Cyrus' World

“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.” - Arthur Schopenhauer [1]

The issue I see with being “original” is that it requires people to go outside of their existing pattern matching and actually think. This leads to some finding the same quality ridiculous, humorous or offensive. As we all look at the world through a set of foggy mirrors, you never know exactly how someone sees a situation. It’s impossible to know what’s going to happen when the black box of perception starts working. For that reason, I see no reason to worry about it.

Whenever I stress about someone thoughts of me I think, “I love a sunny day, but the weather has no care for me.” It’s possible to live in a world where we revere, love and hope for the uncontrollable and still keep our sanity. They key is realizing that the phenomenon or thing we want is truly uncontrollable and relatively unpredictable.

“Shakespeare will never be made by study of Shakespeare.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self Reliance

Since I’ve moved to the Silicon Valley, I see an undue amount of hero-worship of existing and prior tech folk. I never understood why people tend to put others on pedestals; however, it seems to me that they should realize that many of those the look up at never would have looked up at another. No great man has ever stood alone trying to be another man. Some tried to be greater than a man by holding themselves to a religious or spiritual ideal that has not ever been; but that is very different than looking to your fellow man to understand how to be.

A closing by Blaise Pascal.

[1] As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624

I’ve wanted a new way to consume music that was both personalized and didn’t require much action if I wanted to basically listen to the radio.

An interesting dynamic would be starting users in the same room based on the song they are listening to. When you get in a room, you can “chat” with everyone in there as long as the song is playing. You can control your own playlist or jump on another user’s by basically following them so you’ll attach to their playlist.

Users could have some metrics, e.g. biggest tribe (following), longest party (session), ect. that would help power users re-engage and show some clout when restarting for the day.

The game play would basically push some folks to try to dynamically build a following as they go from room to room and basically take the party with them. Celebrities and musicians could be an early user engagement/acquisition strategy, e.g. chill and listen to music with Skrilex or Paul Oakenfold.

Eventually you’d get to know folks, “tribes” would dynamically form based on common musical taste and you could begin to deepen relationships with them.

Thoughts, any existing products that are doing this?