less humans, more robots
My work moves around the intersection of technology, design, architecture, venture capital, psychology, economics and applied physics. I work with startups and large corporations on business design and future design.
In my work, it starts with ideas. It starts with design. It starts with writing. It starts with strategy.
In my work, It starts with getting started.
Almost all people answer that the opposite of “fragile” is “robust,” “resilient,” “solid,” or something of the sort.
But the resilient, robust (and company) are items that neither break nor improve, so you would not need to write anything on them— have you ever seen a package with “robust” in thick green letters stamped on it? Logically, the exact opposite of a “fragile” parcel would be a package on which one has written “please mishandle” or “please handle carelessly.”
Its contents would not just be unbreakable, but would benefit from shocks and a wide array of trauma. – View on Path.
Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish-green slime. It demanded from humankind a blood-curdling tribute: to satisfy its enormous appetite, ten thousand men and women had to be delivered every evening at the onset of dark to the foot of the mountain where the dragon-tyrant lived. Sometimes the dragon would devour these unfortunate souls upon arrival; sometimes again it would lock them up in the mountain where they would wither away for months or years before eventually being consumed.
The misery inflicted by the dragon-tyrant was incalculable. In addition to the ten thousand who were gruesomely slaughtered each day, there were the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children, and friends that were left behind to grieve the loss of their departed loved ones.
Some people tried to fight the dragon, but whether they were brave or foolish was difficult to say. Priests and magicians called down curses, to no avail. Warriors, armed with roaring courage and the best weapons the smiths could produce, attacked it, but were incinerated by its fire before coming close enough to strike. Chemists concocted toxic brews and tricked the dragon into swallowing them, but the only apparent effect was to further stimulate its appetite. The dragon’s claws, jaws, and fire were so effective, its scaly armor so impregnable, and its whole nature so robust, as to make it invincible to any human assault.
Brilliant piece on medical ethics and innovation by Nick Bostrom. Read the full essay here.
Why has the growth in wealth and complexity been sudden and explosive rather than smooth?
Just what kind of an algorithm is evolution? What does it do?
Evolution creates designs, or more appropriately, discovers designs, through a process of trial and error.
One needs “design without a designer” to explain biological evolution, but why do we need ‘that process’ to explain the wealth creation?
Aren’t we the gods of our own economic creation?
Wealth, after all, is created by smart, innovative people coming up with new ideas for products and lots of hard work to make and sell them.
We are gods.
Design has tended to be solution driven, but the problems are becoming more complex and contradictory, and the solutions no longer so easy to define. The space before us is unresolved, full of dilemmas and trade-offs.
Yet, even here, designers are perfectly equipped to flourish. Understanding and accepting the complexity, and the messy loose ends, can provide cohesion through multiple possibilities. Tangible problem-solving design skills can be used to ask questions, interrogate existing frameworks, and generate a broad range of diverse alternatives, both positive and negative. The implications of technological cultures are revealed even as they are still in formation.
The requirement is imagination, and more importantly, the ability to trigger the imagination of others. Design proposals
are used as participatory tools, not only for a broader public of citizens or end “users” but also for “experts” and “decision makers.”
“Can we ____?” is an engineering problem.
“Should we ____?” is a design/UX/strategy problem.
Ideally, people on your team can handle both.
At fusedcow, we are not a startup - we are a movement. A movement to help people create inspiring homes for themselves and their families. We achieve that with the help of technology, some really innovative computing which helps the end-user make his dreams comes true.
Human Centered Design:
The technology ecosystem ignored the end-user in this industry. Architects are failing to create/show value. Architecture - from the original ‘human centered design’- is moving to ‘architect/me centered design’.
Especially in India, everytime I talk to somebody who have hired an architect for any job is dis-satisfied with the architect. They think Architects are teaming-up with the local-contractor and pushing the budget up (to earn 10% of the total spend).
This is not a problem of the architect - 5 years of grad-school taught him to create ‘inspiring designs’ - not ‘inspiring and usable designs for the client’. The role models - whosoever, the Hadids to the Roarks - pushed the point “create iconic buildings” - never really focused on ‘usability’. — especially in interiors.
The end user is dumb/less-visionary than the architect - he wants a well-planned & designed space for himself and family and it should be under the budget.
The home owner never gets what he wants from the architect - and that is one of the reasons the 70+ home-owners bitched about the architect to me.
The Satellier Alumni and other things DESIGN:
Let’s change that. My friends and I worked on changing the way architecture is done about 9 years back, bringing collaborative technology platforms in large-scale real-estate development. At Satellier Inc, we worked with some of the best estate-developers in the world (especially in the US and UK) with a strong focus on the designer.
Not the end user. The market then demanded better tech for the designer. The market we know of is saturated.
Let’s bring the most- important stake-holder in the real-estate business: The home-buyer. That space is still craving for technology, design and innovation.
We are building a technology platform which will help you build a dream home, the CAD drawings you see will transform into magical-spaces, just the way you wanted.
If you are a recent home-owner, sign-in for the private-beta of fusedcow - thank you!
….when it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
You live your life by a code, an ethos. Every man does. It’s your shoreline. It’s what guides you home. And trust me, you’re always trying to get home.
Why. (and What you need to think when you startup?) – View on Path.
The Bombay where impact-investors write their thesis document on.
