My Interview on The Setup
Jan 20, 2012
I’m a fan of Daniel Bogan’s The Setup and am honored to be on a short list of interviewees alongside heroes like William Gibson and Keita Takahashi. There’s a certain kind of ambient learning that makes The Setup work as an interview blog. The answers to the boilerplate questions are revealing when considered across the full archive—you start to understand people by the differences in what they pay attention to.
You also start to see what they have in common, and I find that the answer to the last question, “What would be your dream setup?” is almost always the same. It’s some variation of “I have it” or “I’m nearly there,” and I think it’s because doing any kind of personally meaningful work requires a state of almost-thereness. If you had the absolute, perfect setup, you would stop trying to change, stop dreaming of the way things could be better. Being almost there keeps you moving but with an eye peeled for a better path. The answer to the last question is always the same because the constant pursuit of perfection is the closest we ever come to attaining it.
