Rob Brackett

“ Privilege doesn’t mean you’ve never had to struggle. Privilege doesn’t mean you don’t work hard. Privilege doesn’t mean you’ve never had tragedy in your life. Privilege doesn’t mean you’ve never had to suffer. Privilege doesn’t mean you haven’t been discriminated against in other ways (including, yes, for being White). Privilege means there are a lot of things you’ve never had to think twice about that other people have to think about every day. → ”

“ Through these repeated acts of petty propaganda, [Elon] Musk has developed a reputation as a Tony Stark–like man of action—rather than, say, an endlessly self-aggrandizing, union-busting executive whose empire rests on billions in government subsidies and canny acts of self-dealing. → ”

“ The best approach for a vulnerable community like Makoko is softly-softly. Not with grandiose projects that put the community at risk if anything goes wrong. → ”

“ San Francisco is becoming like Manhattan in density, but it’s got the transit system of Cincinnati. → ”

“ Imagine that you’re an old-school working programmer. That means that you write code for its intrinsic value [to] a business, not for resale or as an investment vehicle. → ”

“ I’d always assumed that people understood that perfectly well and felt free to jump in and question my judgment. But maybe my demeanor was making that difficult. I decided to test that proposition: instead of waiting for feedback, I’d invite it and see what happened… Not surprisingly, the answer was rarely, ‘Don’t change a thing, Chris.’ → ”

“ To protest is to have an unyielding faith in the potential for a just society. → ”

“ Trying to generalize about ambition is like comparing apples and oranges and bananas and flowers and weeds and dirt and compost and kiwi and kumquat and squash blossoms and tomatoes and annuals and perennials and sunshine and worms. Wanting to be first in your class is and is not like wanting a Ferrari is and is not like being the first in your family to go to college is and is not like wanting to get into Harvard/Iowa/Yaddo is and is not like wanting to summer on Martha’s Vineyard is and is not like wanting to rub elbows with fancy folk is and is not like wanting to shatter a glass ceiling is and is not like wanting to write a lasting work of genius with which no one can quibble. Our contexts are not the same, our struggles are not the same, and so our rebellions and complacencies and conformities and compromises cannot be compared. But the fact remains: whatever impresses you illuminates your ambition. → ”

“ The other thing the internet doesn’t show us is quiet. The moments that we’re all having where we’re sitting there turning this stuff over, trying to make sense of it. It can feel like nobody else is doing that. → ”

“ That’s the thing: the internet is not the larger conversation. The internet is a smaller conversation. → ”

“ Peace is not the absence of war but the absence of fear, which is the presence of justice. → ”

“ The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices… and a basic apprehension of people… If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations. → ”

“ If you don’t see yourself in the past, how do you project yourself successfully into the future? → ”

“ One person’s lack of access to medical care is cause for a fundraiser, but thirty million people without health insurance is a ‘choice’ that needs to be protected. One teenager from a disadvantaged background who gets to go to Harvard is a triumph; the systematic increase of student debt and exclusion of large chunks of the population from public higher education is necessary belt-tightening. If we want to genuinely change people’s behaviour… [what we need is] a lot more ways to understand the experiences of large groups of people and to alter the social, political and economic systems that shape their lives. → ”

“ If we stand behind equal, unrestricted internet access as something fundamental… is it not hypocritical to deny access to those who may not be privileged enough to be browsing Facebook in Canary, fullscreen, on their shiny Retina 5K iMac? → ”

“ I think that when I say something is an enhancement, what people hear is that something is *just* an enhancement. It sounds belittling. That’s not my intention… there’s the misunderstanding that progressive enhancement means making sure everything works without JavaScript (it doesn’t; it’s about the core functionality). → ”

“ The manner by which wars are fought matters more than how they end. Because in the end, nobody really wins. → ”

“ The ‘best’ experience is often immaterial compared to something ‘good enough’ that you can easily share with those around you. → ”

“ The main pitfall with hillshading is that it begins to look realistic… it’s very easy to cross the conceptual boundary from “requires interpretation” to “looks plausible,” past which your forebrain shuts off. → ”

“ The challenge is politics doesn't work in thoughtful, reasonable conversations anymore. It happens in sound bites, in shouted slogans, in bumper stickers, in 10-second video clips. And how we take those tools that we have to use and tie them to reasonable conversations is the big challenge that politics is defined by now. → ”

“ Thoughtful feedback isn’t just an answer, it’s time + an answer. Time is a key component to formulating a complete thought. → ”

“ Focus is a very hard thing to impose retroactively. → ”

“ In [Silicon] Valley, I met anti-statism. I met it in executives from corporations, I met it in the ex-hippie community, the bohemian quarters. There is a very strong anti-statism in America generally, and in particular, California, and in particular-particular, Silicon Valley. And I think it’s a mistaken philosophy. → ”

“ [Silicon Valley programmers] want to change the world, but they work all the time… so what exactly do they know about the world except as it is presented inside the cloisters of VCs and startup culture? → ”

“ Age is irrelevant to creative work, but in Silicon Valley, especially on the startup side, there’s a bias toward young entrepreneurs and employees. → ”

“ It’s not enough to remember Nazis as symbols of evil. What happened to six million people was not done by metaphors for wickedness, it was done by other people with hands and brains like ours. They were infected with the idea that there are intrinsically good people and intrinsically evil people. They were extremely evil, but not intrinsically. They were wrong in ways that you and I can be wrong. This is the most terrifying thing I know. → ”

“ Infrastructure is often the least-appreciated part of what makes a country strong, and what makes innovation take flight. → ”

