Aza Raskin – The Fullfilment Project

When navigating the world countries and companies will try to invent things to tip the balance in their favour. In the case of the atomic bomb, during the second world war America was concerned that Germany was building a bomb that could destroy entire cities so they set about figuring out how to create an atomic bomb themselves. They put together a team of physicists and others to secretly figure out and build this new bomb. When the first bomb was tested J. Robert Oppenheimer, the lead physicist, is said to have quoted the Bhagavad-Gita with “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” He regretted the invention. Then America dropped two atomic bombs in Japan killing many many innocent people and the age of the nuclear bomb began.

Aza Raskin invented the infinite scroll on mobile devices. This meant that when you scroll down on your social media account new content keeps being generated infinitely. The inventor said afterwards “It’s as if social media companies are taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back.” Extreme maybe, but the hit of dopamine that you get from finding a new video or post that you like over and over again is creating a society addicted to their devices.

The first example of the Atomic Bomb is far more extreme than the infinite scroll, but the point is that we need to consider the consequences of what we do. Making decisions for moral and ethical reasons could not be needed more. We are seemingly more divided and more obsessed with status and money than we have been before. It is time to live lives with values and principles.

On 16th July 1945 the first nuclear bomb was tested and one of its creators looked on in horror, regretting what he had done. Robert Oppenheimer said later that a quote from the Bhagavad Gita ran through his mind while he witness the nuclear explosion before him, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

This quote is often misunderstood, but it highlights the way Robert Oppenheimer was feeling. Presumably, he had not imagined the power of the nuclear bomb and the destruction its use would unfurl on the world while creating it. But once something like this is done it is hard for it to be undone.

In 2006 Aza Raskin invented the infinite scroll that meant social media platforms could be used without hitting a ‘next’ button, new content simply appears when you scroll down. He later said “One of my lessons from infinite scroll: that optimizing something for ease-of-use does not mean best for the user or humanity.”

The amount of time that people now spend on social media, rather than doing other important things like interacting with the people they are with or doing the work they are avoiding has grown a lot due to this feature. Again, presumably Aza Raskin did not think about the impact this feature would have on the world.

It is not necessarily fair to compare these two inventions in terms of their impact, but the common denominator is that the inventors regret their inventions. The lesson, I think, is that the things we create have a direct impact on the world, so they should be there to serve humanity not to hinder it. When we create anything or do anything we must first ask ourselves if it will serve to bring people together and make the world better, and also if it aligns with our values.

When we create or act for a larger organisation we can often find ourselves serving a goal to beat the competition or to make money rather than making people’s live better. And as we see from the example of Aza Raskin, making things easier does not necessarily make things better.