Possibility Grid
In his recent book, The Life We’re Looking For , Andy Crouch describes the way marketers talk about new tech products: Now you can … Now you don’t have to … Crouch argues that there are two more ways we need to look at new tech to get a good read on whether it’s worth using: Now you can’t … Now you have to … I like to think of these four statements as related like this in a grid of possibilities: Can we? Must we? Yes 1. Now you can ... 4. Now you have to ... No 3. Now you can't ... 2. Now you don't have to ... Consider the interstate highway system. Because it exists, Now we can travel or transport goods a lot more quickly and cheaply over greater distances. Now we don’t have to develop towns and cities that permit non-automobile traffic. But now you can’t access a lot of places without an automobile; and Now we have to design cities and towns to accommodate auto traffic and parking, usually at the expense of