What would my life have been like if I had continued on, potentially believing that people might be standing in formation to honor horses lost in battle?! We can’t have that!

Not only is the dangerous information initially hidden, but when I finally find the “See Post” link at the bottom of the image, it’s incredulous at my choice “Are you sure?” Do you actually want to see something that we’ve found has no information to support it? REALLY?!

But Josh, there’s no evidence of this claim! How can you stand to look at it? Does it not immediately and irrevocably pollute your pure, virgin mind? We fear your very neurons may be ripped to shreds by the unverifiable nature of this information! We’re looking out for you, Josh!

Listen.

Start at Step 3. A tasteful callout. Let me see the information and move on.

If people are going to be stupid, allow it. Yes. Give them that freedom. We sell enough rope at the hardware store that one can go home and hang themselves. That’s OK. We allow that to continue when the other options are regulating rope, or covering every inch of the rope with stickers advertising the toll-free number for the Suicide Prevention Hotline.

Offer help without standing in the way. Just put the offer out there. Say “I care about you, so I’m offering this, but you’re free to ignore it.” Do not say, “You have to stop and look at this before I allow you to continue.” The first is love, the second is anxiety.

The post Instagram, Protector of Virgin Minds appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

For years, I had recurring nightmares about Sonny, the chaotic, mentally-disturbed, manic Cocoa Puffs shill.

I had these dreams from the early to the late 1980s. I was probably three or four when they started.

Here’s the thing. When I was a kid, I hated being tickled. Especially when I wasn’t expecting it. People would tickle me now and then, as they do all kids. Ribs were the worst.

In my dreams, instead of being the homicidal maniac of a more traditional nightmare, Sonny was a relentless tickling maniac. He would find me, he would chase me, he would capture me, and he was cuckoo for tickling me.

I would actually feel it, and I couldn’t wake up.

Don’t misunderstand me: I readily admit this nightmare is hilarious. Besides my hatred of being tickled, I don’t know where in my conscious mind it could’ve come from.

I really don’t understand the connection to Sonny, or cereal at all. He just had a malevolent energy, I guess?

I had this dream dozens of times. Every month or two, for about 7 years. It would happen in different locations. It would start differently, every time. Sometimes I wouldn’t know when it was “one of those”, and then suddenly, Sonny was there, he was laughing, and I was running.

Let me tell you, young Josh got really tired of it. I tried to train myself to fly away in my dreams (ironically, Sonny could never fly?) and I would occasionally escape him that way. Sometimes I could outrun him, but not usually.

Then, when I was 8 or 9 years of age, I awoke from what must have been a particularly severe session with my cuckoo nemesis, and I decided enough was enough. I had been backed into a corner. I had no choice. I was going to end this once and for all.

I was going to murder Sonny.

I figured that since “my” Sonny was a dream creature, he could only be affected by dream logic and dream things. I couldn’t kill him in the real world. I had to go where he lived, in my head. I would only be able to kill him while sleeping, with a weapon I chose while awake.

That evening, as I went to bed, I intentionally thought about Sonny. I focused my little kid mind on him, and I laid in my bed, on my stomach. I put my hand under my pillow, and I imagined a large knife forming, handle in my palm. My weapon of choice. My ticket out.

The handle of the blade gained weight as I focused on it, and I knew Sonny couldn’t see it because it was under my pillow. I knew he would arrive soon.

Then, I felt his presence. He sat on my back. He was more controlled, more serious this time. He knew something was different.

Before he had a chance to make the first move, I rolled over and swung the knife at his torso with all my kid strength!

In the real world, I literally physically fell out of bed and onto the floor, and woke up.

I never dreamed of Sonny again.

True story.

The post My Cuckoo Nightmares about Sonny appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

As I found myself responding, I was surprised at all the places in my life that my response touched on, so I thought I’d share it here. More of the same from me, perhaps, but I suppose that’s part of what makes it important. This stuff is really important to me. In the end, he supported my decision.

I’ll be candid in the hopes that it’s illuminating and helpful.

My lifestyle and personal needs and tolerances right now won’t allow me to read political news regularly, for several reasons. I’ll explain why. I know this matters to you.

1 – I am so busy that I have not yet had a single week in which I have been completely faithful to God, my family’s needs, my clients’ needs, and my own needs. And I haven’t even listed friendships or “societal duties” in there! I am always letting at least one of those things down significantly. I’m not OK with that. I need to use my very limited time and will power to improve that situation before I add more daily habits into the mix, which would once again make it more challenging to be faithful to all of the above.

2 – I am predisposed to severe anxiety and some depression, too. The news not only doesn’t help that situation, but it actually makes it far worse. On rare occasions it has been severe enough that I couldn’t function day-to-day. That’s not OK, because it hurts #1 above. But, I have found a massive improvement in personal peace and clarity since 2008 when I stopped watching live TV and stopped regularly reading the news. It has improved further since leaving Facebook. I am literally never upset about politics outside of election day, and random days on which I give in and start paying close attention to the news. (Then I often get upset again, while never having any way to take action and improve the situation outside voting.)

