Song for a future generation

A Geek Manifesto






1. We have given up on creating innovation with our talent.
We have arrived at Windows 10 and iPhone X while an electric car is flying to Mars with a dummy on board. We wanted to dominate the galaxy and we wanted to do it by endlessly building on yesterday’s success. OK, the Earth still remained the disco club of the Universe, but precisely for this reason we should change music every so often.

 

2. We have given up using our skills to really help others.
We were so deeply committed to designing the new Candy Crush that we did not realize that one billion people in the world did not even know if they were going to eat that day. Ops! Today the art of digital technology in its highest form is not very human.

 

3. We had given up on learning and teaching what we could do.
We strutted around proposing courses full of case studies of successes already many years old instead of humbly listening to what the future was asking us and trying to learn from the mistakes of others, convinced we would live long enough to experience them all by ourselves. The term “mediocracy” had lost the meaning of a time when it designated the power of the middle classes. It had gone so far as to indicate the dominion of the mediocrity as well as the domination of the latter through rules that are also mediocre, yet elevated to a just and coherent system, sometimes even the key to survival, to the point of submitting its empty words to those who aspired to do something better and dared to assert their sovereignty over themselves.

 

4. We had given up on solving the real problems of others with our abilities.
We looked into designing, implementing, perfecting and getting Google Glasses accepted while people were demanding more privacy. Cursed fools, how could they not understand the inalienable usefulness of a device that shows you personal information, directly from your Facebook page, about the girl they were talking to?

 

5. We have given up on committing ourselves to change the world for the better with digital technology.
In fact we had already changed it, but it had become an anxiety-producing planet from which people felt increasingly cut off. We have coined the term FOMO precisely to describe this unprecedented anxious condition. We had our fun and had nice things, but everything had been sucked into the Grand Global Market, and ethically we thought we were fairly ordinary people, like everyone else. But on the other hand, the world was mostly made up of those like us: everyone was trudging. This general mediocrity was depressing, but it relieved us of the security of knowing we are part of the majority of the human species engaged in mediocre digital works.

 

6. We had given up protesting against what seemed unfair to us to create with our work.
We lent a few pennies to create platforms that would make thousands of people work for a few pennies, and we called it Gig Economy. It seemed cool but it was not for those who had real work to do. We accepted the dreams, but did not even worry about the nightmares that came out of our keyboards.

 

7. We had given up organizing ourselves to work together.
After enthusiastically greeting the arrival of the sharing economy, we had found ourselves planning platforms on behalf of economic predators who, taking advantage of the very high rate of insecurity, sent people around to deliver sushi. But you know, every market also has its own laws.

 

8. We had given up on being a community of professionals who believed in the same values.
The Homebrew Computer Club, where we stayed together at night to admire the lights of a device, a precursor to the computers from which we are writing, turn on and turn off dreaming of a world made better by technology, it was now a distant memory.
We were all competing with each other in the great arena of digital work and what was really unfortunate was that we joined together to do mediocre things. On the other hand the main competence of a mediocre was to recognize another mediocre, so together they could organize exchanges of favors to make a clan already destined to grow exponentially even more powerful, because the mediocre are soon to attract their fellow men. Mediocrity was so relaxing!

 

9. We had given up taking small steps.
We all wanted to become emperors of the world like Mark, always making new, fantastic and unusual global platforms like Jack. All this thanks to the firm conviction of the constant presence of a network of financial and emotional security always ready to soothe the pains arising in the meantime from our great company. Usually the network was made up of our parents.

 

10. We had decided not to throw ourselves firmly into the projects we personally believed in.
We would like to lease our talents to the maximum price on the market. The over ease with which access to any form of visibility, however, rewarded us for renunciation of our impulses, effectively promoting the dilettantism and mediocrity of our activities.

 

11. We had given up on the joy of developing technology for people’s well-being .
Instead, we made sure that many people would tote their sleeping bag to sleep in front of the store that would sell a $1,000-dollar phone the following morning. This favoring the well-being of the company that produced them. Something had gone wrong, or perhaps, according to some, too well.