“ We treat sufficiently cataclysmic events as acts of God rather than failures of risk management. If enough people ignore a risk, they can successfully argue after the fact that no one could have foreseen it. → ”

“ It’s been said that the terrorist in Charleston was a “lone wolf,” but this is a lie. He did not act alone. He acted within the framework of white supremacy, within a system that we have officially decried but quietly tolerated because it works in our favor. He acted with our consent. → ”

“ Lots of other practices fall out from the remote by default stance… but rigorous documentation is the most critical habit. → ”

“ When you say “engagement,” I now hear “theft of attention.” → ”

“ Our shared conversations are increasingly taking place in privately owned and managed walled gardens, which means that the politics that occur in such conversations are subject to private rules. → ”

“ The voices we hear most frequently are from a particular segment of the industry—those who can afford to spare the time. → ”

“ I thought we were publishing lots of women in 2014. Our pages seemed to be full of ’em! Which just goes to show how easy it is to normalize lack of diversity when you’re not paying attention: 4 in 10 feels like “a lot,” instead of “less than half.” → ”

“ Many people look at these stories and seek to blame “bad cops.” This is a serious mistake. Part of the system’s success is its ability to get people to focus on criticizing “bad apples” rather than on challenging deeper structural problems. → ”

“ Missing water is only missing from the human perspective: someone promised it, someone needs it. A crisis in physical infrastructure is a symptom of crises in the ultrastructure—the cultural, political, regulatory systems that we wish we could take for granted. → ”

“ You can’t or maybe you can override prejudice overnight, but the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, ninety-odd years ago. I believe in gradualism. I also believe that ninety-odd years is pretty gradual. → ”

“ Is the culture of physics a place where many different people come together around a common goal, or a place where anyone is welcome as long as they act and believe the way everyone else does? It’s a fine distinction, but a vital one, and I think the answer is the latter. → ”

“ Making websites is fucking weird. I’ve spent my whole life making things that can’t be touched. They disappear, and it’s as if they never existed. They leave no human trace. → ”

“ If the bar is that [a police officer’s] not been convicted [of murder] and that means it was justified, then you are justifying the murder of many people. → ”

“ We can choose not to be defensive… we can choose to listen. We can choose to correct for that moment, to reflect, to apologize, to stop, to be aware. → ”

“ I couldn’t solve those kids’ problems. I couldn’t ensure their safety, or take away the hurt. What I could do was ask a question: ‘What would you like to see happen?’ I couldn’t promise it would come true. But oftentimes, I was the first person who’d ever asked, who’d acknowledged that they had choices—that they were humans with preferences and wants that deserved to be considered. → ”

“ This man believes the term [“brogrammer”] is cutesy… On a scale of 1 to Cute, it’s blobfish. → ”

“ Culture counts, but a culture is never a reduced essence of something indigenous. → ”

“ The cosmopolitan nature of civilization, derived from trade, is always the single most startling thing about it. → ”

“ I think it makes more sense to analyze [the drought] with questions like ‘why are we undervaluing food and water so badly?,’ or more deeply with ‘why are we accepting dollars as the denominator of social and environmental value?’ than with ‘how do we ban almonds?’ → ”

“ Most people think femininity is an act to impress men. → ”

“ We work very hard to avoid false positives because false positives are one of the worst things you could do to any warning system. It just makes people tune them out. → ”

“ The notion that every woman you may hire has some measurable risk associated with her—as if we’re all ticking discrimination lawsuit timebombs—is itself discrimination. → ”

“ On the topic of testing, the baseline is to accept the truth of [“legacy code” as any code that does not have tests], even if other constraints are preventing you from addressing it. → ”

“ The processes that occur in cities are not arcane, capable of being understood only by experts… Many ordinary people already understand them; they simply have not given these processes names, or considered that by understanding these ordinary arrangements of cause and effect, we can also direct them if we want to. → ”

“ “This is a public place!” she explodes. “Everyone has the right to be left in peace.” It is an odd bit of dialogue, at least to American ears. → ”

“ We can no longer define and describe [privacy] so certainly in terms of “public space” and “private space.” We probably never should have… one can invade another’s privacy, and even do that person harm, simply by recording or filming that person in a public.  → ”

“ The best way to salvage any kind of sorted-out project, up to the time it is actually built: think better of it. → ”

“ Attrition [of cars], too, must operate in positive terms, as a means of supplying positive, easily understood and desired improvements, appealing to various specific and tangible city interests. This is desirable not because such an approach is a superior persuasive and political device (although it is), but because the objects should be tangible and positive objects of increasing, in specific places, city diversity vitality, and workability. To concentrate on riddance as the primary purpose, negatively to put taboos and penalties on automobiles… would be a policy not only doomed to defeat but rightly doomed to defeat. → ”

“ Because we have a word for the stories women sell to women… it’s easier for us to be aware that it’s a transaction. It's easier to recoil against that sale. It’s easier to reject the vendor as manipulative and disingenuous. We're able to see it, thanks to a provided context. → ”

“ Everyone has an opinion. Even “data” (which is either other people’s opinions, or interpreted by someone with biases). → ”

“ I need me being a software engineer to be unremarkable in comparison to what has already been achieved by women of color. → ”

“ The working hypothesis for privacy enhancing technology was simple: we’d develop really flexible power tools for ourselves, and then teach everyone to be like us. → ”

“ [Engineers who make mistakes] are, after all, the most expert in their own error. They ought to be heavily involved in coming up with remediation items. → ”

“ [When buying a car,] we often did without most… add-ons. They were the extras. They were what drove the cost of a car higher and higher. They were nice to have, but a car would work without these things. I worry that we have it backwards on the web. We ask questions like: How much does accessibility cost? How much does progressive enhancement cost? Meanwhile we’re shipping sites that support only the most “modern browsers”. We ship sites built specifically to achieve some fancy effect. → ”