In short, I find through experience that I can’t handle the news. I’m convinced it’s psychologically unhealthy for me to read news regularly and get into the “daily churn” of ceaseless noise and politically-motivated grousing. Especially if I’m under the impression I can or should do something about it. Others can and should. At least during this decade, I cannot and should not. My wife and my kids and the other things listed above are my priority, and they take everything I have to give.

As a nice bonus, the stories that matter come to me eventually through organic means, and I read about them and discuss them then. 95% of it does not matter and never will. It’s shocking how much of what’s reported never comes to pass and never matters. The news media attempt to keep my attention for their own benefit, not for my benefit. So I take my attention back into my own hands, and spend it on #1 above, where it should be.

That’s how I see this whole issue, and why I distance myself from it as much as possible. It’s my hope that given the positive personal changes I’m going through, I might actually be able to add more to my plate in a few years. But it won’t be soon.

Josh

I hope you’ll all consider doing the same, leaving the news mostly behind and spending more of your time on the things that actually matter, where you can have a real effect in people’s lives.

I know that some people can and should have a positive, even huge influence in politics, but I become more convinced as time goes on that most of us can’t, and yet most of us are also out there shouting at each other online or in person, getting mad, discussing everything ad nauseam. Must we? I don’t think so. I think it accomplishes more harm than good these days, in this culture, in this context.

The post Priorities, Anxiety, and The News appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

I continue to want to build some kind of system in which people could learn this way of thinking and practice with others with whom they would normally disagree. How could it be done? What protections would need to be in place?

I’m imagining technology at the moment (something that matches you up with non-anonymous people with whom you disagree about any political or religious issue, to have a friendly, civil conversation) but I’ve also imagined analogue methods of achieving the same thing.

I think each user would have to have “reputation” so the haters / trolls could be quickly weeded out (or steered towards those with proven experience dealing well with such attitudes).

If the system saw things were getting heated (A.I. detection?) it could prompt the users to shift gears / topics, pause the chat for 30 seconds. Or put up reminders about how to handle the uncomfortableness in a healthy way.

The key to the whole thing is that whatever happened, whether via technology or not, we maximize the parts of the experience that leave the other thinking, “that was a decent human being that I like, and with whom I happen to disagree sometimes.”

I’ve wondered if an analogue version of this would just use technology to match people up in certain geographic areas to meet in pre-selected, well lit, calm places (staffed with trained security) to converse over a table. Walk in, shake hands, talk for 30 minutes, and leave.

One hunch I have is that people who were new to these “empathy chats”, whether they were digital or in person, would be joined by a third person who was experienced. They would moderate and help steer and encourage, and set the tone when the two others were less certain.

I know this whole concept is pretty far out and more than a little harebrained. Likely very naïve or at least overly optimistic. But if you’ve read this far, I want to hear what you think. What are the strong points / weak points? What would prevent you from participating?

I originally posted this as a Twitter thread, but decided I wanted to also have it here on my blog.

The post Building Empathy Systematically appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

I considered just accepting and having a phone call, but I thought better of it and decided that I should at least be up front with her.

Hey [REDACTED]!

I appreciate the offer of a conversation. I’d be open to a chat, but I have to put out a big warning that I’m probably not an ideal Facebook candidate for a couple reasons.

First, I’ve lived in the Valley before (I worked for Apple for six years) but I live in Minnesota now, and I intend on staying. So even if I were to get a job with Facebook, I’d want to spend 95% of my time in Minnesota.

Second, I deleted my Facebook account about six weeks ago. I have serious concerns about Facebook’s role in society at large. In the interest of transparency, I’ll give examples:

• Facebook can negatively change our perception of each other, our culture and our country
• Facebook can manipulate how I see myself and my own value (or lack thereof) to my friends and family
• Facebook’s work to increase user engagement has been so incredibly successful now that it feels to many to be unthinkable to live without it, in spite of the fact that they admit having serious fears and misgivings about what Facebook might do with their information
• Facebook can in some cases even damage relationships that could have otherwise remained healthy, if distant
• Facebook’s business model seems to be directly at odds with a person’s need for privacy and control of their own information, and for that reason Facebook may be forced to favor commerce over a person’s emotional needs, or risk going out of business

I think even if everything else worked out, having opinions like that would be painting a huge bullseye on my chest, you know? So I want to be up front about all of it as much as I can be.

I would be really excited to help Facebook to overcome these issues, as incredibly challenging as they are. I think it will require changes to the priorities we carry with us into the engineering process that before now have never been heard of or considered. As you know from my LinkedIn profile, I myself helped to get a niche social network off the ground and bring it to a peak of over 125,000 users at one point, so I certainly believe in the good that social media can do in our lives and the world in general.

