Smoke & mirrors - by Ashley Zhang

Recently, a longtime friend asked me what drew me to the San Francisco startup scene. “You studied philosophy and love literature, so I always clocked you as a humanities person,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense on paper — yet, somehow, it fits.” My answer, in less carefully crafted terms, was this: I have always lived with one foot in make-believe, and am drawn to people who are the same. The things that fascinate me most — startups, ideologies, literature, love — are acts of shared imagination. We conjure up new worlds and ask others to inhabit them with us; we build a glimmering tower upon a mirage. We are drawn to promise and potential over what is actual, seduced by visions of what could be rather than what is. There’s power in this delusion. Invention, at its core, is a subversive act of imagination. To create anything truly original, we must grasp onto an nebulous vision with enough conviction — even when it remains invisible or incomprehensible to others — that we cannot help

Recently, a longtime friend asked me what drew me to the San Francisco startup scene. “You studied philosophy and love literature, so I always clocked you as a humanities person,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense on paper — yet, somehow, it fits.” My answer, in less carefully crafted terms, was this: I have always lived with one foot in make-believe, and am drawn to people who are the same. The things that fascinate me most — startups, ideologies, literature, love — are acts of shared imagination. We conjure up new worlds and ask others to inhabit them with us; we build a glimmering tower upon