| Sunday, 09 November 2025 |
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Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
We were walking back to the office this Monday afternoon after grabbing a post-lunch coffee from the neighbourhood Blue Tokai in Indiranagar. I don’t remember how, but my colleagues and I ended up discussing cities and how our imagination of them is shaped by what we read and watch.
We discussed the outsized influence of Mumbai (then Bombay) in popular culture as I was growing up, and its waning now. We discussed the rising impact of Bengaluru. And then we got to New York.
I’ve never been to New York. But one of my younger colleagues said they loved every bit of it during a visit a few years ago. “It was everything they show in the movies, and more. It was so full of life and energy!”
I was immediately reminded of the wonderful lines from Mary Schmich’s 1997 essay, “Wear Sunscreen” (yes, the same one sampled by Baz Luhrmann):
“Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.” –Mary Schmich
It’s the same with organisations, I thought. I did not say this out loud.
Though I did not express my thoughts at that moment, subscriber Hetal Sonpal expressed his thoughts on last week’s First Principles–when I talked about nature baths, Shinrin-yoku–by trying to get an AI to imagine the scene I had described.
I was fascinated by this, not because the image is accurate (it isn’t), but because something like this–a photorealistic imagination of written words–is now both possible and trivial.
As Arthur C. Clarke put it, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Here’s everything we have for you in First Principles this week:
1. Generational Golems
2. Reframing identity 📚
3. Scale and detail… 📸
1. Generational Golems
I won’t lie. I’ve been a Golem.
I don’t mean that I was once just mud and clay, brought to life through magic and sorcery.
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Chairman and MD, InvAscent
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CEO and Co-Founder, Razorpay
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Executive Chairperson, Biocon Limited
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