Thanks for the email.

Josh
651-[REDACTED]

I never heard back. I didn’t really expect to, but it’s an interesting sort of confirmation nonetheless.

The post Facebook Asked Me to Interview appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

My family had a Commodore 64 from maybe 1983 – 1992 or so. My friend Nathan and I would type in BASIC code we found in books he’d bring home from the library, just like this guy is doing, because we wanted to see what it would do. It was like having access to magic spells. How does it work? Who knows? It doesn’t matter. It’s magic! Let’s try it!

We’d take turns line by line, typing in one character at a time, reading them to each other.

Half the time, we made a typo somewhere 20 lines up and couldn’t find it, and certainly didn’t have the knowledge necessary to debug it, so we’d just move on. I was surprised when I saw how easy it is to edit code and add new code in this demo. I had no idea that was possible! Whoops. Though I guess I should give myself a break because I was 9 years old at the time, and no one was teaching me how to do any of this.

Brings back fond memories. Technology seems less magical now, and I don’t think that’s only because of my experience. Maybe the ubiquity of it has demystified it somehow.

The post Memories of Writing BASIC on the Commodore 64 appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

I’m leaving Facebook forever on April 1st. No, this isn’t a joke. You should leave too. Read on.

I read more and more stories like this every day. People with inside knowledge and real expertise and deep, powerful connections in the tech industry, encouraging people to get rid of their Facebook accounts.

It’s not limited to the WhatsApp guy. It includes Facebook’s first president Sean Parker and a former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya. The article I linked to says they “both expressed serious misgivings about Facebook and how it messes with people’s psychological and social structures.”

And I’m seeing it myself too. I honestly think the rising anger in this country, the building political polarization, the rise in all kinds of dangerous psychological trends… I know the human condition is deeply broken. But Facebook is making it worse.

And the thing is, since I’m here, I’m part of the problem. And so are you.

I think it’s time to go. Not “time to go until they promise with sugar and a cherry on top they’ll never do it again”. Just time to go, and not come back. Ever.

Let another network rise that respects me and my privacy, respects my personal agency and personal opinions, and isn’t from the outset so fundamentally incapable of making the right choices socially. We cannot reward that behavior any longer by remaining present. I refuse to.

Here’s what I’m going to do, and I encourage you to do the same.

I’m going to keep my Facebook account active (so friends have a chance to read this message!) for the next few days. On April 1st, I’m deleting it permanently, not just deactivating it. And I’m not coming back. Let April Fools’ day be a reminder that Facebook has fooled us all, and we won’t play the fool any longer.

For practical purpose, if you leave Facebook, and you should, you should also make sure friends know how to get ahold of you without it. I’m still going to be on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/joshlewis And my blog, as long as I’m alive and probably for a little while after I’m not, is here: https://blog.joshlewis.org/

Share this message if you agree. But more importantly, on April Fools’ day, stop playing the Fool. Click the big blue button: https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account

The post I’m Leaving Facebook Permanently appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

This article at TechCrunch by Matthew Panzarino has the real story. I strongly recommend reading this one to be best informed.

I want to talk about another issue too. It’s related.

I’m so deeply disappointed in some members of the press for the way that they sensationalize stories. It’s nothing new, I know. The fact that I often only notice their sensationalistic tendencies when they’re talking about a subject I actually understand hints that they might be doing this all the time, and I just don’t know it.

On this particular story, I’ve seen absolutely terrible articles by CNET and Business Insider already. Business Insider even went so far as to make it sound like Apple had confirmed, hat in hand, that they were throttling old iPhones in order to sell newer iPhones. They’ve done no such thing.

How can we hold the journalists responsible for these kinds of things accountable? I understand that I could just stop reading stories from those publications, but I imagine that sometimes the writer who publishes the story isn’t the only one responsible for this problem. They may have even been compelled to write something they didn’t personally agree with, or even understand properly, by someone higher up who is motivated to bring in more clicks and more ad revenue.

How are we to know who is to blame for gross misrepresentation of the truth? Is there nothing we can do? Do we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? It’s terribly ironic that these things are coming from the very organizations we patronize for the sole purpose of bringing us the truth in a timely manner. What a terrible abdication of duty!

The post Apple & the Sensational Press appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

It seems from my vantage point that many people reach a point in their lives where they close themselves off to new things. This could be new scientific discovery, new art, new political thought, new music, or even simple things like new habits, new personal preferences, new beliefs about the simple, everyday things of life.

I think that’s kinda sad. I don’t want that to be me. My aim in writing this is to make a public commitment that I will not allow that in myself, ever.