“ The age of buildings is no index to the age of a community, which is formed by a continuity of people. → ”

“ The Sierra Club was created by men of privilege who wanted to go camping and hiking with other men of privilege. It's tricky to have that history and negotiate a political moment that requires a much contestation as this one does. → ”

“ ‘Humane’ is never a default. Humane only comes out of very deliberate and conscientious design work. → ”

“ Culture is a byproduct of all the people, activities, and work that goes on at your company. It should change over time. If you’re hiring for your culture, you’re doing it wrong. You should be asking yourself: Can this person do the job? Do I want to work with them for the next 5 years? If the answer to both is Yes, you just enhanced and changed your company’s culture by one person. → ”

“ The purpose of all Refresh Portland events… is to Inform and Entertain. In that order. Learning new stuff should be fun, which is why both are important to me. → ”

“ It is easier to imagine bodies suffering than to imagine people suffering in their hearts and in their minds. → ”

“ To feel short feelings about climate change—terror, rage, or panic, for example—is to ask of our bodies a physical exertion that is simply not sustainable. The fatigue is a forced rest, a compulsory respite. → ”

“ I’m an old-fashioned guy. And I also happen to believe in history. The lack of interest, the disdain for history is what makes computing not-quite-a-field. → ”

“ I think we, the JavaScript community as a whole, have grown to undervalue stability. It’s a boring concept, really. There’s nothing exciting about it. But having a solid base platform on which to build means you’re free to focus on the more interesting higher levels. → ”

“ History has shown overwhelmingly that if you want to change the world for the better, you should deliver good tools for making it better, not policies for making it better. → ”

“ We’ve taught generations of architects to speak out as artists, but we haven’t taught them how to listen. → ”

“ Assuming any data is neutral elides the social and political systems from which it emerges. → ”

“ Human beings are capable of dealing with complex, adverse situations—we do it all the time—but many of the social structures we live in assume that we're not capable. → ”

“ An economic system centered on the god of money also needs to plunder nature in order to maintain the frenetic pace of consumption inherent in it. → ”

“ Behind a euphemism lies a crime. → ”

“ It's by having more women and more people of color running shows that you stop having to talk about it all the time, and nobody wants to talk about it all the time. But if you don't talk about it, nothing changes, and that's the trap. → ”

“ National scrutiny is a fragile thing. → ”

“ Right where written evidence for Western culture starts, women’s voices are not being heard in the public sphere; more than that, as Homer has it, an integral part of growing up, as a man, is learning to take control of public utterance and to silence the female of the species. → ”

“ This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds. → ”

“ The mind – the culture – has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel. With these we bluster about the continents and do all the world’s work. With these we try to save our very lives. → ”

“ To negotiate about human rights under the table is insulting to those that it concerns. → ”

“ [Nepal’s] government and parliament today represent the face (or shroud) of impunity. → ”

“ Uncertainty and failure are part of the nature of software-as-service. They are, to use @seungchan’s term, part of its “materiality”, just as flexibility or brittleness are part of the materiality of the wood or metal or plexiglass used to make a piece of furniture. → ”

“ As a software developer, your level of personal security directly affects that of your users. → ”

“ Passion is useful, but you’ll be more effective when you demonstrate the evidence behind your beliefs, rather than the strength of those beliefs. → ”

“ It seems more often than not the frailties of the human mind exceed our efforts to improve it. → ”

“ The law should encourage intelligent discussion of possible remedies for what every American can recognize as an ongoing national tragedy. → ”

“ You only need to look at the standards of dentistry in the mountains to realise that handing out candy to children is neither appropriate or responsible. → ”

“ Ask any young black person their views on the Police, I assure you their response will not be positive. Yet if you have something against the Police, who represent the government, you cannot sit on a trial jury. A young black woman was struck from the jury in my case because she said she sees the Police as ‘intimidators.’ She never had a good experience with the Police like most young blacks, but even though she’s just being true to her experience, she’s not worthy to take part as a juror in a trial. → ”

“ A lot of developers (and managers!) resist [polyglot software code], under what I think is the mistaken impression that committing to one language keeps projects and teams simpler and more efficient. → ”

“ Physical objects come with complex and inseparable contexts, and they are produced by a huuuge machine full of flywheels with unfathomable inertia. → ”

“ A slow, inefficient court applying outdated laws under the influence of mild institutional corruption is at like the 99th fucking percentile of justice that human civilization has acheived. → ”

“ There is a geometric relationship between the length of an estimate and its inaccuracy. → ”

“ We put so much care into making the Internet resilient from technical failures, but make no effort to make it resilient to political failure. We treat freedom and the rule of law like inexhaustible natural resources, rather than the fragile and precious treasures that they are. → ”

“ Craft inhabits whatever medium or tool you work with, if you let it. → ”

“ Those invested in the old will rightfully take issue with the new. Because anyone who loves and has invested in a way of doing something will not — and should not — give it up without good cause. But that doesn't mean the changes aren't real. → ”

“ Form and content must never apologize for each other. → ”

“ Waiting for institutional backing can be such a slow and complicated ordeal that it becomes the biggest reason for doing nothing. → ”

“ We speculated that museums have taken the place of churches and temples in contemporary society: today's pilgrims are more likely to travel to remote museums than to hilltop shrines, and works of art have replaced religious idols as targets of veneration. → ”

“ If the Camorra had all the power, its business, which is essential to the workings of the legal and illegal scale, would not exist. In this sense every arrest and maxi-trial seems more like a way of replacing capos and breaking business cycles than an act capable of destroying a system. → ”

