Spime Script?

In search of Spime Script ...

The rants and raves of Simon Wardley on Evolution, Technology, Economics and Business

The continued search for Spime Script

The rants and raves of Simon Wardley on Evolution, Technology, Economics and Business

Presentations — Benedict Evans

Every year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. New in May 2025, ‘AI eats the world’.

Shirky: In Praise of Evolvable Systems

Clay Shirky's writings about the Internet, including Economics and Culture, Media and Community, Open Source, and Genetics As Information Science

Steve Jobs

"FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING BIOGRAPHIES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND ALBERT EINSTEIN, THIS IS THE EXCLUSIVE BIOGRAPHY OF STEVE JOBS. Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues--Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values"--

The Anti-Intellectualism of Silicon Valley Elites

I recently re-read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, and now every time a reactionary Silicon Valley billionaire opens his mouth, I think about it. So I wrote about it for The Nation. Here's the column: On Instagram, there’s an activist named Brian Patrick (@pano.

Selling the American People: Advertising, Optimization, and the Origins of Adtech

How marketers learned to dream of optimization and speak in the idiom of management science well before the widespread use of the Internet.Algorithms, data

What corporate thrillers tell us about the '90s economy

PLUS: Has Forum Brain crossed the gender divide?

Profit, cost, price, learned societies; further thoughts on Samuel A. Moore's Publishing Beyond the Market

Since I last wrote, I have had a few more thoughts on Samuel Moore’s book. Again, these are not necessarily things that he does not discuss or things that he should have discussed. They are merely thoughts that occurred to me in response to reading his work.

Nature is Laughing at the AI Build Out -

I was catching up on Acquired episodes this week and listened to the spectacular “Google: The AI Company” episode that Ben and David put together. What the two of them have created with their podcast fascinates me in the inevitability of its success. I think Acquired proves that if you are smart and work your […]