5: Tina He - Internet Citizen and Philosopher in Action

Dialectic

Tina He (Site, X, Newsletter) is a product designer, entrepreneur, writer, and amateur philosopher. She is a product lead at Coinbase, where she works on developer tools for its network Base. She joined Coinbase through the acquisition of her company, Station Labs.

Tina grew up in China before moving the U.S. at age 14. As an adult, Tina has been a dual-citizen of New York City and the internet. As she has put it, Tina is interested in the culture of technology and the technology of culture. While we share a love of technology and the internet as a "place," Tina is also my favorite person to get reading recommendations from. She studies philosophy, immerses herself in art, film, and fashion, and has been writing online since she was a teenager. I aimed to give listeners a glimpse of the types of wide-ranging conversations that I've enjoyed with Tina over the years.

We cover identity, locality, NYC, the internet, writing and sharing online, finding your people online, her career arc from comparative literature in college to venture capital and crypto, how labor markets and economies lay a foundation for culture in cities and online, what it means to be serious, patriotism and greatness, ambition, philosophy, ideas and action, Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World, her favorite philosophers from Kierkegaard to Wittgenstein to Byung-Chul Han, Beauty, taste, aesthetics, film, fashion, and how love and attention underpin her life.

Timestamps:

• (1:07): Identity & Place: What Does it Mean to be Local?
• (7:46): New York City
• (14:24): Urban Design and Evolution in Cities and Online
• (19:03): Being a Citizen of the Internet & Sharing Yourself Online
• (31:55): Tina's Unique Path: from Comparative Literature & CS to VC to Crypto
• (45:58): Station & Coinbase: Why Economic Systems & Labor Markets are Upstream of Cultural Outcomes
• (55:22): Being a Serious Person
• (58:53): When We Cease to Understand the World
• (1:02:47): Greatness, Patriotism, and Ambition
• (1:07:00): Reconciling with Obsession and Ambition: Can They Go Too Far?
• (1:10:13): What is Philosophy For? Refining Realities vs. Asserting Reality
• (1:20:57): The Patterns in Tina's Favorite Philosophers and Writers
• (1:26:04): Making Time for Philosophy and Study
• (1:32:09): Aesthetics, Taste, Beauty, Film, Fashion
• (01:39:58): Love & Attention

Links & Resources

• The New Frontier of Belonging by Tina He
• Order without Design by Alain Bertaud
• When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut
• Tina's "raw thoughts from the journal" post-election
• Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld by Byung-Chul Han
• A train rushing through a lightning storm - the first post I read from Tina, which includes the Bezos speech

Photo: Eugene Wei

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