Omar Rizwan: “I’m relatively opposed to trying to articulate a philosophy or have a manifesto of what should be done. I’m much more drawn to ‘OK, let’s have this set of striking, concrete images, of things that would be cool or would feel good’, and having that in the back of your head as an anchor for what computing could be like.”

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Devon Zuegel: “Why do you prefer the striking images approach as opposed to the manifesto approach?”

Omar: “I have this implicit assumption that this is the way people think. They anchor onto an image or an idea that they can picture in their head, and that’s something they can keep coming back to. Whereas a philosophy or a set of rules is satisfying to write, but I don’t know if it’s as creatively useful as having a bunch of images. And maybe in a few years I can articulate a philosophy, but I think images are the important thing.”

Devon: “I think something with verbalized principles is they can sound like very clear tests you can apply, but when it comes to actually building something, it’s a lot less clear if you are meeting that principle. Company values at tech companies often have this problem where you’re trying to decide between A and B, and one person is like ‘well A follows our company values more’, and another person is like ‘well no, B is actually more…’, and neither of them is totally wrong. Versus if you have a concrete example you can be like ‘well, this thing is more like that thing and they share these characteristics’.

Omar: “I think principles are the ashes or excreted product of this really rich thing in your head, and you try to write it down, but you’re really not getting most of it. Or if other people get it, that’s because they’ve been able to reconstruct the thing in your head.”