There is so much flavor and nuance and amazement and beauty in the world, it is practically packed to the gills with it. Why shut yourself off from that? Maybe at first glance you don’t perceive it’s there, but don’t turn away just yet. Look a little deeper. Trust what your friends and loved ones tell you through their own amazement and enjoyment, and spend the time.

As we get older, we often have even more of that kind of time, so one would think as a person gets older they’d be using that time to expand their horizons. It seems that’s often not the case. My “ignorance alarm” tells me there’s so much I don’t understand yet about life and aging, and that once I get there I’ll see why. We shall see. But my intention is to always broaden myself.

Having said that, I totally understand that there’s no moral obligation to enjoy new things. Or even to notice them. So I’m not arguing that it is wrong to stop learning and changing. I mean, hey, if something is perfect, you’d be wrong to change it, right? But the chances that something is perfect are incredibly, extremely, ridiculously low. Believing you’ve found perfection should at least call for healthy skepticism.

I also acknowledge that there are areas of life that I have literally no interest in. Certainly, no one is obligated to love literally every activity and every subject. But I think a person isn’t living their full life when they close themselves off more and more over time from more and more things, drawing inside themselves, disconnecting and becoming calcified.

So let’s not say that calcification is a normal part of aging. Let’s not accept it in ourselves and others. Encourage the people you love to live their lives as broadly as they can, with as much connection as they can. And when you see calcification happening in your own life, fight it!

The post The Calcified Persona appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

But these are just surface-level symptoms of a larger mindset. The real question is why. It’s given me so much joy, I want to share it. So, why do I do this?

What I’ve found is that as you approach nothingness, the only thing left you have is the work you’re doing. You’re there to do the work. So do the work. If there’s something else for you to do, something else to look at, something to be distracted by instead of doing the work, get rid of it. Do the work.

The more work I do, the more I find that this principle of ruthlessly removing the extraneous is really central to excellent creation. It echoes what I wrote years ago here and I’m shocked to find I don’t back away from that nothingness these days. I go forward, closer and closer to it. It’s beautiful.

I should say that I understand there are plenty of people who can focus without any distractions, even if their desks and their lives are crowded with all kinds of junk. I’m not one of those people. So if you find that you aren’t one of those people either, try nothingness. You’ll acclimate and you’ll love it.

The post Work & Nothingness appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

Hi. I’m Josh, Ken’s son, and Emily (my sister) and I wrote this together.

She and I are two of only three people in the world today who can claim to have lived with Ken Lewis for two or more decades. What that means is that I’m a member of a small, elite crew of Ken Lewis experts who know what he’s really like, in all circumstances.

I’ve read Exodus 20 and I know there’s no command to “tease thy parents”, but I just know so many things about him that you probably don’t know, I have to share. For instance:

• I know what he’s like while travelling for days on end across the country in a Volkswagen Jetta. 46 of the 50 states, and parts of Canada and Mexico. Because of that, I also know that the very first thing he does when he gets into a motel room is turn on the air conditioner under the window. Full blast!
• I know he’s a late laugher. It’s not that he gets the joke later. I think it’s that he enjoys it along with everyone else, and then goes back one more time to savor it a little more.
• I know more about jazz than almost anyone else my age, all due to him. I’ve spent hours with him listening to all the greats.
• I know how frugal he is. I’ve watched him laying on his back under one of those aforementioned Volkswagen Jettas in the garage, doing who knows what to save a few bucks on a mechanic while an AM radio on a nearby shelf plays a barely-decipherable baseball game. Probably the Reds.
• I know one of his most-used phrases is “C’mere, let me show you something.” He is constantly sharing what he loves.
• I know how much he loves to whistle. In the late 80s, during a road trip, Emily and I conspired to see if we could trick him into whistling a song he would otherwise hate, without realizing what he was whistling. So we started humming Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”. He couldn’t stand Madonna, but he didn’t know the tune. So we hummed for a few minutes, and pretty soon he was whistling right along, totally unaware.
• I know he loves recording important events, just like my mom does. When Emily and I were young, they had an actual Super-8 silent movie camera, and in order to get enough light for this thing to record well indoors, he had a set of intense white floodlights. So every Christmas when it was time to unwrap the presents, before the camera came out, this blinding array of floodlights would come out and get set on a stand, casting shadows as deep as astronauts on the moon, and smoke would rise slowly off of them and float up to the ceiling as we opened our gifts in a brilliant flood of pure white light. Christmas doesn’t feel the same once you get used to those, and then more modern cameras come out.
• I know something scandalous about his toaster. It’s a Sunbeam, and it has a high wattage they can’t sell anymore. But because of that, the toast it makes is perfect. He has actually made a multi-toaster comparative chart demonstrating his Sunbeam’s unique qualities.
• I know how he preaches. I’ve seen about a thousand Ken Lewis sermons live and in person.

