I still love software as much today as I did when Paul Allen and I started Microsoft. But—even though it has improved a lot in the decades since then—in many ways, software is still pretty dumb.
A golden age of connectivity is ending. “I deleted my Facebook years ago, spend at least three to six months off Twitter every year, and Bluesky invites are just sitting in my inbox,” a friend tells me when I ask how her relationship to social media has changed in recent times.
A few years ago, advertisements for a software service named Monday.com seemed to be suddenly everywhere online. This ubiquity didn’t come cheap. An S.E.C. filing revealed that the product’s developers had spent close to a hundred and thirty million dollars on advertising in 2020 alone, which amounted to roughly eighty per cent of the company’s annual revenue.
Time is not to be trusted. This should come as news to no one. Yet recent times have left people feeling betrayed that the reliable metronome laying down the beat of their lives has, in a word, gone bonkers. Time sulked and slipped away, or slogged to a stop, rushing ahead or hanging back unaccountably; it no longer came in tidy lumps clearly clustered in well-defined categories: past, present, future.
WHEN A MOVIE becomes a mass culture phenomenon, like Barbie, any negative criticism of it runs the risk of coming off hysterical. Any meanness toward it becomes the mirror version of the reactions of fans who see the movie in the theater again and again, who cry during certain scenes each time, and who tell the world about it on social media with a great sense of pride and purpose, or even with a certain amount of shock about its power over them.
Sunday Best is a brand new feature here at TIG that we plan on making a recurring one. Each Sunday, we will bring you a cross-section of interesting articles, links, ideas, music, culture, and anything else we think might be interesting or entertaining⏤the perfect supplement to your Sunday and one we hope you will add to your routine.
Philosophy seems to be on a hiding to nothing. It has a 2,500-year history in the West and an extensive back-catalogue – of problems. There are questions about what exists, and what we know about it, such as: Do we have free will? Is there an external world? Does God exist? and so on. There are also questions of analysis and definition such as: What makes a sentence true? What makes an act just? What is causation? What is a person? This is a tiny sample.
In this week’s instalment of TIG TV, we look back at a tumultuous 2017, see how to start a business,...
. . . elegantly tailored a-line princess coats perfectly paired with matching lace-trimmed satin, crocheted mohair, and appliquéd floral lace,...
today’s give-away is an exquisitely beautiful vintage diamond stacking band from paris hotel boutique, a beautiful online shop that celebrates...
No More Content