 

12. We had given up resisting the temptation to join the Great Money Cult.
We were now addicted to the thought that eventually the best thing to do with our talent was to turn our talent into money. Everything here and, possibly, immediately. We were not having a good time, so we heard a little voice that warned us that we were doing something wrong and that we were doing it even in a mediocre way. Unfortunately, the most obtusely mediocre part of our mind is more familiar with gain than with anything else.

 

13.
We had given up on joining together.
Are you by chance part of some digital talent team? Without being necessarily asocial, we believe that if a digital talent wants to use its brain for a creative work, a certain level of silent solitude, what is also called self-discipline, is not a way to escape society. But this does not mean withdrawing alone forever in a cave with a good connection. Unless, as happens to some people, you are not used to being part of an environment where excellence is required and that your isolation is not a subtle alibi to stay in the comfort zone of mediocrity.

 

14. We had given up on being generous.
What project of real social impact were you working on?

 

15. We had given up on being humble.
We had the courage to remain indifferent to a guy who just because he founded Alibaba said that if you’re still poor at 35, then it’s your fault. People loved to look great, especially the youth.

 

16. We had given up on being enthusiastic.
Were you waking up every morning with a light shining in your eyes because a digital work day awaited you? Or were you among the many people just trying to get to the end of the day?

 

17. We had given up on adapting.
Or rather, we had adapted the wrong way, putting aside what really interested us to follow the business instead of using the business to carry out valuable projects.
Heterogenesis of purpose.

 

18. We had refrained from correcting others and ourselves.
I agree that the concept of debugging was born on a strictly technological level but getting to understand that there were also systemic socio-economic bugs in the new digital economy that we were contributing to create certainly did not require deep worthy analysis of a Nobel Prize in Economics.

 

19. We had given up on winning.
Computer Liberation had taken place, computers were no longer the exclusive prerogative of the Army and the big corporations, and everyone could finally play Minecraft. So what was the problem?

 

20. We had given up on the Future.
We thought about our little personal future all day. The mediocrity with which we chiseled our small objectives was really our great point of arrival.

 

21. We had given up on punishing.
The society in which we lived would have to apologize for its mediocre mentality. Normality was overrated and becoming more and more pop was our mantra. The masters of excellence had been liquidated: the morality of the common man had triumphed within our mind. What is curious about the civilization of consumption. It promised a lot and what it offered was the mass production of mediocre goods and services for people with equally mediocre expectations.

 

22. We had given up on being kind and creating really beautiful things.
The fact that, for people like us, doing something we thought technically intriguing or massive was motivation enough to get us to work hard at a level that could reach intensity and results unimaginable for a common mortal, someone had taken advantage to pay us with tasty peanuts and make us realize things whose usefulness was quite debatable.

 

23 We had given up destroying.
The era in which we lived, very obscure, was certainly that of the aura mediocrity and insensitivity, the love of ignorance, laziness, ineptitude to action and the claim to find everything ready on the table. Envy was the favorite social sport, which was widely tolerated and practiced in delicious scraps of time because it softly consoled, responded to the concerns that devoured us.

 

24. We had given up on recognizing our mistakes.
One moment! Tim Cook has just stated that they did not think people would spend so much time on the iPhone!

 

25 We had given up on being spontaneous.
On the big digital labor market we all became brands. Recent studies show that a prolonged exposure to any language, visual or verbal, certainly alters the way a child perceives his universe. And we, among the brands, were born and grew up.

 

26. We had given up on dominating ourselves.
Instead, the money, and the prospect of making it in impressive quantities, seemed to be the idea that had been more firmly rooted in our heads and had always been our second motivation ever since. We aspired to satisfy our childhood instincts convinced that, by doing so, we could also become rich breakthrough.

 

27. We had given up wanting.
There were lots of desires, but we did not do our job simply because we liked it. And because that work there made us feel alive just by making us feel we were born to perform inspired digital activities.

