Author, here. Thanks for sharing this!
The Religion of Speed
11–20 of 166 posts
Re: The Religion of Speed
#12The biggest joke of the entire things is that no one wins by being first anymore. It is not the 1990s. If anything, you win by being a good second. Facebook won because it watched MySpace mistakes and fixed them. There is even less value in being first with this AI-driven nonsense. The first mover just creates the template everyone else feeds into an LLM. You do the hard work. Someone else collects the reward.
>If anything, you win by being a good second.
More specifically, winning often means being last. Case in point: Lycos, AltaVista, Yahoo!, Infoseek... then Google. Let others rush around doing your prototyping.
Re: The Religion of Speed
#13A very relevant book that goes beyond the workplace (but also includes it): Alienation and Acceleration: Towards a Critical Theory of Late-Modern Temporality by Hartmut Rosa
Re: The Religion of Speed
#14Use to work with a pretty jaded Army Colonel. He'd often say: "even periodic motion looks like progress on short enough time scales." And also, "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast."
>"Slow is smooth and smooth is fast."
When I was in basic the instructors repeated this incessantly. About two thirds of the way through what Americans would call OCS they made us walk into "the gas hut" which is a concrete bunker-like building in the middle of a field near the rifle range.
Inside the hut is a hot plate with an old shitty skillet. Inside the skillet are pellets that give off tear gas when heated. You walk into the hut and immediately get slapped in the face by what I might charitably describe as the worst onion-eyes you've ever experienced, multiplied by at least 100.
But the training is fantastic because in that moment as I was standing there with my eyes scrunched and burning, I unconsciously whipped out the gas mask, put it on, did the proper drills with the filter and decon cream, and had no conscious recollection of having done so. The urge to rip off the mask and rub your eyes is overwhelming. The instructor told me "good drill" and sent me on my not-so-merry way.
Same thing with mag drills. You slap that forward assist without even thinking. Anyways, slow really is smooth which really is fast.
Re: The Religion of Speed
#15Use to work with a pretty jaded Army Colonel. He'd often say: "even periodic motion looks like progress on short enough time scales." And also, "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast."
I remember learning to race on the track.
In the sharp turns, you feel like that's where you should try really hard to go fast. Because you're going so slow!
But really, it makes more sense to slow down MORE, be smooth and controlled and get the turn right. And you'll get a better drive and be faster later. slow in, fast out.
also, the math wins - going 1mph faster on the 1/4-mile straightaway works out better than going 1mph faster on the 100-foot slow turn.
Re: The Religion of Speed
#16We did a paper airplane test in 5th grade. We split into teams and made them like McDonnell Douglas, etc. First, we saw how many airplanes we could make and then how far they flew. Everyone was rushing to get the planes made, but I took my time and measured them to make sure every fold was done right. My planes flew the farthest, and our team won the government contract. The moral of the story was that haste makes wa…
Your team won government contract for paper planes?
Re: The Religion of Speed
#17I realized early on that sometimes management thinks that if you don't look stressed than your not taking it seriously enough. Phrases like "I don't feel that you have a sense of urgency" really messed with my head back then.
Re: The Religion of Speed
#18The biggest joke of the entire things is that no one wins by being first anymore. It is not the 1990s. If anything, you win by being a good second. Facebook won because it watched MySpace mistakes and fixed them. There is even less value in being first with this AI-driven nonsense. The first mover just creates the template everyone else feeds into an LLM. You do the hard work. Someone else collects the reward.
>If anything, you win by being a good second. More specifically, winning often means being last. Case in point: Lycos, AltaVista, Yahoo!, Infoseek... then Google. Let others rush around doing your prototyping.
Google didn't win because it was last. It was last because it won!
Re: The Religion of Speed
#19The biggest joke of the entire things is that no one wins by being first anymore. It is not the 1990s. If anything, you win by being a good second. Facebook won because it watched MySpace mistakes and fixed them. There is even less value in being first with this AI-driven nonsense. The first mover just creates the template everyone else feeds into an LLM. You do the hard work. Someone else collects the reward.
>If anything, you win by being a good second. More specifically, winning often means being last. Case in point: Lycos, AltaVista, Yahoo!, Infoseek... then Google. Let others rush around doing your prototyping.
Xerox to Apple
Re: The Religion of Speed
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If anything, you win by being a good second. More specifically, winning often means being last. Case in point: Lycos, AltaVista, Yahoo!, Infoseek... then Google. Let others rush around doing your prototyping.
Google didn't win because it was last. It was last because it won!
It's always in the last place you look.