Trying, Stephen, and shoeboxes of hope A composer for memory that works like friendship I had such a beautiful day. It was a good day, mostly just working, but I had a wonderful conversation with Stephen at the Royal Society of Arts (our regular meeting spot). We caught up first on the Stella trip he took in Lucerne, Switzerland, where Solveig, Haley, and Tobias put together the philosophical R&D festival. Stephen told me his biggest takeaway was actually the nuns that shepherd the covenant, and he thought a lot about contemplation and how technology can aid us in contemplating. I also literally could not stop working last night because I managed to get this social sharing feature to work, and it's **huge**! I cannot wait to demo this and show people how to use it. It's something very simple, but the core of this is the brain connection back into real life again. You can see each other face-to-face, share your lovely keepsake and letters and memories, face-to-face, and the UI looks gorgeous, so I'm super excited to push the new version out tonight. Later, I was trying to design the memory shoebox in Glia's UI, wondering about abstractions for the container itself. I thought about the piggy bank where a cat paw reaches out and swipes the coin into the box—that playful grab. Or maybe just a box with some stickers on it? Insomniac City is one of my favorite books. Bill Hayes is a rare author who writes with such pure humanity. After his partner passed away, he booked a one-way ticket from SF to NY. He would bring his camera to capture stories from the street and its people. To me, this book is about hope and falling in love with the world (through falling in love with a person) again. It is about the salvaging power of true love. As a constant force of transformation, love changes us, we change each other.