The explosion of the Web and digital media from 1995 to 2000 shook companies more profoundly in a shorter time than anything since the end of World War II.

Chunking is the ability of the brain to learn from data you take in, without having to go back and access or think about all that data every time. As a kid learning how to ride a bike, for instance, you have to think about everything you're doing. You're brain is taking in all that data, and constantly putting it together, seeing patterns, and chunking them together at a higher level. So eventually, when you get on a bike, your brain doesn't have to think about how to ride a bike anymore. You've chunked bike riding.

Fidelity is the total quality of an experience, including a sense of exclusiveness and aura. Convenience is simply how easy something is to get, which often means a low price and ubiquitousness. A super-fidelity product or service would lose its luster and quality if it's pushed too hard toward convenience. A super-convenient product or service would start to get expensive and exclusive if it moved toward higher fidelity, which would naturally undermine its convenience.

Who "wins" and who "loses" depends on when you measure it.

When someone is in a state of flow, that person's brain is not thinking about anything - it's just processing things through chunks at a total instinct level. Athletes in a state of flow describe knowing what will happen just before it does - knowing how a defender will react to a certain move an instant before doing it. Of course, if you know what will happen, you can succeed at doing it, so an athlete in flow has a stand-out game.

The explosion of the Web and digital media from 1995 to 2000 shook companies more profoundly in a shorter time than anything since the end of World War II.

Wayne Gretzky's talent doesn't come from studying everything he's experienced in hockey and making long-term game plans. It comes from constantly taking in all the data that's happening in the moment on the ice, and instantly generating constant predictions based on super-efficient mental models he's built in his head. Technology has to work more like Gretzky.