Opinion
Slavin: Most VR Developers Are Applying Console Game Mindsets
“Broadly speaking, everything that I'm seeing in VR games is basically done by people who made console games and where their essential mode is thinking in console games.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Slavin: The Creator Who Solves VR Won't Come from AAA Studios
“Instinctively, and from my experience, I don't think that that person is going to come from one of the big AAA studios because they're going to have to be thinking in a different way.”
Opinion
Slavin: Games are not narrative vehicles in general
“Games aren't narrative vehicles in general, right? I mean, they're, I, there's a whole very nerdy set of ideas around games and narratology, which we're not going to get into”
Opinion
Slavin: Large-scale cultural institutions are weirdly risk-averse
“Large scale cultural institutions are weirdly risk averse to my mind these days.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Slavin Predicts 98% of Americans Will Own Smartphones by 2019
“And by 2019, that's 98%. 98% of the United States will have smartphones, you know, even Obama phones or smartphones. You won't be able to buy a non-smartphone in 2019.”
Assertion Supported
Slavin: Roughly 15 US Universities Go Bankrupt Each Year
“We talked about this a little bit earlier, but there, it's basically 15 universities a year that go bankrupt in the United States.”
Assertion Contradicted
Slavin: Academic Tenure Arose Under McCarthyism to Protect Free Thought
“Tenure, which there's, there are very good reasons for tenure, and it arose under McCarthyism to protect free thought essentially, which is great.”
Insight
Slavin: Leadership is enabling brilliant people to surprise themselves, not management
“There's a difference between managing people and actually drawing things out, you know, and I think learning how to, learning what brilliant people There's an art to getting brilliant people to surprise themselves.”
Insight
Slavin: Deep domain experts often struggle to pitch work to funders
“I think people who are really, really good at whatever they do are often Not in a good position to be able to do that because it requires a level, a certain level of detachment from what you care about to be able to look at it from somebody else's point of vie…”
Insight
Slavin: Fundraising fundamentally requires telling a story of scale and growth
“People might argue with this, and I don't even know if I believe what I'm saying, but I think probably I would say that the essential story that you have to tell when you're fundraising is a story of scale, right? Like, because the premise of fundraising is, i…”
Insight
Slavin: Game studios must specialize in specific platforms to survive
“Normally, if you want to make money in games, if you even want to make a living in games, you say, like, I'm going to build a shop that's optimized for you know, AAA console development, you know, which has nothing to do with the shop that you would build if y…”
Insight
Slavin: VR games should embrace headset wearing and local asymmetric information
“Maybe what the materiality of the medium of VR should include the fact that you're wearing a fucking helmet, right? Like, you know, and you're in a room with other people, right? Like maybe that's not like maybe that's not something to write off. Like maybe th…”
Insight
Slavin: MIT Media Lab hires 'misfits' inventing non-existent disciplines
“One of the most interesting things about hiring new faculty at the media lab is like the primary criterion is, is that they're a misfit, right? And it's like, we're looking for misfits who are thinking about how to ensure the heritability of CRISPR engineering…”
Insight
Slavin: Travelers get sick because their microbiome is tied to origin cities
“You are effectively in exchange with that city. This is why, it's why you get sick when you travel, right? You know, it's like, it's why you eat the food That, you know, in some city that you've never been to, you eat the food that everybody else there can eat…”
Disclosure
Slavin Is Developing a Large-Scale Artwork at MIT Using CRISPR
“I'm working on a project. This is the last project that I have at MIT that I can't exactly, I can't talk about what it is, but it's I'll just say it's a very large scale Artwork that is that's using CRISPR.”
What-if
Slavin: Early growth focus would have forced Area Code into an all-in Pokémon bet
“And if we'd had to think about growth from the very beginning, man, we would never have done Anything we did, you know, we would, you know, we would have bet it all on, on this idea that we had in 2004 that we went and talked to the Nintendo corporation. We ha…”
Assertion Supported
Slavin: The Shed is NYC's first major cultural center since Lincoln Center
“The Shed is the first cultural center to be, at scale, to be built in New York City since Lincoln Center.”
