On Age of Empires

Cowritten by ChatGPT o1 Few things are cozier than the occasional super-nerdy round of Age of Empires II with friends on cold winter nights with our own set of rules. Even after 20 years, it still brings me so much joy. It’s also taught me a few lessons—not just about resourcefulness or the classic cheat code (“how do you turn this on”), but deeper ideas that stuck with me as a designer and strategist. Every game starts the same: the mini-map is hidden, the resources are equal, and you’re lef...

While Hunting, We Miss the Forest for the Trees

(collaboration with ChatGPT-01) The AI hype from the last few years ago already feels like ancient history. We've collectively shifted our obsession to the latest shiny object: agents. But perhaps our relentless anthropomorphism blinds us more than we dare to admit. One of my favorite book series is Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, especially the second book that delves into the chilling "Dark Forest Theory." In this cosmic perspective, life is reduced to a brutal game of survival—you eith...

Design Ourobors

The past few years have profoundly reshaped my work and days as a designer. I won’t lie—it feels like nearly everything has changed. With genAI here and undeniably real, I sometimes wonder if I’m still necessary at all. But more than anything, what’s most striking isn’t just the tech itself, but a shift in the very way I approach design—the process, if you can still call it that, because linear design no longer applies. Last year, I collaborated with a startup on building reputation systems, ...

Player of Games

Yesterday, someone asked me to review a thesis on the future of games. Somewhere in the conversation, a question came up: “How many games can you feasibly play as a human concurrently?” The question took me back—way back—to my first real game addiction, a browser game called OGame. Dumb, relentless, real-time. This was before mobile internet, so to keep my account alive, I’d sneak away from school during breaks to log in. It was thrilling and consuming, until my school efforts suffered, and I...

Never-ending Childhood

As probably almost everyone who's chronically online, I’m consuming a ton of content all the time. Just one more YouTube video before bed, I guess, but lately, I keep asking myself, what the hell am I even watching here? First off, let me just get this out of the way: the YouTube interface is absolutely useless. You can’t really search anymore; it’s just an endless scroll of the same Mr. Beast-type grin or whatever’s trending. But this isn’t about YouTube itself—it’s about the content. I’m ge...

The Internet Has No Shape

The Internet Has No ShapeThere was a time when the web felt whole—every app, service, and product neatly bundled form, function, and content. Louis Sullivan’s idea that “form follows function” helped shape architecture and design ideology, and Dieter Rams’ principles of good design pushed it even further. But for all their clarity, these ideas fall short in the digital space. In the virtual world, form and function needed a third element: content. Form, function, and content have long been th...

The Internet Was Never for Us

Not for Us.It’s happening. The internet is waking up to agents. Bots, algorithms, and scripts are everywhere, quietly running our digital lives. They’re efficient, relentless, and designed to get the job done—without us. And maybe that’s the point. Agents aren’t just here; they’re thriving. They dominate social feeds, manage transactions, and shape content without ever needing a screen. Add a bit of lore, some identity, and suddenly, they’re us, only better. They don’t get bored, tired, or di...

On World-Building

World-Building: A Blueprint for Building Networks in Emergent TechIn emergent technology, you’re not just building a product. You’re building a social protocol or network, and networks and protocols are inherently social. They thrive on community and culture. Your role isn’t just to create the tools for the future, but to construct the world around those tools—a world built on mental models, language, frameworks, and experiences that others can adopt and propagate. This is the essence of cult...

The Attention Market Is Broken

// Monday Morning chat with GPT-4o We’ve been told that markets, if left alone, naturally lead to the best outcomes. Milton Friedman championed this idea, arguing that free markets optimize things for everyone. But in today’s world of TikTok, Onlyfans, and Bumble, this idea falls apart. The attention economy—designed to capture and exploit our focus—reveals the truth: markets don’t serve us. They exploit us. And this isn’t just a flaw in how platforms operate—it’s a flaw in how markets as a w...

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Some Loose Thoughts About “Crypto Consumer Goods”

/ramblings Need First, Then Tech.Consumer goods are hard apps! Period. As notorious early adopters, we’re the only ones hooked by faster transaction speeds compared to the real world. But seriously, speed matters a lot less if you just have a great waiting screen to occupy someone’s mind. What really matters—and I’m adapting this from a post by Nikita Bier—is that most consumer apps fall into three categories: Get Rich, Get Laid, Get Distracted, and their overlaps. People want to earn or save...