 

28. We had given up on sacrificing ourselves.
The great Steve had taught us that every technological realization always carries ethical implications: freedom, simplicity and beauty were his reference stars in creating technological objects and digital ecosystems in which the user found these ideals realized. But what Steve had forgotten to do, and with him all of us, was to widen the view and to understand that the ecosystem to be considered in terms of the ethical impact of our technological achievements should not be limited only to the phase of the use of what we had achieved: there was a whole world that we should have taken into account to evaluate the systemic consequences of what we were doing in the digital field, from production to the disposal of products and their by-products and waste, from Amazon boxes to the mass of vans needed to deliver them; there was all the rest of the user’s life, his relationships, girlfriends and boyfriends, wives and husbands and children, and we were not willing to sacrifice anything of our plans to conquer the world to improve the harmony of that vast and sensitive human ecosystem and not even to make it worse. Our vision of the true life of the people was very limited and this because basically a certain level of blindness suited us: we could create digital addiction in adults and children, but we did not see it. The only important thing was the time these people stayed on our platforms and with our product in hand.

 

29. We had given up on being brave.
We were just looking for ways to get away from problems; they leaned us cautiously forward from our desks, laboriously advancing, meter by meter, day after day
Real creatives, on the other hand, are parachuted directly behind enemy lines.

 

30. We had given up on being penetrating.
Our level of penetration of the future stopped at the elaboration of some, vague, Business Model Canvas. The people who were sadder in this were those who once knew what depth was, but then they had lost or had become insensitive to the sense of wonder, resigned people who had felt their emotions go away and did not care about them.

 

31. We had given up on letting ourselves be attracted.
An obsessive need for professional autonomy oppressed us, usually at the expense of truly constructive long-term working relationships. When we met a digital professional we did not think to emulate him and become like him in the fear, however justified, that mediocre patrons select only their peers, or better yet, professionals of lower stature because they are more easily tamed and more obedient.

 

32. We had given up on being persevering.
Yet we knew that our destiny was what we worked on every day. The future did not yet exist.

 

33. We had given up on detaching ourselves.
We were fond of our fattening pens: small and cramped work stations built with removable panels covered in fabric, usually inhabited by a single member of the clerical staff. Us.

 

34. We had given up on advancing and coming into contact.
It was the golden age in which we lived for the benefit of a purely imaginary public. The excellence unfortunately did not interest almost anyone we worked for, we were in close contact with the mediocrity of others, ending up straight to the umpteenth failure of every project. Mediocrity, unfortunately, manifested itself in all its splendor always and only after, and never before or during, work.

 

35. We had given up on creating true progress.
Why did we never continue to work in digital even if nothing new happened, we did not learn anything new and we did not transmit anything new to others?

 

36. We had refrained from opposing ourselves.
Apart from our commitment to social media in a bitter war on hipster aesthetics, at the price of craft beers, the cuff of trousers. While socio-economic brazilification, the ever-widening gap between rich and poor and the consequent disappearance of the middle class, was also engulfing our sector and our curriculum.

 

37. We had given up on being a big family.
To everyone his start-up!
And my elevator pitch was still much better than yours.

 

38. We had given up on being unique individuals.
Many people spent a lot of time a) convincing themselves that their life was still a story and b) writing storyboards based on the theories of the Hero’s Journey. The result was that the part of the brain truly creating lived stories atrophied by dying a little bit every day. Actually we were not doing anything that could even give a cue to a bad Disney television series for twelve years.

 

39. We had given up on having character.
The maximum expression of our determination consisted of widespread digital spectacularism: being fascinated by getting stuck in extreme situations but strictly documentable on Youtube.

 

40. We had given up on being free.
One of the few motivating factors to make radical professional choices was the unhealthy office emigration syndrome: the tendency of young digital workers to resign or otherwise avoid jobs in unhealthy offices or workplaces that could health due to the construction materials used. All the rest we could accept it.

 

41. We had given up being modest.
If it was not scalable, it was not worth doing, we always said. But all the good things in life stubbornly refused to become scalable: to work in an excellent way, to truly love a project, the amount of Ikea chips you could eat without being hospitalized.


