A Wabi-Sabi Technology Age

Since many of you have been suggesting for years that I do a Breaking Smart podcast, I figured I’d do a little experiment and try out the podcasting widget in Substack. If this works well, I’ll start mixing things up a bit and do a mix of text posts and podcast episodes.

This is an unrehearsed, unedited, live 10-minute recording. Apologies for the 15 seconds of siren noise outside my apartment at around the 6:22 mark. I’m not sure exactly how you’d get the podcast into your listening app, but presumably there’s a way. I think I’m supposed to do stuff to submit it to Apple or something. Here’s the podcast feed URL if that helps: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/9973.rss

In this first short episode, I talk about how the Digital Age embodies a wabi-sabi approach to technology, where the Industrial Age embodied an ethos based on the pursuit of a “like-new” state. Let me know what you think!

Some links for stuff I talk about are below the image.

Image Credit: Kintsugi bowl, CC-BY-SA 4.0 by Ruthann Hurwitz

Show notes:

Joel Spolsky post Things You Should Never Do, on why “throw one away” is a bad idea

Original Frederick Brooks argument that you should plan to throw one away is from The Mythical Man Month

Wabi-Sabi and Kintsugi

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