So given how much I know about Ken Lewis, and how much experience I have in this particular subject area, I hope what I’m about to tell you holds extra weight. You may already know, but I want to confirm it. It’s just this: Ken Lewis is who he appears to be. He’s a man of great integrity.

It seems simple, and it kind of is, but it’s also extremely rare. I’ve spoken to so many pastors’ kids who are disillusioned in their faith, or left the faith completely once they got into their 20s, and you can usually trace their lack of faith back to the hypocrisy of their fathers.

But not my father.

It’s the faith that I saw every single day in him and in my mom that has kept pulling me back towards Christ over and over again, making me want to enjoy what he’s enjoying.

And what he’s enjoying is Jesus.

So I want you all to know without a doubt that the love Dad gave to you when he served you is completely real. 100%. He’s not perfect, but he is who he says he is. He’s the same guy at home that he is behind the pulpit. His passion for Jesus is gigantic and authentic, and Jesus’ love for him shows through in what he does and says, and it’s beautiful. I’d guess we’re all here, in part, because we’re glad we got to see that love and experience it in person.

Dad, thank you for your humor. Thank you for your integrity. Thank you for your love and your passion for Christ and His bride.

The post My Dad Retires appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

Jason liked it, so the recording ended up on the Table Project’s blog. Listen to it here.

The post We Are All In Ministry Now appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

Hey Josh,

I was looking through the internet to try to find the best way to submit an idea for an iPhone/iPod accessory that has not yet been available and I stumbled upon your blog. A little about me: My name is [redacted] and I am currently attending (an American university) and I am a double major in Accounting and Finance. It’s a long-shot but I was just curious if you had any ideas or recommendations, advice, contacts, etc. that could help me in finding a way to get this idea to the right people in order for me to make some money to be able to pay off college. Thank you for your help and any further help would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

[Redacted]

Here’s my response:

[Redacted],

Since I don’t know you and I’ve only got one paragraph of (kinda vague) information here, I’m going to make some assumptions, and they might be wrong assumptions. Please forgive me if that’s the case.

Turning an idea into money is extremely hard. In this industry, people don’t pay for ideas. Even good ones. They might pay when all the details (and I mean all the tiny, tiny details) are fleshed out, and they’re holding something in their hand. But there are thousands of people who are out there saying “I’ve got this great idea. Let me just find some people to work for free and make it reality and I’ll just take 10% of the profits and leave the rest to them as payment for their work.” Those folks go nowhere.

If you want to go that route, I’m not sure what to tell you. Ask for help on Craigslist or on a local university message board and see if someone will have coffee with you, I suppose. If money is the final goal, you’ll learn a lot less, have little to be proud of and little to build from.

The category you want to be in is the group of people who are passionate (obsessed?) enough about their idea to build a team, get into the details, learn a lot, work extremely hard, and probably even build a prototype. Or a hundred iterations of a prototype. It turns out you have to put your own life into the thing to make it really worth something. And when you work hard, get into the details and learn a lot, even if your whole project ends up failing, you come out the other side wiser and more able to succeed next time. That’s something no one can take away from you. If you can find a team of people who see it the same way, no one will be able to stop you. You don’t need any of my connections, you just need to find those people.

If you want to go the better, harder route, it might look a lot like the shorter, weaker one in the very beginning, but after a lot of hard work it’ll eventually lead to places like Kickstarter. You can check out the Elevation Dock for an example of a well-done idea (where the details really mattered and the hard work was easily evident) that actually led to a real working product and clearly quite a lot of money. (Almost $1.5M in that case.) Another such case is the Recoil Winder. You can tell when you listen to the video that David Alden spent a lot of time working on the idea before he ever went to Kickstarter.

I hope that’s helpful, [Redacted]. Good luck pursuing your idea!

Josh

The post Ideas and Hard Work appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

The company is NewRelic, and the tools they make are wonderful in helping me to make my web applications better in many ways. I was bothered by the video, and I said so on Twitter.

Later, the man who made the video contacted me and invited me to email him my thoughts on why the video bothered me so much. This is what I sent to him. In the hope that it might be helpful to others, or least enlightening as to my motivations, I’ll post it here too.

Patrick,

We spoke on Twitter earlier today. The meat of this message might not be fully “baked” and ready for deep analysis, but I think if I try to consider it more deeply and make a better argument, I’ll never actually send this email, so please forgive the holes and incompleteness of some of these ideas in the interest of having a conversation.

First off, I want to say that NewRelic is seriously my favorite web app from a professional perspective, and has brought me so much peace of mind and so much help that it is mind-blowing. So, well done. I recommend it to every serious web app developer without reservation as often as I can.

Your “Developers” video bugged me for a few hard-to-explain reasons. I’ll give it my best shot.

