Serendipity and Learning

Today I was listening to someone talk. The topic of was the future of work in a post pandemic world.  What was striking that the leader was saying the right things - yet nothing was strikingly new. It was what everyone has been saying on Linkedin or in any other report. And that led me to think - given that there is the internet and what people write typically and know as typical - it is very easy to believe that "you know everything" because everybody knows it and believes it to be  true.  To find original thought, you have to go beyond that. Else you will be taken by surprise when a different thought comes along. Or caught unawares when the market moves.  Sometimes our confidence in what we know is foolhardly  (this was written when the pandemic had just made an appearance) and will prevent us from seeing beyond what we know. So, at every point, how do we ask this question of ourselves? The title of the post is a question that is ostensibly asked by Jeff Bezos...

This is something that has always intrigued me. Newspaper websites, digital properties - almost always look the same - worldwide. TV sites and digital properties - ditto. Why? The earlier method of printing news was limited by the newsprint and the ads. Now with space no longer an issue (atleast on websites) how is it that it is still organized by print needs? What can a newspaper website potentially look like in future? Today it looks somewhat like a newspaper that is mounted on a website. What if news was organized in terms of current events, recent events and on events where a long form investigation is being done? Why not start with a map and people zoom into the location where they want news about? Why not a world map with users being to click at a country level to begin with? Why not share data and news separately (as in share long form data alongwith news as well). Why not allow users to scroll through a timeline? Or search about incidents - like terrorist incidents. Curren...