Hello from the beginning of June. I’m Diana Kimball Berlin, a partner at Matrix leading concept through Series A rounds in B2B SaaS and AI startups. Here are five fragments that caught my eye last week…
Post-AI art as a form may focus on e.g. clashing colors that previous art theories stated were bad, just because those colors never show up in AI art.
– Midjourney Discord user “Kraemahz” in the #philosophy channel in 2022, rediscovered while going back over some long-ago notes. (Let me know if you’d be interested in seeing them.)
The first microcomputer in our Department was a Processor Technology SOL-20, purchased by Joe Felsenstein (out of his own pocket for about $2000) in November of 1977. It had 16K of RAM, no disks, and took its input from a cassette tape recorder. It had BASIC available and was mostly used for BASIC programming. The SOL was produced by Processor Technology from 1976 to 1978, when the company went out of business. It was the best-selling microcomputer of 1977. It was designed by Joe's brother Lee, who worked for Processor Tech in Berkeley (I mean, if your brother designed a microcomputer, you couldn't very well buy anything else, could you?).
– “The first microcomputer in the Genetics Department” at Washington University, most likely written by Joe Felsenstein himself (though the page isn’t specifically credited). Undated. Also the source of the lead image for this newsletter. This was a completely random find, but I had a chuckle thinking about Joe buying his computer (out of his own pocket!) and poking fun at himself on a subpage of a university department website…vintage internet at its best.
The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play. It seems to describe a life where it’s just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on ideas.
– Celine Nguyen, “research as leisure activity,” Personal Canon, May 27, 2024. Thanks to Chris Xu for sending / knowing me so well. Celine draws the connection to “tools for thought” more generally, and I think that’s right. “Tools” and “thought” together imply “knowledge work,” but what if they were pointing toward “knowledge play” all along?
We had arbitrarily said this is what our version of the 24th Century looks like based on what we thought looked cool and what we could do on time and within budget. We tried very hard to be internally consistent, which I think is one of the most important keys to believability.
– Michael Okuda, lead graphic designer for Star Trek, in an interview with Carlos Miranda for startrek.com, August 6, 2022. Thanks to Rick for sending this after seeing last week’s highlight about recreating instruments from Star Trek. This sounds true to me as a general rule, applicable to startups as well: internal consistency is the key to believability on a budget.
So the magic of that complaining is that every complaint implies a dream. It implies a better world where that complaint is resolved. And so often that’s the tool that I'll take people to first to say, “All right, great. Let's complain. Right? It feels so fun and good and releasing to complain, and let's look at what that implied world is behind that complaint.” What is this vision? And then to really check, “Okay. Let's imagine you get that. That's the world of the future that you get. How does that feel? Is that big enough or is it kind of meh?”
– Kenneth Berger on Lenny’s Podcast, May 19, 2024. I’ve been thinking ever since about “the dream behind the complaint.”
Until next time,
Diana
https://dianaberlin.com
p.s. Do any San Francisco-based Diagonal readers have a Daylight on the way? I didn’t order, but I’d love to meet up to see it in person once you have it in hand.