42. We had given up on serving.

All those funny-looking boys out there who looked so cool and fashionable and casual, were actually clumsily dragging themselves from a useless minute of hypothetical pleasure to the next, just like us.

 

43. We had given up on being resolute.
Our successophobia, the unconscious terror that, once achieved success, our problems were forgotten and there was no longer anyone to meet our childhood needs, blocked us in openly inconclusive projects.

 

44. We had given up resisting the temptations.
We were completely in the paradox of comfort: as soon as we were a little comfortable in our situation we sat and uncorked a unfiltered beer, forgetting that, to change life, the right time is just when it seems that everything goes wonderful.

 

45. We had given up on feeling the same.
Our collective identity barely reached generational solidarity, the desire of a particular generation to label the next one as blank, in order to exalt its collective pride: “Today’s young people never do anything. They are so apathetic. Once we went out to protest. Instead they do nothing but spend and complain.”

 

46. We had given up admiring the best of us.
We had cheered Jeff Bezos and forgotten Aaron Schwartz. The fact that life in the 21st century was a karaoke, the endless attempt to maintain a dignity in front of a vortex of data that flows uncontrollably on a screen, however, did not constitute a collectively sufficient excuse.

 

47. We had given up on worrying about what was really important.
We all wanted to get into the story. We all wanted a page on Wikipedia. We wanted personal results on Google. We did not want to be living organisms that came and left without a trace on this digital planet. But we did not have enough slots to try and leave a real and concrete sign in that week and anyway there was no budget.

 

48. We had given up on being wise.
We had discussed privacy with Facebook and bravely fed all our data to Zuckerberg. Our minds should have been more careful, more accurate, more reflective. We could go to some Starbucks to discuss it.

 

49. We had given up renewing ourselves.
Working, working, working: nothing ideal. No weaving. No eureka! Only production shifts and days. So much so that we lived in an office. Which, moreover, many of us did.

 

50. We had renounced the spiritual dimension of our work.
It was not just a problem for us digital professionals. For the contemporary Westerner then, even when in good health, the thought of death was a kind of background noise that crept into his brain as plans and desires were fading. With the passage of time, the presence of this noise became more and more invasive; it could be compared to a dull buzz, sometimes accompanied by a crash. In other times, the background noise was the expectation of the Kingdom of the Lord; in our times it was instead constituted by the expectation of death. That was it. Imagine if a spiritual dimension such as the pursuit of excellence could constitute, at that historical juncture, a practicable field. Mediocrity was the norm because it sought only certain solid, tangible and material certainties against the ineffable risks of the divinely excellent.

 

51. We had given up on learning from our misadventures.
To declare ourselves decisively was the form of self-criticism we practiced with greater conviction.

 

52. We had renounced being satisfied with contributing to human progress.
It was because we were not convinced that we really wanted to do something for posterity and thus leave something excellent for future generations. After all, what had they done for us?

 

53. We had given up being gradual.
There had been a bankruptcy of the social imaginary: no one had been concerned to visualize the mediocre consequences of the digital innovations to which we contributed. We wanted everything immediately and we had to get there first. The beta phase concerned only the product and service and not the impact on users’ lives. We lived in a huge and endless economic and social beta phase.

 

54. We had renounced being loyal to our talent.
The trouble of wanting to get rich was that we were busy all day.

 

55. We had given up on being magnificent.
We believed that progress was only technological development without taking into account that without a great cultural vision, technology quickly became dystopia more than the Black Mirror writers could imagine. Cultural mediocrity was a dark room that overlooked a world that the light had never illuminated. The excellence of technological execution, occasionally happened, could not compensate for the mediocrity of the concept, on the contrary, it helped to create even more perfectly functioning nightmares.

 

56. We had given up traveling light.
Life is a bridge, but we wanted to build on great digital careers as if they could last forever.

 

57. We had given up on going all the way.
The digital industry was born as a counterculture by a movement of Californian frikkettoni with sandals who dreamed of freeing computers from the exclusive possession of the great economic powers and putting them in the hands of all. The revolution, however, curiously, had stopped when, in the heat of this change, new great digital economic powers were born.

