Links - September 5, 2016
- Labor Day: From the Job Loop to the Knowledge Loop Albert Wenger - Continuations
What is the point of work? What should people spend their time on, and why? Wenger argues that we are about to enter a post-capital and post-labor world. I still haven’t decided if I should read his book now, as a draft, or when it is published in a few months.
- Are We Really So Modern? Adam Kirsch - The New Yorker
I should make an effort and learn more about history and philosophy. We are solving different immediate problems, but ultimately trying to answer the same basic questions as those that came before us.
- The Pill, the Condom, and the American Dream Derek Thompson - The Atlantic
In a complex world, second order effects tend to be more important in aggregate than one would expect. Increased access to birth control results in better care for the kids who are born, and eventually a better society.
- What to Make of Andreessen Horowitz’s Returns? Mark Suster - Both Sides of the Table
Not often do you get a VCs view on another fund. Suster gives us some great insights in his piece.
- How Uber Drivers Decide How Long to Work Noam Scheiber - The New York Times
No data was released, but here is the original paper, in case you want to take a look.
- Trying Not to Try Edward Slingerland - Nautilus
Thinking fast and slow, from the angle of Butcher Ding and chinese philosophy. When your conscious mind lets go, the body can take over.
- Will Amazon Kill FedEx? Devin Leonard - Bloomberg
Amazon is an impressively interesting company (as an aside, the old timey look of the photos is great, too). The original bits and atoms startup, which somehow keeps innovating.
- All about Microservices a16z (Podcast)
Starting a career in software engineering during the days of AWS and Heroku gives me a strange vantage point. The story of how Netflix switched their whole infrastructure would not be half as impressive if I didn’t understand the role of culture in organizational change. The fact is that “this is how we do things around here” can make or break you. This episode talks about the architecture that underlie the modern web stack.