What lasts 500 years resists improvement
“Anything that has persisted in roughly the same form and resisted change for 500 years is unlikely to be improved easily.”
Investing
Jeff Bezos's 2007 letter to Amazon shareholders, one of the letters in Day 1: The Amazon Shareholder Letters, 1997–2020.
A book disappears into the author's world
“[The book] disappears. When you read a book, you don’t notice the paper and the ink and the glue and the stitching. All of that dissolves, and what remains is the author’s world.”
Beating the book takes new capabilities
“We also knew we shouldn’t try to copy every last feature of a book—we could never out-book the book. We’d have to add new capabilities—ones that could never be possible with a traditional book.”
Less friction produces more of a thing
“Anytime you make something simpler and lower friction, you get more of it.”
Humans co-evolve with their tools
“We humans co-evolve with our tools. We change our tools, and then our tools change us.”
Networked tools pushed us toward information snacking
“Lately, networked tools such as desktop computers, laptops, cell phones and PDAs have changed us too. They’ve shifted us more toward information snacking, and I would argue toward shorter attention spans.”
Easier snacking draws us from long-form reading
“If our tools make information snacking easier, we’ll shift more toward information snacking and away from long-form reading.”
Missionaries build better products
“I’m glad about [the shared missionary tone] because missionaries build better products.”
Books will improve, with or without Amazon
“I’ll also point out that, while I’m convinced books are on the verge of being improved upon, Amazon has no sinecure as that agent. It will happen, but if we don’t execute well, it will be done by others.”