Aiming higher

We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars — Oscar Wilde by way of Chrissie Hynde (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlOV6ywJt7s)

Honor and Ethics

So much brinksmanship and venom and anger in the world these days.   And the media encourages it; it is easy to get sidetracked and wound up.   And so I have to force myself to step back and take the long view.  I apologize for being a day late this week; I had to re-center myself.

I started writing this newsletter because I wanted to celebrate technology that matters and people who use technology to make a meaningful difference.  And damn it, I still feel that way, though sometimes I feel like a salmon fighting up Niagara Falls. 

But I still believe in the goal.  Matt Yglesias wrote this week about how capitalism needs honor and ethics.  In it, he says:

But there’s a difference between earning your living by baking bread and earning your living by coming up with ad campaigns designed to induce heavier drinking among college students. There’s a difference between developing A.I. for drug discovery and developing A.I. to make compulsive short-form video. And I think that an important part of sustaining a liberal society and a market economy is regaining some form of judgmentalism about this kind of thing.  

I think we all want to be part of a society in which people obtain social status by launching good businesses and good products that solve big problems and make the world a better place, not one in which anything that makes a buck is equally good.

and

People need to conduct themselves with a sense of honor and dignity, and with a clear understanding of the difference between taking pride in a job well done and making money with scams and nonsense.

The entire article is well-written and worth reading.  His earlier post in the week about living your values is also excellent.  I know Matt is not to everyone’s taste, but these posts are good and remind me why I write.  And give me renewed energy to focus on the positive opportunities all around us and the people working on them.

Healthcare

Health insurance in our country is a mess.  Many of the problems stem back to the uniquely American practice of tying insurance to employment.  I hadn’t realized one implication of this tie — given that Americans change jobs frequently, insurers have no financial motivation to cover long-term care and diagnostics:

Chris and Adam had recently spoken to someone at a health insurer about whether they’d offer things like Prenuvo screens that might catch cancer and improve outcomes (at lower cost).

They wouldn’t, the insurer said.

“If I catch that person’s cancer,” he explained, “They’ll leave their job in 2.5 years and go to a competitor insurer.”

Those quotes come from an article about Thatch, which is attempting to create a new non-employer-based insurance product utilizing the mechanisms of the Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA), a concept I was previously unfamiliar with.  It is tough to overturn the current system legislatively; I am hopeful that something like Thatch can erode it organically.

On other medical fronts, there is great info in Zvi Moshowitz’s latest about GLP-1s. I am super cautious about medications and medical treatments. I’m happy to be on the very far trailing edge of the curve, and so I’m not taking a GLP-1, but everything I read suggests I should be.  

AI

Who can keep up with the blizzard of product announcements in this space?   I need AI just to keep up with AI announcements.  OpenAI now has 2 of the top 3 spots in the app store, which is kind of amazing.   I can’t claim to be a Sora convert yet — consuming a stream of AI-generated videos is not my jam, I am interested in real people and their stories and creativity.  

But the most interesting thing I read about AI this week was from Paul Kedrosky — AI tools may be shifting the mean of human performance upwards, while reducing the variance.  Interesting implications for what people do and how we reward them.   

Visualization

I am always a sucker for great visualizations.   And great storytelling.  It is hard to convince people with just data, but if you can weave a great story and have a great visualization, you can cut through a lot of people’s filters and really have impact.  This is an outstanding visualization of the current federal budget crisis.  Whatever you may feel about the issue — this guy does an excellent job of making his point in a way that everyone can understand.

Questions

Perhaps the most critical skill you can have is asking questions — including asking questions of yourself. Stephanie Harrison has a great set of questions you should be asking yourself about your work.  Her summary:

Wisdom is something that develops with time and effort, through challenging yourself to look at situations from different perspectives in order to learn from them, examining your own behavior, and developing compassion for wider circles of beings.

And I have posted this before, but I will post it again.  Ted Gioia outlines the 12 problems that he constantly thinks about, which drive all his work.   They are problems that he has been mulling over for years or decades, and he keeps beavering away on them.   I love the clarity and durability of his thought, and am a little embarrassed that my own thinking and goals are not as well articulated.   Certainly, I have an amorphous goal about how to use technology to better all our lives, and that is something that has dominated my entire professional career, but I need to uplevel my thinking and goal-setting.

Art

Finally, a little art plug.  I love glass art; I also love watching the process of creating it.  Stonington Gallery has a nice show this month of some Northwest Native inspired glass art.   We have some pieces from a couple of these artists, and I recommend visiting if you have an interest.