Blog

What can we build for 2050?

Thirty years ago this month, I created 18 Pine Street, a series of young adult novels with bestselling author Walter Dean Myers. He was a brilliant creator and a delightful partner. The kids who bought those books are having kids of their own now, and perhaps some of the books’ ideas around identity, agency and inclusion made a difference along the way.

And twenty years ago, I produced and published Waiting for Godiva on SACD. It’s now on Spotify. It sounds even better than I remember. Beth and Michael made something magical on that single day we spent recording.

When we’re in the middle of a project, it’s easy to imagine that it’s not going to be around for decades. But every project opens doors, for you and for the people you build it for. It doesn’t matter if it works for everyone, if it’s a worldwide bestseller or on the front page.

Oceans are made of drops.

Your house contains products from hundreds of thousands of suppliers and craftspeople.

The food you eat comes to you from a very loosely coordinated (not organized, not controlled) network of millions of vendors and farmers.

To read this blog, you’re using software from hundreds (probably thousands) of companies, all barely connected in time and space.

In the Star Trek future, it’s all seamless, coherent and controlled.

In fact, the hodgepodge continues to get more chaotic, not less.

The work is to build and influence systems, not to seek to control it all.