 

58. We had given up on knowing how to settle for what really matters.
Youth, beauty, strength: the values ​​of the digital imaginary, as indeed those of the physical market, were exactly the same as those of Nazism.

 

59. We had given up on being universal by achieving our specific excellence.
In fact, we somehow managed to dilute our ego voluntarily by filling the internet with as much information as possible about fundamental aspects of ourselves: what we ordered at the restaurant or how much we enjoyed on holiday.

 

60. We had given up focusing on what we do.
Everyone had to do everything and be skilled on everything and constantly updated about the whole professional knowledge, which is why it was quite difficult for everyone to do everything perfectly well: and here it was luxuriant the famous tendency to mediocrity, typical premonitory phase of the decadence of every professional civilization.

 

61.
We had given up being authentic.

On the other hand we had become skilled experts in the science of persuasion to persuade people that becoming Apple consumers would make them central players in the evolution of humanity, authoritative members of the élite flag of all progress.

 

62.
We had renounced being prudent.

We had launched products on the market that we had then banned from using our own children because they delayed their cognitive development and created addiction. On the other hand we had created the digital detox market and enrolled our children in Montessori schools.

 

63. We had given up trying to achieve valuable purposes.
We had transformed the digital environment with diligence from the mythical human conversation place that took place with human voices in a gigantic sales funnel that finally brought you to reason with a chatbot.

64. We had given up ordering the world.
Yes.

 




 

But today we decide to:


 

65. Improve the world together.
With digital excellence we want to change our lives for the better. We consider the digital world as an integral part of our lives, having given us great objectives and fantastic adventures: it is like a lamp by Aladino that we can ask to realize our desires. For this reason we think that anyone can and should be able to benefit from digital excellence, and that, if we use it in the right way, our ethics will not only create excellent projects that improve the world, but that will expand in the world, encouraging others to improve it. in turn. Then we will understand the deep meaning of the term shosoku, which in Japanese indicates the feeling you feel when you receive a letter from home. Those who work at levels of excellence know that next to this world there is another world, a dimension that we sometimes manage to graze while we work in an excellent way for excellent purposes.

 

66. Teaching and learning from one another.
Access to digital excellence, and to anything that could teach something about how the world could work best, must be absolutely unlimited and complete. We always give precedence to the imperative “Hands on!” “put our hands on it!”, an empirical and curious approach to problems, experimenting and learning from the problem we are studying. The world is full of fascinating problems just waiting to be solved. Do you want to be able to examine existing systems and excellent projects to understand them and get to know them? Do it with us and in this way it will be possible both to improve these projects, but also to create new ones and better ones
We become teachers for each other, we really get in touch. A master of excellence, even if he has only two or three followers, does not describe the excellent work method in detail. The only way to study with him is to eat with him, talk to him, do as many jobs as possible with him.

 

67. Trust one another.
We have a precise perception of the importance and the concrete possibility of making a personal and original contribution to knowledge through the pursuit of excellent goals combined with excellent performances. The excellence of means and goals will save the world.

 

68. Drive and be guided.
At the heart of the best of our technological age lies a fascinating group of people who believe that the benefits of this new information technology should really be for everyone. Do you want to be part of this fascinating group of people who drive real progress? Then stop waiting to fully express yourself and join us, launched in this venture. Rationalization is your biggest enemy.

 

69. Be Decisive .
That is Heaven: the moment when the spark ignites and you understand that it will really happen, that your instincts are not wrong. If we seek excellence together, we will stop time forever in an eternal shining moment.

 

70. Have an Identity.
We should be judged for our work, and not on the basis of false criteria such as status, age, race, gender or social position. In this community, the ability to produce excellence counts more than any other personal characteristic.

 

71. Being fraternal.
Fundamental changes have always come from people who really paid attention to others
We attach importance to the warmth of the heart, to a search for heat-filled excellence. The feeling of warmth that we experience in the pursuit of excellence for us is already, in other words, illumination.