“ The economic power of the Camorra system lies exactly in its continual turnover of leaders and criminal choices. → ”

“ The resulting changeset to fix this ended up so large that it took weeks to land. Well, live and learn, right? I remember Michael Starzinger telling me the same thing about V8—you just have to keep your patches small, as small as possible, and always working. Words to the wise indeed. → ”

“ The smartest people in the world aren't protective of their creations. They know they can always make more, and they know that life isn't a zero-sum game. → ”

“ You may have heard preventing error is cheaper than fixing it–yes, in manufacturing or medicine, but… not so in creative environments. → ”

“ Standing up for the public good may be altruistic, but it does not preclude ‘doing well by doing good.’ → ”

“ The continual rebuilding process keeps traditional crafts alive: preservation of expertise and knowledge rather than preservation of buildings. → ”

“ For some reason one stupidly thinks a criminal act has to be more thought out, more deliberate than an innocuous one. But there's really no difference. Actions know an elasticity that ethical judgements ignore. → ”

“ Experimentation is great if you’re learning. If you’re not, it’s just expensive. → ”

“ The North Koreans surgically removed everything of Danish origin from the comedy show and replaced it with the story and content made up by Mr. Jong Sei Jin, their director. If our comedy show had suffered from a lack of logic, continuity, as well as quality, the North Koreans replaced it with a show which was even more bizarre and grotesque. → ”

“ If you want to be inclusive, find the people you want to include and fucking include them. …only the most belligerent are going to bother to challenge the mixed message in “we want you here, please fight your way in, and can you pick up some ice on the way”. → ”

“ Sometimes, declaring a problem impossible is also a great advance. → ”

“ I look at visual performances like this and suspect that it is in part precisely because our ability now to churn out products so quickly and effortlessly that the results often do not compare to those that required an inordinately greater investment and therefore commanded a sense of magnitude in the proceeding that has few analogs today. → ”

“ It’s just a Los Angeles; it’s not the Los Angeles. It’s very much a particular spot in time that I found myself at that moment. → ”

“ You’re flying and imaging and circling—again and again and again, around and around and around—because you can’t just move the camera two inches to the left, or wait 15 minutes. You’re moving along at 60 miles an hour through space. So you have to shoot it again and again and again, until, finally, you get to a point where your physical senses are moving faster than your mind, and you’ve made all the shots that you think you should make—which are generally the worst ones—and it’s at that point that you come up with something genuinely new. → ”

“ Do not do what [Neil Gaiman] did when his 11-year-old daughter was into RL Stine, which is to go and get a copy of Stephen King's Carrie, saying “if you liked those you'll love this!” Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years, and still glares… when Stephen King's name is mentioned. → ”

“ I've learned that you have to show determination, and nothing shows determination like a professional-grade rubber stamp. → ”

“ If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. → ”

“ Accepting that all existing constraints are immovable isn't problem-solving, it's capitulation. → ”

“ When I got to GDS I found the obsession with user needs so refreshing and helpful - not just users, but user needs. That's a big important distinction. One that sometimes gets lost in a warm bath of user-centricness. If we forget the needs bit then we're just talking about users, which easily elides into audiences, which everyone takes to mean target audiences - which is a whole different kettle of ball games. → ”

“ It is not the case that we have failed to care for Creation, but that we have failed to care for our technological creations. We confuse the monster for its creator and blame our sins against Nature upon our creations. But our sin is not that we created technologies but that we failed to love and care for them. It is as if we decided that we were unable to follow through with the education of our children. → ”

“ I don't want to make pretty buildings, drawings, or words. I want to make good ones. → ”

“ In his criticism of design theory [Jacques Herzog] argued very saliently that the biggest measure of architecture is whether people actually like it. Suddenly, the postmoderns and the theorists in the room got in a huff. I thought it was amusing to see this tension. → ”

“ I decided that from now on I’d only hang out with eight-year-olds, because they still understand the whimsical joy of silliness, and they’re too young to call the authorities on you. → ”

“ I wish we'd worked harder early on to build an organization in which human potential isn't just expected and taken for granted but is also nurtured. → ”

“ Toys are not really as innocent as they look. Toys and games are preludes to serious ideas. → ”

“ To disregard these innate disciplines of raw material and to think that patterns can be put anywhere with freedom of fancy is our unrecognized modern disease. → ”

“ Put aside the desire to judge immediately; acquire the habit of just looking. → ”

“ Get along, but don’t go along. → ”

“ While the high level culture of any country can be found in its fine arts, it is also vital that we should be able to examine and enjoy the proofs of the culture of the great mass of the people, which we call folk art. The former are made by a few for a few, but the latter, made by the many for many, are a truer test. The quality of the life of the people of that country as a whole can best be judged by the folkcrafts. → ”

“ Practice before theory. → ”

“ It’s pretty punk to write in a novel, isn’t it? People would say, “You can’t do that!” and I’d just say, “Sure I can.” It was okay because the book I was writing in was by Nietzsche… → ”

“ Stale phrases mechanically repeated have dangerous political effects. → ”

“ There’s a myth: progressive enhancement means ‘designing for the lowest common denominator.’ No: it means STARTING there. → ”

“ There’s this funny misconception that developers just love writing code. But developers are essentially creative: what they really love is to create great app experiences. Code is just their medium. → ”

“ When you cut into the present the future leaks out. → ”

“ When you cut into the present the future leaks out. → ”

“ Space is a harsh, inhospitable frontier and we are explorers, not colonisers. The skills of our engineers and the technology surrounding us make things appear simple when they are not, and perhaps we forget this sometimes. → ”

