Curated Content June 2023
A few pieces of content I thought were worthwhile in the month of June.
June was a light month for curated content, but I still wanted to share the 3 pieces of worthwhile content.
Articles
Setting time on fire and the temptation of The Button
Ethan Mollick
Mollick discusses the implication of a new feature in Google Docs, "Help me write", which generates document drafts based on user prompts. He calls this "The Button". He juxtaposes this in a very interesting way with the fact that many previous tasks were seen as valuable explicitly because they effort in terms of both time and intellectual labor, requiring us to set time on fire.
Previously, time and effort invested was seen as a signal of support. With that no longer being the case. What are the implications for work and society? It will likely render a lot previously useful signal as additional noise, or worse. Raises a number of interesting questions.
The Prime Directive
This one was short enough that I lifted the entire prime directive:
Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand
This is an important thing to keep in mind when dealing with heritage code that allowed you to get to where you are today, but that may be outliving it's usefulness now.
Nobody is trying to do a bad job, and this may even be something where concepts like Chesterton's Fence come into play, as they may have done something valuable that you've forgotten, or never know the contextual value of.
Books
IdeaFlow - Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn
While IdeaFlow doesn't necessarily present a ton of novel ideas or concepts for those who are versed in creativity, creative design, and entrepreneurship it's a fantastic one stop shop of concrete playbooks for systematically increasing creativity of individuals and groups.
If you're wondering about how to flex and grow your own creative muscle, or the creative muscle of your organization IdeaFlow is a fantastic resource.
Conf Talks
No conf talks this month.
Podcasts
Likewise no podcasts.
Tweets
No curated tweets this month.