SWAN of the Week, Number 137

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” – Elon Musk

SWAN of the Week, Number 136

“The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products.” – Neil Postman

French cultural theorist Paul Virillio on the integral accident

When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution… Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress. – Paul Virillio Virillio believed in this idea of the […]

Orson Welles

“Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.”

Philip Glass, Words Without Music

I sometimes hear about work described in terms of ‘originality’ or ‘breakthrough,’ but my personal experience is quite different. For me music has always been about lineage. The past is reinvented and becomes the future. But the lineage is everything.

Henry David Thoreau (journal, March 18, 1861)

Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not. You are simply a witness on the stand to tell what you know about your neighbors and neighborhood.

70% of people laughing at your joke means that you’re crushing it

Great comedians like Mitch Hedberg make us feel as though we’re hearing something we’ve known for eternity, yet also experiencing for the first time — revealing obvious truths in surprising ways. Every brand or product has multiple truths. One of those will be surprising. When you find a surprising truth, people can’t just file it […]