Years ago, I taught an undergrad new media / information theory seminar and used a few chapters from your book “Interface Culture”, which really helped us dig into how design decisions mean more than the formal sum of their parts. I confess to only being an occasional reader of your subsequent work, so I’ve enjoyed reading your stuff more frequently via the Substack. Thanks for sharing and happy new year.
Interface Culture is old-school! Glad to hear it was helpful. I've been meaning to go back and revisit that book and write something about how it reads to me now, in the context of everything that's happened since -- it's been almost a quarter century since it came out.
I've enjoyed several of your books, especially The Invention of Air. The Invention of Air was a favorite of a student who combined a love of chemistry and a love of a good story--I was so happy to have it to recommend to her! I enjoyed Extra Life very much and gave it to my son-in-law for Christmas and he reported that he was almost done with it just a couple of days later. I love the way it complicates the story of progress by telling the stories of the many others who took scientific breakthroughs and spread them into good common practice, making our lives longer and healthier.
I have read 2 of your books, Where Good Ideas Come From and Farsighted, and found them useful. I have benefited from adopting the ideas put forth in the book. Thank you. Happy New Year.Regards, Gaurav
Happy New Year Steven. Thanks for your brilliantly written newsletter and books. One of my favourites was The Ghost Map. It brought back memories of my geography degree in the 1980s. This Xmas I bought a copy of Where Good Ideas Come From to my nephew who is a budding inventor. In terms of requests, I would like to see more member only content. All the best.
Much appreciated and thanks for being a part of Adjacent Possible. I'm working on a bunch of new things that will be member-only -- including some audio based projects which will be interesting to experiment with. stay tuned!
A random question - do you think sites like Feed and/or Plastic would have had a greater chance of survival/success if they had launched in this present-day era of subscriber-supported work?
yeah that's a great question. Maybe I'll write an AP post about it sometime. For FEED, I think it definitely would have helped if we'd had some mechanism to get our readers to pay for subscriptions -- we were entirely dependent on advertising and it just wasn't a mature advertising medium back then. But Plastic was basically Reddit and I think could have survived/thrived if we'd given it more time -- we basically ran out of money just a few months after it launched and so it never really got a chance to grow into something sustaining... There's an argument to be made that when we raised our one big round of financing (which was like $3M I think) we should have instantly shut down FEED (and Suck, which we had merged with) and just put the $3M into keeping Plastic going for a few years to see what happened. That's an interesting alternative history to contemplate...
Years ago, I taught an undergrad new media / information theory seminar and used a few chapters from your book “Interface Culture”, which really helped us dig into how design decisions mean more than the formal sum of their parts. I confess to only being an occasional reader of your subsequent work, so I’ve enjoyed reading your stuff more frequently via the Substack. Thanks for sharing and happy new year.
Interface Culture is old-school! Glad to hear it was helpful. I've been meaning to go back and revisit that book and write something about how it reads to me now, in the context of everything that's happened since -- it's been almost a quarter century since it came out.
Thanks for all you do. I can't pay for a subscription, but I'm grateful to read what you publish for free.
I'll be remembering Extra Life a decade from now as well! Such a great project, Steven.
I've enjoyed several of your books, especially The Invention of Air. The Invention of Air was a favorite of a student who combined a love of chemistry and a love of a good story--I was so happy to have it to recommend to her! I enjoyed Extra Life very much and gave it to my son-in-law for Christmas and he reported that he was almost done with it just a couple of days later. I love the way it complicates the story of progress by telling the stories of the many others who took scientific breakthroughs and spread them into good common practice, making our lives longer and healthier.
I have read 2 of your books, Where Good Ideas Come From and Farsighted, and found them useful. I have benefited from adopting the ideas put forth in the book. Thank you. Happy New Year.Regards, Gaurav
That's great to hear. Those two books complement each other well I think -- how to have complicated ideas and how to make complicated decisions...
I saw you at Penn State Harrisburg. Thank you for then and thank you for now and into the future....
That was a fun talk! I remember it well. Thanks for staying in touch...
Enjoy your family.....
Happy New Year Steven. Thanks for your brilliantly written newsletter and books. One of my favourites was The Ghost Map. It brought back memories of my geography degree in the 1980s. This Xmas I bought a copy of Where Good Ideas Come From to my nephew who is a budding inventor. In terms of requests, I would like to see more member only content. All the best.
Much appreciated and thanks for being a part of Adjacent Possible. I'm working on a bunch of new things that will be member-only -- including some audio based projects which will be interesting to experiment with. stay tuned!
Happy New Year, Steven!
A random question - do you think sites like Feed and/or Plastic would have had a greater chance of survival/success if they had launched in this present-day era of subscriber-supported work?
yeah that's a great question. Maybe I'll write an AP post about it sometime. For FEED, I think it definitely would have helped if we'd had some mechanism to get our readers to pay for subscriptions -- we were entirely dependent on advertising and it just wasn't a mature advertising medium back then. But Plastic was basically Reddit and I think could have survived/thrived if we'd given it more time -- we basically ran out of money just a few months after it launched and so it never really got a chance to grow into something sustaining... There's an argument to be made that when we raised our one big round of financing (which was like $3M I think) we should have instantly shut down FEED (and Suck, which we had merged with) and just put the $3M into keeping Plastic going for a few years to see what happened. That's an interesting alternative history to contemplate...
Thanks for this, Steven. Enjoying the newsletter!
And thanks for contributing to one of the three (3!) books I released this year. Here's my own year-end wrap-up: https://buttondown.email/roychristopher/archive/2021-in-links-and-images/
Happy 2022!
Congrats on such a productive year Roy!
Hopeful and encouraging note. Happy New Year!
Thank you -- always good to have a little optimism at the end of the year, even a year like 2021!
Happy New Year. Enjoyed Extra Life, nice work.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for being a part of Adjacent Possible...