“ I changed the word ‘creativity’ to ‘imagination’ and then a lot of the opposition melted away because people didn’t have any ingrained prejudice against imagination. → ”

“ I feel orders of magnitude more useful delivering business value than I feel delivering [software] code. → ”

“ Part of studying data is worrying about the information you don’t have, because no dataset—no matter how large—tells the entire story alone. → ”

“ When [the dishwasher] finishes, there's a light. Light travels a distance. You know, I don't need my phone to tell me that. → ”

“ Secrecy - the first refuge of incompetents - must be at bare minimum in a democratic society, for a fully informed public is the basis of self-government. Those elected or appointed to positions of executive authority must recognize that government, in a democracy, cannot be wiser than the people. → ”

“ Sure, it can be infuriating to read scathingly hostile comments written by troubled individuals who clearly didn’t take the time to read the post you spent countless hours carefully writing… but isn’t one of the things that makes the Internet so darn special its unwavering reminder that free speech includes speech we don’t appreciate? → ”

“ When [your kids] hit eleven, give them a plaintext file with ten-thousand WPA2 keys and tell them that the real one is in there somewhere. See how quickly they discover Python or Bash then. → ”

“ Nothing is more valuable than information extracted from trash, because no one has edited it in any way. → ”

“ We discovered that in some cases the compiler was doing a “bad job” because the C++ code was preventing the compiler from optimizing. This typically happens when developers try to save a few lines of code instead of writing more explicit algorithms. → ”

“ To the extent that you can see ‘normal’ as a construct in yourself, you have freed yourself from the constraints of thinking that this is the way the world is. Because it isn't. This is the way that we are. → ”

“ Undoing the damage of mid-century urban renewal takes much longer than pushing through a software update. → ”

“ There is a context through which to understand eyes on the street or the creative class, and it’s important not to lose that context as the ideas migrate into new spheres. → ”

“ I think supplementing makes things complete—another person adding an action to the idea you thought of. → ”

“ As long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine. → ”

“ Once a web community has decided to dislike a person, topic, or idea, the conversation will shift from criticizing the idea to become a competition about who can be most scathing in their condemnation. → ”

“ I promise you there is no amount of salt you can add to any dish you cook—and still have it be edible—that will match the amount of sodium in a processed microwave dinner. → ”

“ My sense of righteousness, one that might have justified any violence, was exaggerated beyond any reality, and no true morality could grow in me until I put it aside. → ”

“ We would all like to believe that our suffering has made us special—especially if it gives us a righteous reason to destroy our enemies. → ”

“ The position of symbolic and actual power centers, like the Capital, biases decision-making. → ”

“ One benefit of political boundaries may be—somewhat counter-intuitively—the difficulties they create. → ”

“ There’s always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won’t reflect the storyteller’s true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he’s been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don’t even think to question, that you don’t even notice— those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations. → ”

“ I’m a firm believer in justice, but I just think that it’s impossible. → ”

“ City people really don’t live on Earth. They live on Human Earth–a much smaller world. → ”

“ They were art, not mere maps–for they DID express emotion. INSTITUTIONAL emotion. They expressed fear. The fear of making a mistake, or offending someone’s pet theory, or suggesting knowledge where there’s only guesswork. The fear of looking unscientific! The result was more misleading than any opinionated speculation could ever be. → ”

“ [A career counselor] was a particular admirer of [envy], and lamented the way that its useful role in alerting us to our possibilities was too often censored out of priggish moralism. Without envy, there could be no recognition of one’s desires. → ”

“ ‘Shared space’ systems, which require heightened engagement from drivers, are safer; traffic lights, machines to which decision-making is outsourced, are less safe. Let's learn from that. → ”

“ Success boils down to serially avoiding catastrophic failure while routinely absorbing manageable damage. → ”

“ He also makes the ancillary suggestion, less often remarked upon by marine biologists, that our perpetual killing of fish has left the seas choked with an array of pallid oceanic ghosts who will one day gather together to exact terrible revenge on humanity for shortening their lives and transporting their corpses around the earth for supper in Bristol. → ”

“ It seems easier to respond to our enthusiasms by trading in facts than by investigating the more naive question of how and why we have been moved. → ”

“ The artwork can be found in between the internalized concept and the external environment, the factors and limitations. I always feel that this is similar to language. The language I use comes from who I am and my life, and the language of others is similarly derived from their experiences and bodies. Conversation is born in the intermediation of this, and likewise my artworks are the same, located midway between myself and the environment and things around me. → ”

“ A Catholic priest told me I was supporting an unnatural act. I thought that was quite interesting coming from someone who’s taken an oath of celibacy. → ”

“ It’s always good to be working on two things: The next most important thing, and the next most interesting thing. → ”

“ Designers and engineers alike need to think deeply about the implications of the things we make, and appreciate the value of doing so. → ”

“ Getting caught [climbing/trespassing] in Paris has smaller consequences. The French appreciate eccentricity and creativity and that extends even to the police. → ”

“ Ethan [Zuckerman] limits his suggestions for engineering cosmopolitanism to the digital realm. The is unfortunate because the path towards cosmopolitanism begins offline. → ”

“ People will watch crap video quality with good audio, but they won’t want to watch top quality video with crap audio. → ”

“ We often fall into a trap: if we make net life just like real life, we can write about it! But net life is real life. It deserves its own aesthetic of language, and it only suffers the paucities it’s accused of when clumsily translated to our old ways of being in the world. → ”

“ We’re a small shop so we want to create a world that is as wide as possible with the books on one shelf. We are conscious of the distance between the books next to each other, the context that comes out of a few books clumped together, and we try to make the bookshelf interesting. We have also done our utmost to eliminate common genre divisions. → ”

