The passionate pursuit of the money for its own end has a huge price tag. Many

6 min readDec 3, 2020

My point is if you have a trillion dollars and it had no purchasing power (you couldn’t trade for what you need or want) it won’t be of value to you. The only purpose of money in modern society is to exchange it for anything you want in the near or far future.Freedom to think for yourself, the freedom over your time and what you can do with it and the freedom to express yourself invest in something meaningful to you as a person.In short, they’re experimentalists, and though they get less media coverage, they’re geniuses too. Which should cheer up those of you muddling your way along trying to figure out your own big contribution to the world. Just because brilliance didn’t explode unbidden in your brain by the age of 29 doesn’t mean it’s not on its way.

Progressive Web Apps, at their core, are nothing more than web apps. They are applications you access via a traditional desktop browser or a mobile browser. And yet, PWAs offer something so much more than the traditional experience.

There is some truth in the protective qualities of a walled garden approach like this. Apple has been known for decades now for its stability and its lack of viruses. Yet, that stability and security comes at a cost. You may not be getting the best deals you can when making payments in-app for the software you use on your phone or iPad. Surely, apps tack on a percentage to whatever they would otherwise charge to help offset the fees Apple extracts. And what about those older Apple devices that are no longer supported by Apple? Those perfectly serviceable iPads lying in the junk heaps or in your junk drawers? In an open ecosystem, in the open web world, a device’s age has no bearing on whether it can be used, on whether new software can be installed.

PWAs offer a place on your phone’s or tablet’s home screen. They offer an opportunity to live among the convenience layer offered by having an app available with just a simple click on your home screen. PWAs also offer the opportunity for apps built for the web to live in your start menu or in your dock on desktops and Macs.

They do everything in their power to make more of it and sacrifice time and freedom to make even more of it and later find out that they don’t have the “time” to spend it on what’s really important for happiness — experiences.

As exciting as the proposition of a web app being something that can be installed like a native app is, that only scratches the surface of the potential offered by PWAs. APIs that offer near-native app access are powerful and can create an experience that is indistinguishable from native apps. Push notifications, file system access, splash screens, offline support, and more are all available through PWAs just like they are with native apps. Web apps can be distracting if for nothing more than the always-there option to open another tab. With PWAs, you can focus. With a web app that opens like a full-screen, native app, you can focus on the thing you intended to do. This benefits users, but it also benefits the app developers in that their users are less likely to leave quickly.

So, take sides in the Epic vs. Apple battle if you want, but the point is not about that one particular battle. The point is about the wider problems a closed web (and make no mistake, native apps on phones and tablets are part of the new web) pose to everyday people.

Entrepreneurship is a field that particularly worships wunderkinds. But studies show the average age of founders of successful startups — and by successful I don’t mean nice mom-and-pop shops but startups with big, impressive exits — is actually 44 years old. From RyanAir’s Tony Ryan to Garmin’s Gary Burrell, these aren’t kids who execute on a great idea they had one day in their dorm room. They are industry veterans, who over time figure out better ways to do things and then start companies to actualize those insights.

We don’t make money for the sake of having it — we store if for use at some point in life. No one sacrifice time to make money and then decides to keep it away for good. Everyone plans on using it for comfortable tools, housing, food, experiences, a new life, privacy, security or freedom.

You may have heard of the “epic” battle being waged in courts between Epic Games and Apple. If not, the tl;dr is Epic Games no longer wants to pay Apple 30% of the proceeds they receive from players who purchase their in-game currency on iOS devices. Epic released an in-game payment system on iOS that bypassed Apple’s payment system, and, very expectedly, they got banned. They did the same thing on Android devices, and they were subsequently banned on Android too. Epic used the bans as a springboard to file anti-trust lawsuits against both Google and Apple.

These geniuses figure it out as they go along, piecing together their ideas through trial, and error. That process of observation and refinement takes awhile. Hence their best work usually doesn’t get done until their 50s. Here’s a tweet summing up the distinction nicely:

No matter how much you have, make or intend to make, money will always be a tool for trading your time. Once you have it, at some point you have to trade it for something else you want that can give you deeper fulfilment.
But there is another more halting path to genius. It’s the road Darwin took when he spent decades minutely observing the natural world and piecing together his theory. Or when Twain rewrote and revised Huck Finn for a decade. These are experimentalists.
“For most people, it is likely that wealth has to improve in order for their happiness level to remain constant; if their wealth were to decline, so would their happiness,” writes A C Grayling of The Telegraph.

In short, they’re experimentalists, and though they get less media coverage, they’re geniuses too. Which should cheer up those of you muddling your way along trying to figure out your own big contribution to the world. Just because brilliance didn’t explode unbidden in your brain by the age of 29 doesn’t mean it’s not on its way.

This is because there are two very different approaches to creativity. Those who burn brightly young and flame out early, Galenson terms conceptualists. Their best work tends to be the result of one, brilliant, radical, overarching idea. Einstein walking home from his job at the patent office in Bern one night has the mother of all Eureka moments about the nature of the universe and writes it up. Picasso thinks up cubism and executes on it.This case study is not about whether you stand with Epic, stand with Apple, or stand in the corner twiddling your thumbs. What it is is an illustration of anti-competitive practices and their impact on the web. Apple is a walled garden. There is no disputing this. It’s a fact paraded around as convenience, as security, as usability. Your iOS device or iPad is not yours in the sense you cannot install whatever you want on it. You can only install what Apple says you can install.Real wealth is, “not having to go to meetings, not having to spend time with jerks, not being locked into status games, not feeling like you have to say “yes”, not worrying about others claiming your time and energy,” argues James Clear.

The passionate pursuit of the money for its own end has a huge price tag. Many

Written by spdc