We should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating them like thieves

"Music," he explained, "is different" from other intellectual property. Not Karl Marx different - this isn't latent communism. But neither is it just "a piece of plastic or a loaf of bread." The artist controls just part of the music-making process; the audience adds the rest. Fans' imagination makes it real. Their participation makes it live. "We are just troubadours," Tweedy told me. "The audience is our collaborator. We should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating them like thieves."

Lawrence Lessig, "Why Wilco Is the Future of Music," Wired, Feb 2005.

The technology aspect needs to be stripped out

"Marketing is the key," Hirschhorn says. "The technology aspect needs to be stripped out of the equation. People need to understand that they can take their music with them, they can take it on the bus."

Eric Hellweg, "Gunning for iTunes," Technology Review, 25 Jan 2005

I could find patterns in it

I began by counting things. The very thing that had attracted me to the diary in the first place was also the thing that made it difficult to work with. I mean there's just so much. The diary is a long accumulation of workaday entries. And so I had to find some way to get control of the information so that I could find patterns in it.

Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, "Interviews with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: About Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Work on A Midwife's Tale," dohistory.org, Interviews done in 1991,1993 & 1994.

Passion vs Job

The Mac was more like a back-to-the-roots thing. Really the reason the Mac succeeded was the people were passionate and brilliant and motivated and devoted their lives to it. Whereas, the Lisa maybe had a little bit of that, but it was much more corporate, and a job, as opposed to a passion.

....

When you look at the last 20 years of PC development, are you surprised at how much has changed, or how little?

Both. On the hardware side, how much. Moore's Law predicted it, but then to actually see it play out in such a stunning fashion. I mean now the computer I'm using every day has literally 8,000 times the memory that the original Mac had. The hardware is so capable compared to that, it's almost like a dream. Whereas the software is where it's disappointing. The basic software since the Macintosh has evolved at a snail's pace and in some ways it's even gone backwards in usability.

The metaphor of the interface has hardly changed at all.

That's right. That's not because of a lack of possibilities. It has to do with the business dynamics of the industry--essentially Microsoft getting the monopoly and being anti-innovation and establishing an environment where innovation was crushed rather than rewarded. That's the PC industry the last 10 years.

....

How do you feel about the iPod being closed now?

The same way. I think Apple is making a blunder not licensing FairPlay. Ultimately, when you boil it down, it comes to respect for your customer. I think Apple is showing disrespect to the customers by locking them in.

Mac fans are often described as fanatic. What is the "cult of Mac"?

The cult of Mac, I think what it is...is essentially passion. It starts with the designers and the people in the company being passionate about what they're doing. It starts with the designers making something that they want for themselves more than anything else in the world, that's the single secret. As soon as you're making something you want more than anything else, you don't have to do research about the customers. You just look inside yourself. You run the risk of being wrong about it, but at least you make something that has integrity.

Maybe even a better word is love. You fill the product with love and then people will love it.

Scott Ard, Interview with Andy Hertzfeld, "How the Mac was born, and other tales," CNet, 11 Jan 2005

less conspicuous technology consumption

It turns out that when everyone’s income swells, people’s subjective sense of what they minimally require to be happy inflates, too.

Psychologists call this “hedonic adaptation”—and it works for technology as well. We become desensitized to our good fortune. When international telephone calls, jet travel, or broadband Internet access first appeared, they were wonderful things that seem to clearly make our lives better, but as their price fell and they became commonly available, they quickly seemed quotidian. In no time at all, we were irritated when they did not work perfectly.

So are we happier for new technologies? In one sense, Sure (imagine yourself, hedonically adapted to this world, stripped of all your stuff). In another sense, No. Happiness economists have shown that there is a kind of decreasing return to increasing income. Except for the very wealthy (the Forbes 400 consistently report that they are very cheerful indeed), people who strive ardently to become richer don’t report any significant increase in well-being. Some happiness economists suggest that “inconspicuous consumption”—that is, investment in health, family, or community—tends to have a better return in happiness than buying bigger cars or houses.

It is the same with new technologies. Purchasing lots of the latest gadgets is unsatisfying: you know that in a few months there will be new, improved versions of the things. But some technology consumption is less conspicuous. Internet technologies like search or social networking are informational and affective networks that expand our knowledge and relationships. Biotechnology and health care offer a better and longer life. They’re the better buy.

"Don't Buy That New Gadget," Technology Review, Jan 2005, p. 16.

breadth as a human being

Only after I came to know the limits of the possible as expressed by these other visual artists, and had tested them by my own experimentation, was I able to evoke the style of photography that had been inside of me all along. I could see my way clear toward a career in which making money from commercial assignments was a less important goal than living a life in which the wholeness of knowing and communicating about the earth's wild places reigned supreme. I judged that Ansel Adams' emerging immortal greatness was at least as much due to his breadth as a human being--teacher, technician, innovator, environmentalist--as to his images themselves.

Galen A. Rowell, "In Search of a Mentor," Galen Rowell's Inner Game of Outdoor Photography, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, p. 64. by ,

google alignment

"In my opinion, this is one of the things that really makes Google a great place; that the company's systems, resources and, most important, people are all aligned to make it as easy as possible to take an idea and turn it into something cool. " Kevin Gibbs, Google Blog, 10 Dec 2004:

courage to design

So are we, designers of digital experiences, architects of information, ready to take on that potential pain in order to make good work? Are we ready to take in information, but not hide behind it? Will we be responsible for our creations, will we to put our ego in the plane?

Do we have the courage to design?

Christina Wodtke, "Fear of Design," Boxes and Arrows, 1 June 2002.

Do no harm

...we started to take the longer view: How do we develop an industrial system that does no harm? That became our ultimate goal; we called it climbing Mount Sustainability. You picture that point at the top representing—symbolically—zero impact, zero environmental footprint.

Martin C. Pedersen, "Climbing Mt. Sustainability, "Metropolis," July 2004.

innovation isn’t what innovators do

Simply put: innovation isn’t what innovators do; it’s what customers, clients, and people adopt. Innovation isn’t about crafting brilliant ideas that change minds; it’s about the distribution of usable artifacts that change behavior. Innovators—their optimistic arrogance notwithstanding—don’t change the world; the users of their innovations do. That’s not a subtle distinction.

Michael Schrage, "Innovation Diffusion," Technology Review, Dec 2004 via Tomalak's