“ Whenever people crash into the ground or each other, it’s Red Bull, basically. → ”

“ When I left school I worked a bit with Brian Eno, and one of the most useful things he taught me was just to record everything and cut the best ideas later. → ”

“ Due to a back injury, Sergey stood a lot. This tended to intimidate some of the other [board] members, who were pretty clearly wondering “What’s going on? Should I stand too?” An accidental executive power move. → ”

“ I lamented the way the Design Patterns book was waved around in the early Gecko (Raptor) days. Too much abstraction can be worse than too little. → ”

“ Science is knowledge which we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer; and if we don't understand something, it is an art to deal with it. → ”

“ [Google] Glass has a certain inevitability about it, like the weight of expectation on of child born to a great composer or, if you will, to a middle-aged suicide. → ”

“ Not only politicians; I want the people at the top of the business world to be poets. A romantic vision is important, isn’t it? Especially with political leaders; without romance I think they are totally unqualified for the job. → ”

“ A good critic recognizes the useful big ideas, and after puncturing them helps define their boundaries better, or else counters with other ideas — puts something on the line, actually comes out and says something capable of being refuted. → ”

“ People don't tell their friends about you because they like you; they tell their friends because they like their friends. → ”

“ Left alone, innovation and capital accrue to where they are already in highest concentration. Collective work and effort are the only forces that can counteract gravity with any regularity. → ”

“ What we see again and again in our society is that people do not need to be encouraged to create, only that businesses want methods by which they can minimize the risk of investing in the creation. → ”

“ Civilians think of computers as really smart TVs. In truth they are terrifying scaffoldings held together by scotch tape, jittering a billion times a second like an over-caffeinated light switch. → ”

“ If you can convince me of the reality of something, you have gained an authority. → ”

“ If you are willing to entertain this notion that when writing you should “tell what you know,” the question becomes what can we not tell, what must we show, what cannot be simplified? Emotions, for instance. Relationships. And the only way to express such complication is through interaction—often between the characters but sometimes… between the narration and the doings of these characters. → ”

“ My approach to writing and recording now is pretty much the same as when I started. Except now I worry even less about what people will think of what I made. And I am not drunk. → ”

“ Computing systems are suffused through and through with the constraints of their materiality. → ”

“ The less coordination between developers and libraries the more we can create value. → ”

“ That is a stupid question. I cannot answer a stupid question because whoever tries to answer a stupid question would sound stupid. Only someone stupid would ask such a stupid question. → ”

“ All models are wrong. Some are useful. → ”

“ The best DSL for HTML is HTML! → ”

“ To belong to a community is to speak its language. → ”

“ Doing an ugly thing should look ugly… the ugliness of the code should be a thing that you notice, so that you can avoid ignoring the ugliness of the design. → ”

“ What elevates someone’s work from “technically excellent” to “truly great” is the extent to which you feel like you’re seeing them live their truth, be fully themselves. → ”

“ Try, try again, try harder. You can always hold yourself to a higher standard. → ”

“ The beauty, the genius is not to write a 5 cent idea in a ten dollar sentence. It's to put a ten dollar idea in a 5 cent sentence. → ”

“ Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not. → ”

“ Wrong words… put us into a different relationship with our sentences and our work. They open up a discussion with the reader that involves language, metaphor, and plot. The reader gets to ask, just as the writer asks, where the hell is this going anyway? → ”

“ Instead of compliance we need innovation, and to foster innovation we need freedom. People need to feel free to act in the best interest of their stakeholders or, in Moore’s terms, to do what is best in terms of their particular circumstances. To achieve that, we have to make public-sector managers responsible. They have to be able to choose what to do, free from the obligation of compliance. The way to foster innovation is by changing the locus of control from the regime, which compels compliance, to the public-sector manager, who is the person who actually needs to change. Inspection of performance should be concerned with asking only one question of public-sector managers: ‘What measures are you using to help you understand and improve the work?’ → ”

“ [Taiichi Ohno] thought [‘best practice’] a dangerous and misleading idea. ‘Best’ implies static, something ‘good’ that should be copied. He said that whenever you hear the word ‘best’, think ‘better’, because anything can be improved. Second, everything you need to know in order to make improvements will be found in your own system. If you go looking elsewhere, you will be looking in the wrong place." → ”

“ It may be difficult to see that simply dismissing groups of people as not worth taking seriously is a form of coercion. It’s intellectual overpowering: “Trust us; you wouldn’t understand anyway.” Whatever we call it, the chance for persuasion is lost. It’s a chance that’s lost every time authorities (especially scientists) try to tell people how to eat, drive, spend money, raise their kids without explaining why—the evidence and reasoning, in other words, that persuaded them. Instead, it’s like a parent telling a child: “Because I said so!” Nothing lasting is passed on. → ”

“ What if lightbulbs were still $700? We’d carry one around carefully in a case and screw it in when/where we needed light. They are not, so we leave them screwed in wherever we want, and just flip the switch when we need light. Connected computers with eyes cost $500, and so we carry them around in our pockets. But – what if we had lots of cheap computer vision, processing, connectivity and display all around our environments – like light bulbs? → ”

“ I’m very conscious of whether I am affording a feature or styling it. It’s important to distinguish because they look the same from a distance. → ”

“ [Surveillance] is no longer something which takes place exclusively, or even primarily, in the audio and visual registers, or, for that matter, in real time. → ”

“ Fear is a highly contagious state of mind, one that spreads quickly through families, communities, and whole nations. → ”

“ The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea. → ”

