The first to find a degree of order
Five fragments for the week of January 8, 2024
To everyone who’s signed up here over the years without knowing exactly what you were signing up for—thank you. I’m Diana Kimball Berlin, a partner at Matrix leading concept through Series A rounds in AI and B2B SaaS startups (and especially the intersection of the two). Here’s some of what’s on my mind this week…
ImageNet owed the very possibility of its existence to so many converging technological threads: the internet, digital cameras, and search engines. Now crowdsourcing—delivered by a platform that had barely existed a year earlier—was providing the capstone. If I ever needed a reminder that the default position of any scientist should be one of absolute humility—an understanding that no one’s intellect is half as powerful as serendipity—this was it.
– Dr. Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI
This first spec for PowerPoint took an unusual form, almost entirely in pictures. It consisted of mocked-up screen shots with limited ‘discussion’ captions, then mock-ups of all the menus, dialog boxes, and sample output pages.
– Robert Gaskins, Sweating Bullets: Notes About Inventing PowerPoint. A visual plan for a visual product.
I wanted to stay far away from organized physics and mathematics, and to find different, fun ways to apply my growing knowledge and gift for shape. I wanted to feel the excitement of being the first to find a degree of order in some real, concrete, and complex area where everyone else saw a lawless mess.
– Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick
In production meetings, studio executives have begun asking if a particular project is “toyetic” – meaning whether its concept can lend itself to a toy, and whether the project will be able to sell tickets and merchandise.
– Lauren A.E. Schuker, “The Cry Goes Out in Hollywood: ‘Get Me Mr. Potato Head’s Agent!,’” The Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2009. See also this brief 2009 summary from Schott’s Vocab in The New York Times.
By binding image and desire, glamour gives us pleasure, even as it heightens our yearning. It leads us to feel that the life we dream of exists, and to desire it even more.
– Virginia Postrel, The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion
Until next time,
Diana
https://dianaberlin.com