I’m one of those developers who has an immense respect for Steve Jobs and Apple. I moved across the country to work for the Mac OS X team in 2002 and worked there for about six years before moving back to the midwest. I never would have gotten into technology without Steve Jobs or the things he helped to make. I’m completely certain of that. So when someone appears to be teasing something that I know meant so much to him, and so much to me, and they’re doing it only a couple of months after his untimely death, I bristle more than a little.

But more important than my personal emotional ties, I often feel like developers and geeks (among whose number I proudly count myself!) don’t really understand how important visionaries like Steve Jobs are. Technology isn’t just about computer scientists solving geeky problems in clever ways. In fact, I would say it’s largely not about that at all. To be clear, I agree that we absolutely need geeks to solve geeky problems. That’s a crucial ingredient to what we’re trying to do. We don’t get anywhere without that.

We also don’t get anywhere without guys like Steve solving less-geeky problems. Steve doggedly pursued simplicity, down to the very core of his products, and protected the interests of common users who didn’t want to become geeks. He let them get away with not needing to learn much about technology in order to wield its power. In a sense, he delivered great power to the otherwise powerless, and demonstrated that innovation isn’t just the first time something is done, but also the first moment it becomes truly easy to do it.

I remember the first time it became easy to see how my app was performing on my live server. It was with your product.

Sometimes my own people, my geeks, act like lowered barriers to entry are a downside. We’re a pretty elitist, snobby bunch sometimes. I think we tend to forget who we’re making all this stuff for, and we make it obtuse and difficult almost as a point of pride, as though only the “worthy” can use our creations. The attitude is that if you can’t learn our horrible jargon and our convoluted, geeky way of thinking, you don’t deserve to have the power that comes with it. I think that’s a disgusting way to see technology.

So, having said all that, when you turn Steve’s concept into a new video which ends with the line “Because the ones who can create magic with code are the ones who will one day rule the world”, it doesn’t feel genuine to me because it conflicts with and thumbs its nose at the original message so strongly. It’s difficult to believe that it “meant zero disrespect” to the original concepts it is mimicking. “Rule the world” is a very exclusive goal. It shouldn’t be ours. The original line from the poem you’re mimicking says “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” That’s what we’re about. Changing the world. Not ruling it.

I hope that we as developers can pull together, amidst our developer pride and geek pride, and not widen the trenches between ourselves and the users. I hope we can help each other to fight pride and arrogance instead of making it culturally acceptable to build it up. The only way we can ever do that is by pulling the focus off ourselves and putting it onto the problems we’re working to solve together.

Josh

The post Elitism in Geek Culture appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

Steve Jobs died today. I got involved in technology because of him. I moved across the country thousands of miles from family to work for his company for six years. He changed my life. And tonight, it really makes me think.

I’m left contemplating the fact that two of the men I admire most are dead. Initially, I was confused about what to do about this. Despair? No. Apathy? Absolutely not. But it seems clearer now after some thought. What we’re witnessing is a changing of the guard. As the man said himself, death “clears out the old to make way for the new.” The older generation is passing away.

But what are they making way for?

Even without the answer to that question, here we are, walking forward. Those who went ahead of us are passing beyond the veil. And it should strike us now that we’re standing at the front of the line. Here we are. We’re standing right where they were only a little while ago. There’s no need to get scared. That’s pointless. We just got here, we’re not done.

And now the spotlight swings back from the veil and onto our faces. No one is in our way now.

It’s our turn to create. It’s our turn to inspire. It’s our turn to push the human race forward.

It’s our turn. Let’s go.

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But why? It’s not just that everything is a remix (although that’s true). It’s that when a creator catches a glimpse of beauty, despair, passion, joy, it makes the labor of their next creation a little easier for them. We learn how to create by taking in the creations of others. We learn how to shape an experience for someone else by having experiences of our own. So, you want to know how to make someone weep for joy? Have someone make you weep for joy. Even if you can’t quite grasp the whole picture having wept for joy just once, you’re a little closer to understanding how it might work than you were before it became a personal experience.

To that end, I take in a lot of created things, and it’s my goal to try to be an appreciator. And not just an appreciator of created things, but also of the people who created them. When I think about my heroes, they’re all people who create things. Jim Henson, Steve Jobs, Jason Fried. These guys are some of my heroes. And they all know how to deeply study and appreciate the things they see. Things regular people routinely look past.

Take Jim, for instance. He once wrote this:

“I find that it’s very important for me to stop every now and then and get recharged and reinspired. The beauty of nature has been one of the great inspirations in my life. Growing up as an artist, I’ve always been in awe of the incredible beauty of every last bit of design in nature. The wonderful color schemes of nature, which always work harmoniously, are particularly dazzling to me… Working as I do with the movement of puppet creatures, I’m always struck by the feebleness of our efforts to achieve naturalistic movement. Just looking at the incredible movement of a lizard or bird, or even the smallest insect, can be a very humbling experience.”