 

72. Being constructive.
Instead of setting up a new ideological system, we give weight to real practice, beyond the concepts of success and failure. Just doing, beyond any feeling of fear. Only when we do not expect anything can we be ourselves. But like tigers, even when we simply want to catch mice, we always put all the strength we have. We make every job new. Be sincere and creative in everything you try to do here with us.

 

73. Being responsible.
Here you do not need to refer to an authority to whom you must obey. We question authority. We promote decentralization. We spread the idea that wide-ranging sharing is an important way for the production and dissemination of ideas and knowledge. The success of modern technologies available on the web made up of the web 2.0 ecosystem has definitely changed our productive and social landscape. We are opposed to any form of bureaucracy that we believe has no other function than to slow down and hinder knowledge and the pursuit of excellence.

 

74. Becoming Concrete Idealists.
The Net, the personal computer and software like the Linux operating system were not developed by companies or governments, but created by some enthusiastic individuals who, simply, had started to realize their ideas together with other individuals animated by common interests, and working in the freedom to create. This is what we want to do with you.


75. Be magnanimous.

All information must be free. Ideas and information are necessary to improve, correct and create new digital systems; for this they must be free and accessible. Each system can benefit from the free exchange of information. If we have a generous, big mind and have a strong spirit of excellence, we should not worry about anything. When we do something, we work for thousands, for everyone; it’s not a race. Human beings, the species to which we belong, are always attached to things. But the pursuit of excellence starts just when you stop being attached to something.

 

76. Converting ourselves.
Change means reducing the number of our desires and increasing their quality. Having few excellent desires means not fragmenting our concentration by dividing it among many useless things. Doing excellent things with unity of mind, in the spirit of truth, this is what has a few excellent desires. We firmly believe in the need for a healthy ecology of desires.

 

77. Becoming noble.
Our pursuit of excellence does not mean to despise others but rather to know and appreciate them. We should respect everything and everyone because this respect allows us to enter into a relationship with everything and everyone. When we do not respect people and things, it’s because we want to use them for ourselves, and if we use them it’s difficult, as we want to conquer them. So we need to make a lot of effort to practice respect.

 

78. Being satisfied.
There is a certain difference between being always sad and having found a passion in life for which you can also engage in the less fun parts of the work but still necessary. Usually it is difficult to prove this feeling because we are taken by ideas of profit, we expect some improvement in the future. If our pursuit of excellence does not already give you a great, warm sense of satisfaction in itself, then it is not a true pursuit of excellence. It means that you are not kind enough with yourself. When you take the utmost care of what you do, you feel good and take care of yourself without knowing it. But others notice it. Be very kind to yourself and you will also be with others and you will find joy. The essence of the pursuit of excellence is to work together in joy.

 

79. Being Philosophically Practical.
When we truly seek excellence, we trust ourselves totally without thinking, without feeling, without discriminating between good and bad, right and wrong. We bring trust in our life. Our pursuit of excellence consists in helping people and, to help people, we are looking for excellence. In this way we discover the true professional life. We do not stick to pre-established models. We do not become fixated on theory. We do not worry too much about the quality of the means at our disposal. We do not worry about the results, but about the processes. We do not worry about our ability but about our sincere commitment to giving our best. We do not have problems with what others think. We do not consciously strive to achieve excellence. We are not satisfied with ourselves. We do not work as if it were a delightful pastime. But every day spent in the pursuit of excellence is a day of bliss for us.

 

80. Become a Specialist.
Each piece of your digital work shows what you have suffered, the pursuit of excellence you have practiced. You do not need to do other ways to express it. Nurture your specialization with tenacity: however small it may seem, it always has a universal meaning. When you search for true excellence, you reveal yourself perfectly, your actions are complete, and you are beautiful. Search for excellence in your small industry and you’ll find it in everything you do.

 

81. Being Friends.
It was really great, it was great because his understanding of people was great. And because he understood people, he loved them and was glad to help them. In this simple spirit of friendship there is the true greatness of a great person and a great professional.

