Their engineering is philosophy applied. They unlock new value streams. They bring science and research into the everyday. They reshape the way we interact with information and the reality.
They are operating systems, interfaces, blockchain, and quantum computing.
Computing environments
Interacting with a computer environment is like interacting with another dimension. Because of how it distorts time, I like to imagine it as a dimension of time. But mostly, it’s a dimension of information in which computation is the language.
The information landscape is noisy and uncertain. Everything is possible, nothing is predictable. Almost intangible, it threads through every aspect of our lives, yet ephemeral in nature.
It’s curious to me to view computing environments as malleable spaces rather than tools—spaces to build. Instead of bricks and concrete, knowledge is its material and the mind is its tool. Computers are its entry points. If we step away from treating them solely as productivity tools and storage, a lot of creativity and beauty can be unlocked.
OS and interfaces
Operating systems (OS) and user interfaces (UI) are means to work with our minds. UI makes its impact on the human end while OS does the job on the computer side. By building better systems holistically—computers that manage its resources more efficiently and fit human capacities more naturally—our minds might get an expansion.
OS and UI mediate between the digital dimension of information and people. The OS structures raw data while the UI presents information to people. Today, interfaces are the main lever to make working with computers less cognitively demanding.
By limiting choices and creating hierarchies, they deliver a representation of information that is more consumable and interactive. Aesthetics and beauty are their functions to create a clearer dialogue between people and machines.
But it isn’t only UI that influences our minds, it’s information itself. By tackling its flows and architecture at the OS level, there’s an opportunity to deliver better quality information before it reaches people.
Although evolved and improved, the principles of OS are similar to what they were in 1950s-1970s. Back then, the systems weren’t built to handle the amounts of information we encounter today. As the information landscape grows, the OS keeps running on the same structures. As a result, we ended up with two tools to manage information, both running at their limits: a computer and a mind. A computer constrained by its processes and a mind defied by its attention and capacity.
Building technologies that better accommodate cognitive load, mental capacity, and attention requires changes not only at the human level, but at the core of the computers. That’s what I’m curious about. If we rethink flows of information and its architecture, could we build systems that better manage the limited resources of both computer and a human mind?
Blockchain
Blockchain is a technology that creates data structures run on consensus-driven protocols. Its ability to operate securely without a third party is at the root of its financial application. But more broadly, blockchain is a different way to structure and access information—it’s an infrastructure.
Like cables and transmitters for communication, it’s a framework for building online. Whether it’s more efficient remains an open question. Time will be the judge of that. What time has shown so far is this: installing communication systems was once heavy lifting; today, it’s an essential part of our digital products. That’s what fascinates me—the myriad of possible blockchain applications to explore and the social systems it may enable.
What else can one build on top of a blockchain? Could a blockchain be a different kind of operating system—one that reshapes how data is organized before it reaches the interface? What new forms of value can emerge?
Blockchains can lower barriers to value creation and access. In the physical world, resources and value are divided and distributed by institutions. On blockchains, protocols do that instead—no bias, no history, no institution. You have a building site, your resources, and no permission needed to create and participate. It’s an opportunity, a risk, and a shift from a system of choice to a system of creation—something that might enable women. My soft spot.
In addition to offering more women paths to integrate into the market, blockchain may give them an opportunity to shape the system itself. With access to a computer, one can create a source of value: its possession is protected and control over it is individual. These are the qualities needed to make any system more responsive to women’s ever-changing needs. But also, these are the qualities that position them not only as participants, but agents, building something of their own.
Quantum computing
This is an opportunity to learn something extraordinary that hasn’t found its meaning yet.
I have been pondering this quote from a book “How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival” by David Kaiser:
“A physicist should aim, above all, to be Kulturträger—a bearer of culture—as comfortable reciting passages of Goethe’s Faust from memory or admiring a Mozart sonata as jousting over the strange world of the quantum.”
Quantum physics tackles the deepest, philosophical questions of space, time, and matter—the age-old questions. It grapples with how to think about information, communication, and the workings of the microworld. Quantum computing is its application. The breakthroughs in these areas can unlock a new dimension, a new mode of thinking, and a new speed. With all its potential, it almost feels like a door to understand and tackle into the wisdom of Nature itself. And Nature is both a supreme designer and a technology.
Personally, having spent significant time in B2B and lab informatics, it’s intriguing to witness such a nuanced technology being introduced to the market and its value proposition being defined with it.