There are several categories of things that often inspire me, and several companies that regularly create things I deeply appreciate. I’m lucky enough to have worked for Apple on the Mac OS X team for about six years, and Apple is easily at the top of my list. But in addition to Apple, I’m constantly inspired by the guys at Penny Arcade, by Valve Software, by Nintendo, and as cliché as it sounds, by Pixar.

This weekend, I was really struck by the ending of Portal 2 (a game made by the aforementioned Valve Software). It’s an amazing game, but something surprised me about the end because it contained an echo of all the other companies in my list. It was a hint, if you will, about one of the ingredients in a masterful creation.

In a nutshell, it’s this: love your creation.

I’ll try to avoid spoilers, but the ending of Portal 2 brings shocking clarity to Valve’s passion for the universe and characters they’ve created. Put another way, if the folks at Valve weren’t deeply in love with (dare we say obsessed with?) these characters, the bittersweet elements of the ending they created would never have occurred to them. Because something lesser would’ve been acceptable. Still, through the final sequences in the game, I could see the expression on their faces as they looked into mine: “We are so proud of this. We hope you love this deeply, because we love it so, so much that we can hardly bear to say goodbye to it.”

It was like watching a father walk his daughter down the aisle.

To say it was emotionally resonant would be an understatement. And that’s what we’re after, isn’t it? Portal 2 was a fantastic puzzle game, sure, but it was more than that. The thing you remember when you walk away is how it felt to be in that universe, to meet those characters and interact with them, and get to know them and love them within their reality. And that’s the thing that will make you come back next time, not the enticement of more surfaces onto which you can place portals. (Though that’s certainly attractive.)

Then I thought of Pixar. Toy Story 3. Could it have been any clearer how much Pixar loves Woody and Buzz than what we saw at the end of Toy Story 3? It’s not possible to take your characters any more seriously than that. To respect them any more deeply. They went out with unprecedented sweetness, and it was sad and perfectly beautiful.

Apple? Wow. They’re obsessed in a way the rest of their industry can barely tolerate, let alone understand. Exhibit A, the phrase “There’s not a straight piece of glass on this building.” They take what they do seriously and they love it deeply, down to a level of detail others can’t even fathom. In some ways, it almost works against them. People think of buying an Apple device like it’s tantamount to joining a cult. Why? Because the use of something Apple has made contains the emotion of those who made it, and you feel that when you use it. That is, unless you realize you’d prefer to resist it.

But back to creation.

Something interesting happens when you really love the thing you’re creating. When you love it deeply enough, it teaches you how to improve it and make it better. More useful, more beautiful, more resonant. And when you learn those lessons and apply them, you love the creation even more, which then leads you to even more lessons. It’s a spiral that continues upward, and I have no idea where it stops.

So let’s find out. Love your creation.

The post Love Your Creation appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

Yes, it’s me.

Listen, I know we don’t talk as often as we used to, and I regret that. I’m sorry. But I want to introduce you to the reason I’ve been so quiet. It’s something beautiful. Something graceful and seamless. Something with massive potential. Something that has taken most of my energy for the last two years of my life. Something I’ve been actively prepared for by much more than the last two years.

Tomorrow, it’s no longer a test. It becomes real. Tomorrow is a day so many have prayed for, maybe without even realizing it.

It’s called The Table.

Have you ever wanted a place where you could be real? Where you could drop the mask, drop your personal brand for a second, stop talking about skin-deep topics and show the fractures in your skeleton? We’re in pain, right? Some days are bad, some are better. And yet we know we can’t get away with much more than hinting about our pain when we’re broadcasting to the world. So many people don’t get it. So many don’t want to.

I’ve always thought the place to do that stuff was at my church. These are the people who are there to walk with you through the slime, the fear, the hurt, the ugliness. These are the people who are humble enough to serve you when you’re down, and tough enough to not wimp out on you when you’re defiant and running for the cliff. And you don’t just receive that. You give it, too.

I want to be honest with you: if your church hasn’t done that for you, maybe you haven’t been to church.

Ask your church to sign up (don’t go alone) and start loving and serving each other in a way you may have never done.

Get real. Pull up a seat.

The post Becoming Real appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

Consider, agree or disagree, and enjoy either way.

1. Everything in life that you truly need, in the deepest sense of “need”, has been and will continue to be given to you by God.
2. If God intends for you to have something, no one can take it away from you.
3. Therefore, anything you do not have, you do not truly need.

The post Christians: All Your Needs Are Already Satisfied appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

I have a deep desire to be a person who makes real things that are useful and delightful. I’ve been working really hard at The Table Project for many months, and I’ve been learning a lot about hard work and how to sustain it. I’ve also learned that the work affects me just as I affect the work. I’ve changed because of my work.

One of the main things that has changed within me is the heightened value I place on silence. Silence of many kinds.