 

82. Disseminating.
The mere fact of hoping for a general application of the pursuit of excellence should not lead us to believe that this can be implemented by all the others. But this is precisely what we want to achieve, and we have a lot of patience.

 

83. Being ourselves.
Through the pursuit of excellence, with time, we can free ourselves from our ego. Only then will we be able to express our personality in the truest sense. If in someone’s work we fail to see any personality, it means that the author has not yet eliminated his habitual way of being himself. So, work with your character. Every human being is different; express this difference when you work. He manifests great acts breaking rules.

 

84. Becoming Internal Warriors.
We are not against anyone, we are only in favor of excellence, we have constructive purposes. To truly move forward we need a generous mind, a big mind, a soft mind: be flexible, do not stick to anything, do not oppose anyone in particular.
We give the best in everything we do. This is the key to success. By learning one thing well, we will learn how to understand ten thousand things. Ten thousand things are one; this is the secret place of understanding we must find. In this way, everything we do will be mysterious and wonderful. Excellence is nothing more than the prolonged application of a great effort.

 

85 Being Balanced.
Creating problems on your own is like making cookies at home. We all like to make homemade biscuits but we try not to make too many. Without food, we cannot survive, so making cookies is fine, but don’t overdo it. Without problems, we cannot survive, but they must not be in excess. We do not need to create any more problems on our own, we already have enough. Some problems are necessary. But we do not need too many or very big ones: we can practice the pursuit of excellence through the difficulties we already have. The true quest for excellence resides in problems. There is no other place to establish it. If we have nothing to cope with, life appears empty to us. Problems are precious, indispensable treasures. But we seek not to exaggerate them.

 

86 Being Complementary.
True observance of the rules is to observe the rules without trying to observe the rules. And obviously that this does not often happen. It is therefore necessary to always treat the mistakes of your peers with compassion, as true friends. We work with colleagues as we would a friend. We accept the feedback of our colleagues in turn. We must make every effort to help each other to achieve excellence together.
When you are young you may think you will live for fifty or even a hundred years, and so there is no value for you in today. When you reach maturity instead you feel deeply: “I am just a person that is here. Nobody can take my place, so I do not have to play games”.

 

87. Become Admirable.
“The entire scientific and cultural heritage of the world, published over the centuries in books and magazines, is increasingly digitalized and made inaccessible by a handful of private companies.” Here we should admire men and women who have thought and fought to solve this kind of problems, smart and generous young people like Aaron.

 

88. Equip ourselves with a sense of duty.
The word passion describes the general tone of our activity, even though it may not always be a fun game in all its aspects. We commit ourselves with a happy spirit and strong motivation to exercise our intelligence in solving problems in an excellent way, but we reject mediocre work for mediocre purposes. We are capable of great effort because we are motivated by a strong motivation. We do not exclude total commitment at all and, on the contrary, we abhor idleness, but only if we feel that our effort is enlivened by a creative, constructive and excellent motivation. We are therefore very active, we pursue our passions and live from a creative effort and a knowledge that never ends. We know that our humanity is not realized in a rigidly organized time, but in the flexible rhythm of a creativity that must become the measure of a truly human work, the one that best corresponds to our human nature.

 

89. Transform spiritually.
Do not let your mind wander. Do not let worries distract you. Do not rush. Do not get drunk. Do not be hungry. Do not eat too much. Do not be angry. Work well when you may lack enthusiasm. But do not work obsessively. Do not compete with others. When you reach a goal, do not exult; when you miss it, do not break down. Focus naturally on the goal, and use the mind to reach it. Also in every other area of ​​your life, always aim for the center, in every activity always avoids extremes. If you actively pursue the pursuit of digital excellence, over time you will reach the profound experience of vision that transforms a person.

