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Humor us for a moment and picture your favorite neighborhood restaurant. Ours is a corner spot in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. It has overflowing natural light, handmade textile seat cushions, a caramel wood grain throughout, and colorful ornaments dangling from the ceilings. Can you picture yours? Do you feel the warmth and spirit of the place?A Silicon Valley optimizer might say, “Well, they don’t brew their coffee at exactly 200 degrees. And the seats look a little ratty. And the ceiling ornaments don’t serve any function.”But we think that’s exactly the point. That these little, hand-crafted touches give our environment its humanity and spirit. In their absence, we’re left with something universal but utterly sterile — a space that may “perfectly” serve our functional needs, but leave our emotional needs in the lurch.

Operating systems were bubbly and evanescent, like nature. Apps were customizable, in every shape and size. And interfaces drew on real-life metaphors to help you understand them, integrating them effortlessly into your life.But as our everyday software tools and media became global for the first time, the hand of the artist gave way to the whims of the algorithm. And our software became one-size-fits-all in a world full of so many different people. All our opinions, beliefs, and ideas got averaged out — producing the least common denominator: endless sequels that everyone enjoys but no one truly loves.When our software optimizes for numbers alone — no matter the number — it appears doomed to lack a certain spirit, and a certain humanity.

In the end, we decided that we didn’t want to optimize for numbers at all. We wanted to optimize for feelings.While this may seem idealistic at best or naive at worst, the truth is that we already know how to do this. The most profound craftsmanship in our world across art, design, and media has long revolved around feelings.

When Olmstead crafted Central Park, what do you think he was optimizing for? Which metric led to Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight? What data brought the iPhone into this world? The answer is not numerical. It’s all about the feelings, opinions, experiences, and ideas of the maker themself. The great Georgia O’Keefe put it this way: "I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me... so I decided to start anew."

James Turrell took inspiration from astronomy and perceptual psychology. Coco Chanel was most influenced by nuns and religious symbols. David Adjaye drew from Yoruban sculpture, and Steve Jobs from Zen Buddhism and calligraphy.

And yet, in so much modern software today, you’re placed in a drab gray cubicle — anonymized and aggregated until you’re just a daily active user. For minimalism. For simplicity. For scale! But if our hope is to create software with feeling, it means inviting people in to craft it for themselves — to mold it to the contours of their unique lives and taste.

You see — if software is to have soul, it must feel more like the world around it. Which is the biggest clue of all that feeling is what’s missing from today’s software. Because the value of the tools, objects, and artworks that we as humans have surrounded ourselves with for thousands of years goes so far beyond their functionality. In many ways, their primary value might often come from how they make us feel by triggering a memory, helping us carry on a tradition, stimulating our senses, or just creating a moment of peace.This is not to say that metrics should not play a role in what we do. The age of metrics has undeniably led us to some pretty remarkable things! And numbers are a useful measuring stick to keep ourselves honest.But if the religion of technology preaches anything, it celebrates progress and evolution. And so we ask, what comes next? What do we optimize for beyond numbers? How do we bring more of the world around us back into the software in front of us?

So using that hook of “simplicity”, the best advice for “doing agile” is: Read the manifesto Figure out what makes you happy. And do that.

we need a mechanism when there is an emergency threat to human life for infrastructure providers to work expediently with legal authorities in order to ensure the decisions we make are grounded in due process. Unfortunately, that mechanism does not exist and so we are making this uncomfortable emergency decision alone.

blogging is an engine for cultivating agency

I’m in meetings completely credulous, believing whatever anyone says, even though Lucy from Peanuts taught me that that’s a mistake. I don’t have an intuitive sense for where money is. I spend hours on laborious projects that will make me just enough money to buy me four burritos, and fail to follow up on opportunities that would pay my rent for months. I have almost 80,000 followers on Twitter, and have made maybe only $1000 off the platform, most of which has been in the form of meal kits I’ve had to beg companies to send me after they used my Tweets without compensation on their Instagram page.

My job is actually one billion smaller jobs in a trench coat, many of which I’m actually not preternaturally gifted at or even experienced in.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth? Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

When young, we’re anxious — understandably — to find out if we’ve got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you — in particular you, of this generation — may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can . . . And this is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously — as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

I started writing because I was jobless and needed to turn my life around. I was an over-saturated news consumer with nothing to show for it.

Desperate for a solution, I started writing online. At the time, I was nameless and stuck on the sidelines because I didn’t have the gumption to share my ideas. I experienced a cocktail of searing emotions — envy, inspiration, fear, curiosity, rage, hope, hopelessness, excitement, and self-loathing. But with each article, things got a little better. For the first time in my life, I made use of the information I consumed. The friends I made shared my obsession with ideas. As I published, I realized that everything I wrote was a magnet to attract opportunities that felt like magic in the moment, such as a $20,000 grant from Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures program and a podcast interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, arguably the world’s most famous scientist.

becoming an online writer has shown me that I can succeed by bringing out more of myself

Mixed in with seeing Disney movies, at age 10, she discovered John Cassavetes’ Minnie And Moskowitz and thought, “To see that and to say, ‘What’s this world out there and how do I fit in it?’ that to me is the most important part of filmmaking and being in films.

the police are at wits’ end. It all speaks to the desperate need for a statewide mental health system, funded with help from the feds. The problem is just too big for San Francisco to solve on its own.

I kept looking for that one thing that defined me as a creative: you know, that thing that all designers seek. I felt the pressure of needing to have an aesthetic style or skill to stand out as a creative. I wish more people talked about how we don’t have to be pigeonholed, that we can just let the idea dictate the media.

I realized AR requires a combination of disciplines if you want to go beyond “awe.” Knowing how to make 3-D models is not enough. While I used publication design tools to organize information, I didn’t realize how much wayfinding would come into play. In the end, AR requires design for real physical spaces that go beyond a screen. Rules on viewing distance and material design, among other things, became important. Moreover, we experience AR through our mobile phones or glasses—both are experientially different. Having knowledge of interface design helped me navigate that.