When I’m making something, I’m deeply motivated by the anticipation of discovery on the part of the person that will receive my creation. Will it help them? Will it make them smile? Have I thought through all the ways they’ll use it and considered everything from their perspective? I can’t see their reaction if I don’t finish what I’m making. They won’t benefit unless I do a great job. I create with those thoughts in my mind. But it’s not as simple as that. You may not agree with what I’m about to say, but stick with me.

I’m learning about the demotivational power of talking.

There is a vast, gaping difference between talking about doing a thing and really doing it. I have been the crowned and reigning king of “talking about doing a thing” in the past, and this blog stands as a testament to that.

On the simplest level, talking is demotivational because great creation comes from a quiet, solitary place, not from meetings and committees. On a deeper level, talking about what you’re doing and giving people a preview of the future is demotivational because you may be receiving praise which you haven’t yet earned. That’s extremely dangerous. When you go back to your quiet, solitary place to finish that cool thing you just told your friend about, their praise is still ringing in your ears, reducing the reward that is still beyond your reach, and slowing you down. You can’t afford that tradeoff. It would’ve been better to not tell them what you had done until it was ready. And at that point, there’s less need to tell, because you can show.

This newfound belief affects me in a few ways. You’ll notice, for instance, that this is only the 6th blog entry I’ve posted this year, and the year is half over. Last year, I had written 15 entries in the same amount of time.

And it’s not due to Twitter. This graph of my tweets per month, particularly since last July, will tell you a strange little story as well.

I’m not doing this on purpose. It’s a habit that has naturally evolved. I’m no longer the guy who tweets 500+ times each month because I now realize I don’t have 500+ worthwhile things to say to that audience each month. It’s not censorship, it’s editorial and it’s filtering. It’s respect for the listener, I hope.

Speaking of listeners, they’re also at risk in this problem. I’m growing tired of bloggers and content producers of all kinds that don’t know when to shut up and reflect. My apologies if that seems rude, but if you’re publishing to meet a weekly quota, you’re doing it wrong. Don’t game the crowd; make something of quality. If you have a lot to say, that’s fine (look at the length of this entry), but please don’t assume you can take our attention 9 times a week because your analytics tell you that’s your ideal posting frequency to generate higher traffic and ad revenue.

But if you happen to make 9 quality things that week, by all means, share them all. Show me what you’ve done. My favorite blog, Daring Fireball, is quite noisy, and I’ve never regretted reading it. The content is good. It earns its place.

This all relates to the reason that I rarely if ever go to the Social Media Breakfasts anymore (although I really like many of the people), but I participated in the Overnight Website Challenge this year and found it very rewarding. I hope to do it again.

Less talk, more rock. Fewer conferences and meetings, more product and creativity.

There are downsides for me and others in this change, too. In the midst of focusing constantly on creating The Table, it’s become harder for me to carry on conversations in general, and it’s nearly impossible now for me to be in the moment completely. My mind has become so focused that I’ve caught myself thinking things like, “How can this conversation/situation benefit The Table?” even while spending time with family and friends. It’s pretty weird, and it’s something I’m trying to address. Focus shouldn’t have to lead to workaholism or personal narrowness.

Because of all these thoughts and some conversations I’ve seen on the web lately, I’ve decided it would make sense to disable comments on this blog for the foreseeable future. I want it to be really clear that I still deeply treasure all your past comments, and I haven’t removed the ones that have been made. They are a part of a permanent record and a precious heirloom to me. Many of you have corrected me and changed my mind on various topics, or made me laugh, or warmed my heart, and the evidence is right there in the thread.

I still want to hear from you in almost any way you’d like to have a conversation with me. If you want to contact me, you can do so in any number of ways, including directly from this blog. If you want to just say you liked what I wrote, there’s a little Facebook “Like” button at the bottom of each post, even in the RSS feed. I’d love a click. If you want to respond publicly to what I’ve said, making your own blog entry and linking back to this one would be the best way to do that for many reasons. Creating a blog has become so wonderfully, deliciously simple that there’s no reason anymore not to have one if you want one. Go for it! I might even write a public response if you’re making good stuff.

I hope that the lack of comments here allows you to focus a little more on your own work, say what you wanted to say a little more quickly (perhaps with a single button click) and even consider whether certain things need to be said at all.

Now, go to your quiet, solitary place and make something.

The post The Value of Silence appeared first on Blog: Josh Lewis.

It’s really a never-ending journey. I imagine I could do another one of these retrospectives in 2019, and track another ten years of progression. The secret is to hate yourself and the work you produce. If everything you make is trash, then you’ll continually push yourself to produce something that won’t fill you with shame. If you’re lucky, after a lifetime of self-doubt, maybe you’ll produce something you can be proud of before you fall over dead.

It may be hilarious, but it’s not a joke. That right there is pure gold creative wisdom. And a little close-to-home for me, personally.

Thank you, Gabe.

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