The Minimum Viable Word
Darius Kazemi makes many wonderful bots but my favorite is Reverse OCR.
This bot grabs a random word, and then draws random lines until an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program detects them as the word.
That up there is “glory.” Here’s “bicycle:”
Squint and you can see it, right?
Reverse OCR is very clever but that’s not why it’s my favorite bot.
It’s my favorite bot because its squiggly random lines speak to me about art and business.
Reverse OCR generates what you could call a “minimum viable word,” or MVW. I am using this terminology because I am about to draw a tenuous connection between Reverse OCR and the “minimum viable product” trend in business.
What interests me is the power dynamics that surround viability. In Darius’s project, the OCR program defines what success looks like, and the drawing bot labors to satisfy it.
Here we can draw some parallels to the Lean Startup model. From a 2008 piece for Forbes by Venkatesh Rao:
All codification is political. Knowledge is captured and codified in ways that benefit a specific class. In the case of previously tacit entrepreneurial knowledge, the codification has been carried out to benefit investors. The biggest piece of such codified knowledge is the well-known Lean Startup model. While it functions roughly as advertised in a narrow sense, its real political significance is in the control structure it subtly encourages, which increases transparency to investors (and sundry outsiders).
For example, by encouraging explicit, written market hypotheses and undisguised (and sometimes even publicly articulated and defended) business model shifts known as “pivots,” it allows investors far greater visibility into operational realities, and therefore, better back-seat steering control via board seats. It takes a sophisticated entrepreneur to use the model for its strengths, and still create a realistic balance of power with investors.
If I wanted to make a really tidy argument, I’d bring up Steve Jobs’s fascination with calligraphy as a counterpoint to Reverse OCR. Calligraphy as happy marriage of Apollonian and Dionysian urges, etc. etc., but I don’t really know anything about calligraphy so I’ll skip that part.
I’m reminded of that Reid Hoffman quote:
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, then you’ve launched too late.
I wonder if the drawing bot is proud of or embarrassed by its output. Proud, I hope!