“ The software industry takes pride in the technical interview. But what started with the noble intention of hiring the best people has turned into an often reductionist game of hiring those who excel on a singular axis: answering mostly ridiculous technical questions and brainteasers in the moment. The most regrettable casualty of these hiring practices is typically the emotional intelligence of the candidate. Simply put, their personality. This is ironic not only because the ability to write magnificent code or masterfully organize pixels often plays a very tertiary role in the process of innovation, but because it is ultimately balanced people coming together to solve a problem that leads to the kind of emotional experiences that make for hit software products today. → ”

“ There’s no democracy worth its name that doesn’t have a transparency movement. But transparency is openness in only one direction. Being given a dashboard without a steering wheel has never been the core promise a democracy makes to its citizens. → ”

“ I deliberately avoid calculating that number, because if you start measuring something you start optimizing it, and I know it's the wrong thing to optimize. → ”

“ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one. → ”

“ I want programming computers to be like coloring with crayons and playing with duplo blocks. → ”

“ To be free means to be bound to others… to look out for oneself means attending to others… When it's every man (or state) for himself, no one stays free for very long. → ”

“ This is another great American tradition: rejecting ideology for ideology’s sake and remembering always that the value of a value is simply whether it leads to good outcomes for the society. → ”

“ Citizenship isn't just voting. Nor is it just Good Samaritanism… It encompasses behaviors like courtesy and civility, the “etiquette of freedom,” to use poet Gary Snyder's phrase. It encompasses small acts like teaching your children to be honest in their dealings with others. It includes serving on community councils and as soccer coaches. It means leaving a place in better shape than you found it. It means helping others during hard times and being able to ask for help. It means resisting the temptation to call a problem someone else’s. → ”

“ There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. → ”

“ We need strong government. We need strong citizens. Contemporary American political discourse sees these pairings as either-or. Independent-thinking Americans see them as both-and. → ”

“ Great gardens are sustainable only with continuous investment and renewal. Great gardeners turn the soil and rotate the plantings. → ”

“ Increased output is not necessarily associated with positive social change. → ”

“ More companies die of indigestion than starvation. → ”

“ Silicon Valley customers are no longer industrial companies. They are consumers, not companies represented by purchasing agents, and those consumers have less power in dealing with their suppliers. (Nothing better gets a corporation’s attention than a purchasing agent threatening to take away a $50 million order.) Instead of such people to keep us in line, we now have government regulators who are slow to react, subject to lobbying influence, and, in many cases, ineffective. → ”

“ Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. → ”

“ The future is ours to imagine. It’s up to us to put forth visions of how things are and could be. The more beautiful and believable our visions can be, the better chance they’ll have at succeeding. → ”

“ If enough people start to believe in a particular outcome, their subconscious will start to shape their actions, and something like that outcome will end up emerging. That’s why it’s so important to put forth beautiful (and believable) visions of how the world can be. Conversely, that’s why fear-mongering, cynicism, and hopelessness are so dangerously toxic. → ”

“ Under conditions of uncertainty, there is only one way to find out what needs to be done, and that’s to do it. → ”

“ To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time. → ”

“ One hundred rumors are not comparable to one look. → ”

“ Learning to write involves writing. Learning to design involves designing. Learning to code involves coding. → ”

“ What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. → ”

“ You don't build a house by only thinking about the facade. → ”

“ The nation needs a hero to save its citizens by proving that each person has the freedom and power to save themselves and each other. As employees represent a company’s reputation, we, the informed people, run this nation. We each have a brand to develop and are not properly allowed the time or the revenue to appreciate each other’s brands. Personal and societal appreciation drives revenue through localized spending and outside investment, proliferating personal progress, societal productivity, and national providence. → ”

“ When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It’s all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen. → ”

“ When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It’s all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen. → ”

“ When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It’s all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen. → ”

“ Don’t strive to make your presence noticed, make your absence felt. → ”

“ [The tools we build] have to be understandable. Don't confuse “understandable” with “simplicity.” → ”

“ Language design is library design and library design is language design. → ”

“ The bottom line is in heaven. → ”

“ There’s no such thing as bad weather. Only inappropriate clothing. → ”

“ Designing a dream city is easy; rebuilding a living one takes imagination. → ”

“ One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts. → ”

“ By working in an open manner, we hope that tomorrow's mistakes will be new ones. → ”

“ People don't realize that a rapidly growing company is crumbling within and feels pain every hour of every day because nothing works the way it was designed as little as a year before. → ”

“ It wasn't incremental but revelatory; and revelations, though hard-won, are viral. → ”

“ We are face to face with our destiny, and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For ours is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness of striving mighty; let us rather run the risk of wearing out rather than rusting out. → ”

“ I asked people, if they were playing Russian roulette with a gun with a billion barrels (or some huge number, so in other words, some low probability that they would actually be killed), how much would they have to be paid to play one round? A lot of people were almost offended by the question and they’d say, “I wouldn't do it at any price.” But, of course, we do that every day. They drive to work in cars to earn money and they are taking risks all the time, but they don't like to acknowledge that they are taking risks. They want to pretend that everything is risk free. → ”

“ Businesses that run cruise ships have to buy life preservers. Companies that sell alcohol have to keep it away from kids. And people who make communities on the web have to moderate them. → ”

“ When all this equipment arrived [at our high school], it was still in crates. …I remember the teacher saying, ‘Well, you can open any box you like, but there’s one condition: you have to read the manual first.’ This doesn't sound like a big deal, but to a student that just came to high school—to read a manual on how to use an oscilloscope, how to use a signal generator, a computer trainer, how to use all this advanced equipment—these were tricky textbooks to get through and understand. …we opened every single box. → ”

