it shouldn’t be anything.'”
> “We had this concept: what if we could only see advertising that was all in gorgeous slow motion and there were these beautiful abstract images? Then it becomes kind of a viral game where everybody’s trying to decipher the notion of what these different ads were.”
> Barrett’s most radical re-invention for future Los Angeles: There’s not a car in sight. Steering clear of freeway traffic jams, inhabitants ride bullet trains, take subways and walk. “One of the first things I said in designing Her was, ‘I don’t want to show any cars.'” says Barrett. “It’s another gesture of going away from technology. When you look at any film from any time period and see a car, you can place it right to the year.”
> “The device wasn’t designed to stand out like a gleaming new phone, but to be something you’d lay on the night stand, like your wallet or your address book. We wanted to go right past the surface of the device and into Samantha’s voice.”
“Channeling all interaction through a single finger is like restricting all literature to Dr Seuss’s vocabulary. Yes, it’s much more accessible, both to children and to a small set of disabled adults. But a fully-functioning adult human being deserves so much more.” – [Bret Victor](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/responses.html)
[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 ideas at full scale, the Wrights were doing focused aerodynamic experiments at a fraction of the cost. Their biographer Fred Howard says that these were “the most crucial and fruitful aeronautical experiments ever conducted in so short a time with so few materials and at so little expense.”
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 Google is that it’s hard to get people to work on those kinds of things because of the personal risk they feel they’re taking…
> I’ve told the whole company repeatedly I want people to work on artificial intelligence – so we end up with five people working on it. Guess what? That’s not a major expense. There’s a reason we talk about 70/20/10, where 70% of our resources are spent in our core business and 10% end up in unrelated projects, like energy or whatever. [The other 20% goes to projects adjacent to the core business.]
> Actually, it’s a struggle to get it to even be 10%.
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 a stepping stone to reality; it is the vestibule in which we undergo the rites of initiation. Man’s task is to make of himself a work of art. The creations which man makes manifest have no validity in themselves; they serve to awaken, that is all. And that, of course, is a great deal. But it is not the all. Once awakened, everything will reveal itself to man as creation. Once the blinders have been removed and the fetters unshackled, man will have no need to recreate through the elect cult of genius. Genius will be the norm…
What is the end game of communication technologies?
> What we have overlooked, in our frenzy to invent more dazzling ways and means of communication, is to communicate. The artist lumbers along with crude implements. He is only a notch above his predecessor, the cave man. Even the film art, requiring the services of veritable armies of technicians, is only giving us shadow plays, old almost as man himself…
> It may be that the revolution ensuing will envelop us in even greater darkness. But even in the blackest night it will be a joy and a boon to know that we are touching hands around the world. That has never happened before. We can touch and speak and pray in utter darkness. And we can wait for the dawn–no matter how long–provided we all wait together.
> To be a futurist, in pursuit of improving reality, is not to have your face continually turned upstream, waiting for the future to come. To improve reality is to clearly see where you are, and then wonder how to make that better. – [Warren Ellis](http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14314)
> But six [human skills] will survive, say Messrs Brynjolfsson and McAfee, no matter how fast and smart computers become. Those skills are: statistical insight; managing group dynamics; good writing; framing and solving open-ended problems; persuasion; and human nurturing.
[Sounds like a challenge](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2c70abc-8d4a-11e1-9798-00144feab49a.html#axzz1tuW6HMJB).
I worked on early versions of [this](https://plus.sandbox.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts)…the team has taken it a LONG way since then! Glad to see it reach the light of day.