Words&Dirt

“We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.”

––Ulysses, by James Joyce, pg. 132

“Today’s belief in ineluctable certainty is the true innovation-killer of our age. In this environment, the best an audacious manager can do is to develop small improvements to existing systems, climbing the hill, as it were, toward a local maximum, trimming fat, occasionally eking out the occasional tiny innovation––like city planners painting bicycle lanes on the streets as a gesture toward solving our energy problems. Any strategy that involves crossing a valley––accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance––will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains, tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.”

–– “Innovation Starvation,” Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 320