No. 40 The Goldblum Rule

just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

New tech is exciting, so it gets jammed in whether people need it or not.

Every feature costs attention. If it doesn’t help people do what they came for, leave it out.

Ask: would anyone miss it if we left it out?

In Jurassic Park (1993), Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm says the scientists were “so preoccupied with whether or not they could” that they never asked if they should.

The worry is older. In 1954, Oppenheimer said that when something is “technically sweet,” you go ahead & do it.

Nobody knows who first said “just because you can…” The Goldblum Rule is a nickname.

• Jurassic Park (Universal, 1993), screenplay by Michael Crichton & David Koepp
• In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, AEC hearing transcript (1954)

Save this for the next time someone says “we should add AI to it.”