About

"I think there's a profound benefit of revisiting simple ideas and then saying, am I doing those? I don't look for new ideas as much as I look for ideas I've already heard that I haven't fully actualized yet." - Shaan Puri

"Social media feeds are wonderful things for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things." - Donald Knuth (paraphrased)

Hey, my name is Jakob and this is my playground for "Smart Web" ideas.

What's the Smart Web?

Great question! I wrote a long post about it here. But the short version is this:

The dumb web is created by committees, fueled by ad dollars, and run by algorithms. It’s vanilla, boring, and, well, dumb.

The smart web is created by individuals, fueled by donations, subscriptions, and curiosity. It’s powered by RSS, HTML, and email.

It's blogs and newsletters.

It's long-form, courageous, weird, and idiosyncratic.

It's earned insights, original thoughts, first-hand experiences, and independent research, personal stories, bold experiments, deep dives.

It defies categorization.

It's thought-provoking, and occasionally permanently alters how you see the world.

It's raw, unfiltered, honest, and authentic.

It's created by humans for humans.

So one idea I'm testing is a feed of evergreen ideas as a "healthy snack" alternative to social feeds when I'm craving inspiration.

Ideas I've already heard that I haven't fully actualized yet are often far more powerful than the newest ideas.

The odds that someone just shared an idea that is truly better than the best ideas you've already heard are slim.

"I wanna see your best work. I'm not interested in your new work." – Jerry Seinfeld

A second idea is using AI as a firewall for my mind.

AI trained on my preferences checks sites I used to visit myself, filters out all the nonsense (politics, clickbait etc.) and prepares a list of articles I might find interesting every day.

You can see the daily updated output here.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me at jakobgreenfeld [at] gmail.com.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jakob