 

90. To put ourselves at Heaven’s Service.
We understood that by performing mediocre work for mediocre purposes, and not extraordinary work for extraordinary purposes, perhaps we could have made money, and perhaps we would have enjoyed it too. But we knew that at the end of our lives we would look back and see years spent spreading only mediocrity, and we would have understood that it did not help in making the world a better place by wasting the talent that had been given to us as a gift. The secret, however, is to say “YES!” and jump out from where we are busy pursuing small goals. Then there is no problem. This means serving and at the same time being yourself, always yourself, without attaching yourself to a previous mediocre self.

 

91. Cultivate.
If you are upset or nervous, this is proof that something is missing. Do not be sad or depressed: cultivate excellence, cultivate it in yourself, be compassionate and indeed you can salvage the demons. In your quest for excellence you will experience fear, terror, torment, suffering, disturbance, worry, compassion and disappointment in the most profound way, but do not flee. Only from that bitter depth is it possible to glimpse the larger plane.

 

92. Building Cathedrals.
The construction of a cathedral in the Middle Ages was a feat of an entire people. Everyone, no one excluded, participated in the elevation of a monument that would give glory to God and prestige to the city. This was also true of the Milan Cathedral. Among the well-known benefactors is Marta de Codevachi, a prostitute. In Milan she was known as Donona. Thanks to her profession she had become rich, but at one point she had regrets and decided to change her life. She became the benefactor of the poor and adopted Venturina, a child who she found at the ruota degli esposti, where abandoned children were placed. In 1394 Marta fell seriously ill. Her thoughts went to the Madonna and to the new church that was being erected in her honor in the city center. She called the notary and assigned her possessions to the Fabbrica del Duomo, with a clause that the officials would take care of Venturina and that they would commit themselves to finding a husband to her friend Margherita, known to the brothel as Novella de Mandello, to whom she left a large dowry to start a new life. Shortly after, Marta died and the Fabbrica organized a funeral for her worthy of a noblewoman.
Also with us, when we have a great project, your contribution is welcome: we do not care what your past has been.

 

93. Managing a mission.
To be present at work like the essence of a fruit, comfortably, is not a simple task. As when swimming, sometimes you have to lift your head up and breathe, especially when you’re swimming twenty-five kilometers at great depth. It is therefore a matter of learning to move from effort to non-effort, to pursuing a goal indefinitely, without holding back the breath and waiting to be emerge. Traveling is in itself our destination

 

94. To follow a direction.
When we look for excellence in our world, we understand by intuition which way to go. When the environment around us gives us a sign that shows which way to go, we will go in the right direction even if we did not begin with the idea of ​​following a sign. Searching for excellence means having nothing to achieve, and so we have a sense of gratitude, a joyful mind. Let things go as they go, but supporting everything as if it were ours.
The pursuit of excellence has an orientation, a direction, but does not have a purpose or an idea of ​​profit; so it can include everything that presents itself, no matter if it is good or bad. If something bad comes along: “All right, you’re part of me”; and if something good comes along: “Ah, all right”. Since we do not have a particular goal or purpose in the pursuit of excellence, it does not matter what comes. To get to this point you need a well-oriented mind.

 

95. Be sincere.
What is a sincere search for excellence? When it is not so sincere it is difficult to understand it; when, on the other hand, one is sincere in the search for excellence, one cannot accept what is superficial. Only when we become very sincere will we know what sincerity is in the pursuit of excellence. It’s like appreciating great art. If you want to appreciate great art, the most important thing is to see valuable works of art. If you have seen many works of art of good quality, when you then see something of inferior quality, you immediately recognize that it is not so beautiful: your eye has become acute enough to notice it. But it is not something that can be described: one senses with intuition.

 

96. Creating bridges.
Everything written above could be so, and often it is, but we know it’s not always the case. We are prepared to discuss everything we think of.

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P.S.:

Thank you:

Joseph Campbell
Douglas Coupland
Alain Deneault
Pekka Himanen
Glenn Gould
Michel Houellebecq
Awa Kenzo
Steven Levy
Evgenij Morozov
Eric Steven Raymond
Richard Matthew Stallman
Shunryu Suzuky Roshi
Aaron Swartz
Tomaso Walizer and Cecilia Botta

And all geeks, whatever sector to which they belong.