“ There was a huge storm in May of ’95… we had to go rent a power generator and take turns filling it with diesel fuel… we had meetings by candlelight with a bunch of prominent companies. We were trying to convince them, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re a real business,’ when you say, ‘Hold on, I gotta go fill up the tank.’ → ”

“ [When you're a big company,] everyone's watching… on Day One your service pretty much has to be feature-complete, and ready for hundreds of millions of users. Forget about corner-turns. Forget about dipping your big toe in to get a sense of the temperature. These are the advantages of the upstart, when they're starting. → ”

“ The ideal window of time to start and finish a prototype in (including design, implementation, testing, and iteration), is two days to two weeks. Anything longer than that sets off alarm bells. → ”

“ Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. → ”

“ Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, 'See! this our fathers did for us.' For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations: it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these possess of language and of life. → ”

“ The reason that most of us are so unhappy most of the time is that we make our goals for the people we are when we set them, not for the people we’re going to be when we reach them. → ”

“ For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy. → ”

“ Future historians may regard [shipping coal to China] as one of those crazy, impractical feats of engineering, like Stonehenge, the pyramids, or the shelf life of Twinkies. → ”

“ You can’t just give into your own drives, or you simply end up writing the same book again and again. → ”

“ Inspiration and wealth will come to you if your goal is to help another person solve a problem. → ”

“ I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. → ”

“ Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it. → ”

“ I wouldn’t even know what [I’m aiming at as a mechanic] if I didn’t spend time with people who ride at a much higher level than I. → ”

“ [Being a good mechanic] connects me to… those who exemplify good motorcycling, because it is they who can best judge how well I have realized the functional goods I am aiming at. I wouldn't even know what those goods are if I didn't spend time with people who ride at a much higher level than I. → ”

“ All [human beings] by nature desire to know. → ”

“ The curious man is always a fornicator. → ”

“ I felt compelled to get to the bottom of things… but this lust for thoroughness is at odds with the world of human concerns in which the bike is situated, where all that matters is that the bike works. → ”

“ To be a good mechanic, you have to be constantly attentive to the possibility that you may be mistaken [about the problem you are fixing]. → ”

“ It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals. → ”

“ Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films… But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script. → ”

“ Somebody said, “do you think that paging is better than scrolling?” And my answer to that is: well, there's some evidence that people like books more than they like scrolls. The Romans pretty much gave up scrolls. As soon as they started binding books, everyone preferred books. We've been paging ever since. Get over it! → ”

“ It’s true—some people fail to turn off a manual faucet. With it’s blanket presumption of irresponsibility, the infrared faucet doesn’t merely respond to this fact, it installs it. → ”

“ One is urged to consider the “opportunity costs” of fixing one's own car. “Time is money.” …[but] to fix one’s own car is not merely to use up time, it is to have a different experience of time, of one’s car, and of oneself. → ”

“ [Something may be] an intelligible claim, but that does not mean that intelligent people should take it seriously. → ”

“ A great designer is always the proxy of the reader, the user… not of the artist or the writer. → ”

“ Geeks like [me] are always tempted to implement very complex, never-ending features because they’re academically or algorithmically interesting, or because they can add massive value if done well… These features—often very easy for people but very hard for computers—often produce mediocre-at-best results, are never truly finished, and usually require massive time investments to achieve incremental progress with diminishing returns. → ”

“ Google attracts developers, but not consumers. → ”

“ Provide better carrots to lead the horses away from the rotting vegetables, which can be cleaned up later. → ”

“ We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. → ”

“ A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. → ”

“ Stop saying “But how can it be like that?” …Nobody knows how it can be like that. → ”

“ It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, an elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss. → ”

“ Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people… to destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship. → ”

“ The best way to complain is to make things. → ”

“ If you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long. → ”

“ Knowledge cannot advance when the reader is treated as a child. If you “protect” your reader, your next step is to lie to your reader. That is evil. → ”

“ Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation. → ”

“ A number of simple complementary techniques is usually more effective and economical than one comprehensive approach. → ”

“ It is important to hold to limitations in order to keep the project from burgeoning into a huge, expensive and time consuming effort. → ”

“ Anyone who wasn't there when the original problem was solved can never truly grok why they're doing things this way. They do it out of faith and tradition, perhaps fear—which can all-too-easily become religion and dogma. → ”

“ If you are able, take joy in cooking for others. If you aren’t, set the table. → ”

“ Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. → ”

“ We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals. → ”

“ People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. → ”

“ [Coffee] is the principal source of foreign exchange for dozens of countries… an immediate, tangible connection with the rural poor in some of the most destitute parts of the planet. It is a physical link across space and cultures from one end of the human experience to the other. → ”

“ Individuals are equal but cultures and ideas are not equal. → ”

“ The local specialty is Afghan Kebabs mixed with eggs (like the country itself, they're interesting but dangerous). → ”

“ If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all. → ”

“ [Chinese workers'] economic poverty is due to their political poverty. → ”

“ We break stuff before we know what replaces it, and we invent things before we know what they are for. Maybe we’re now living in the future tense. → ”

“ Quality is not an act, it is a habit. → ”

“ Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to. → ”

“ Fundamentally successful companies are unstable. And where we have to operate is in that unstable place. And the forces of conservatism which are very strong and they want to go to a safe place. I want to go to the same place for money, I want to go and be wild and creative, or I want to have enough time for this, and each one of those guys are pulling, and if any one of them wins, we lose. → ”

“ One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison. → ”

“ One is always a bit sheepish about writing quick and dirty programs. And yet some, if not most, of the best programs began that way. And some, if not most, of the most spectacular failures in software have been perpetrated by people trying to do the opposite. → ”