“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
― Oscar Wilde
Our Philosophy
Throughout history there have been groundbreaking thinkers who changed the way the public perceives the day to day. This often comes with a thankless existence and at the extremes, has adverse personal consequences for the creative individual. We recognize and give voice to people who attempt to integrate original views of humanity in their day-to-day work. Such pioneers are a kind of gateway drug to important conversations outside of the Overton Window: They synthesize what it means to be human and adjacent to history. Adverse incentives are difficult to overcome, let alone to describe articulately to one’s peers.
Almost all worthwhile original work faces quotidian anti-incentives to the pursuit of them. There are also latent systemic bottlenecks to progress to wrestle with. A narrative with regards to who can keep track of this takes shape; it is related to what Issimov termed psychohistory. In any given corner of time, all innovation is either allowed to grow, then also often perhaps more interestingly, made to fail.
At Second Foundation, we examine the explicit pressures for the latter effect; including existential risk from human and technology's
role in the failure modes in communication: Those both common and also rarely discussed. Second Foundation has a commitment to acknowledge radical visionaries, visionaries developing concrete designs and systems for how to build. We intend to take an active role in the attempt to eliminate systemic problems and systemic adjacent difficulties coming from poor incentives [or anti-incentives] to innovation by countercultural minds.