Things I Like
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There is no strict definition for the analog web, and it’s not tied to a single methodology or technology. But there is a culture that exists beneath the commercial web that is motivated by the same goal; to create a bulkwark against the erasure of a more human web.
This piece is related, somewhat, to what I posted by Mandy. The way in which we can, if we want, create our own sites and do what we want and not be at the mercy of the platforms or whatever they decide they want to do.
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Why a notebook? I could technically do this with my phone but I have a problem where I pick the phone up to put something in it, immediately get distracted by something else, and then forget why I originally picked up the phone in the first place.
It me. I'm not a sketch or journal person right away in the morning, but I'm trying to take my sketchbook and jot things down during the day such as what I saw on my walk, something about what I'm making, or something I've seen when out and about. Like Rachel, I tried the Journal app on iPhone and while I enjoyed access to photos, it often led to me getting distracted and scrolling and well, not really what I'm wanting to do.
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I’ve always been overly cautious and considered in the tools I use but I’ve never thought of the tools I use as a moral choice. Perhaps now I will. I’m not a Daoist by any means, but this idea of cosmotechnics begins to provide a mental framework for expressing the relationship between technology and morality. From the large scale of the cosmos to the small scale of the knife, I’m glad to have vocabulary to think about future problems.
I still have to read the Jacobs piece that Rupert references here, but I found his thoughts here and all the various things he links to really interesting. We are in difficult times and I'm living a small life, but I think a lot about my actions and the larger repercussions. I realize I'm not making large ripples, but maybe it's more about being thoughtful and feeling better about my own actions.
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The whole idea that ordinary people would concern themselves with their fitness is something that’s emerged over the last 40 years. It’s staggering to consider the scale of the collective awareness of our physical well-being. Now, does that mean that health itself is a new idea? No, people have been worried about their health since forever. But the specific activation of fitness, that’s a relatively new thing, and it’s really changed in our lifetimes. And I’m proposing to you that that’s going to happen again. Over the next 40 years, a collective recognition that our wellness in our attentional lives, our hygiene and health and our attention, is going to be constitutive of our experience of being. This is what’s going to happen. It’s going to reshape education, which, as you’ve signaled, needs to be for and about attention. That’s what it needs to teach. And it’s going to transform our other ways of being together.
I found this entire podcast really interesting and could've pulled a lot of different quotes from it, but settled on this one becuase it resonated so much when Burnet pointed it out. The way in which we collectively change and come to think about things differently takes time, but I do think the way we're thinking about attention is changing. The little devices we carry with us that are constantly demanding our attention, if you let them, are a big reason why. As my life has changed over the past few years, I've become very aware of attention and thought about it a lot and this conversation is well worth the listen if you're interested in the topic as well.
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This isn’t to say Americans don’t value third places. “I think that people both wish they had more of them,” says Katherine Giuffre, a professor emerita of sociology at Colorado College, “and at the same time, overlook them or take them for granted.” With some intentionality, experts believe we can recommit to — and reimagine — third places. They may look exactly as we’ve always experienced them. They may not be physical spaces at all.
Living in a rural community, finding the third place has been hard, but I'm still trying. I'm also intrigued by the fact that many are shutting down and I think often about the fact that there is an epidemic of loneliness but to get out of it people need to take risks and put themselves out there; not an easy thing for many to do.
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You can have a tech that is mostly used for fraud, bankrupts the elderly, or even literally kills people, but tech enthusiasts will defend it by saying it saves five minutes on their morning breakfast routine.
Bjarnson hits the nail on the head.
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I really do think that the internet, in its original open form, is an amazing thing and a genuine contributor to human flourishing — but the occlusion of the open web by the big social media companies has been a disaster for our common life and for the life of the mind.
I love the use of ecological terms when talking about the web. The open web is a great thing and I continue to hope that more people are willing to take a chance on it rather than the big walled gardens.
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There’s too much to read, right? Especially contemporary fiction. Too many choices. You have to develop a strategy of selection, a method of triage. I will always read more old books than new ones, as I think everyone should. But I don’t neglect what my contemporaries are doing.
Not saying I agree with Jacobs criteria, but I did find this post amusing.
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Every hour spent with the phone is an hour not spent on anything I actually care about. Which is fine in small doses but as soon as it gets too much I know deep down that I’m not operating in alignment with my values, and that makes me feel quite bad about myself.
Rach has been posting a note every day this month and so many of them been completely relatable.
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I don’t think consumerism is that satisfying for most people. We’re taught that we need to keep up with these trends and buy all this stuff, but it doesn’t really make us happy. Happiness levels are declining. People have fewer close friends. It’s not like the current status quo is awesome and we should be fighting to hold on to it. We just have a bunch of junk. Instead of being surrounded by beautiful, durable, repairable things that we love, we’ve got a bunch of single-use plastic garbage.
I really liked a lot of this interview, but I think the idea that we're living in such a great situation and time that change is an awful idea is the biggest falsehood being pushed. It isn't great, people aren't happy and maybe making serious changes will lead to better thing, at least I believe it definitely can.
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I wish that people would do things of beauty and benevolence. When I was teaching at the workshop, we would get a good variety of students, a lot of whom came from difficult backgrounds. And in order to make it through all the hurdles to graduate school, they were probably assisted by individuals or by mechanisms at various points, and then they come and they’re brilliant. I hate to use economic language, but in a sense, we’re creating value for the culture in other human beings — in the degree that we’re generous toward them, in the degree that we are made hopeful by their gifts, to the extent that we step out of these stupid competitive models that we set for ourselves and realize that our well being is something that is achieved collectively by encouraging other people to do beautiful things. Not putting them in situations of grinding lack and resentment that then becomes the argument against the social order and against democracy.
First I have to say the title of this piece is terrible, which is unfortunate, because it's a bit click baity. I clicked because I love Robinson and read for that reason and it's worth the read and I'm saving it, so I guess I'm getting past that title.
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Business books are good for business but is the business mindset good for books? Too many entrepreneurs come into the book space and don’t realize that the majority of readers love to get lost in books and to ponder them and process them and to argue with our friends about them.
I'm a reader but I never count what I read or try too hard to sum it up, even in the posts where I record what I've read. And my lists are more for me than anyone else, I just happen to share them here as a good storage spot so that I can come back and look again at what I said, especially when I rearead something.
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McPherson writes that the limiting virtues are grounded in the dispositional substrate of an “accepting-appreciating” stance toward the world, as opposed to the “choosing-controlling” stance that is the naturalized, invisible, and totalizing definition of 21st century technocratic freedom. No one wants life without choices, of course. But McPherson writes that the limiting virtue of loyalty — especially “loyalty to the given world” — is one way to cultivate this accepting-appreciating posture and to enjoy the freedom that it brings.
I really enjoy Sarah Hendron's newsletter, when it shows up it's always worth a read and I love the way she talks about spaces and how we design them as well as use them. This edition is no exception.
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These transitory items and people might say more about our time than cathedrals or statues; they are what’s particular to our era and thus reflective of its ailments and ethos. On that commute, for example, there was a point where the train hurtled aboveground and people craned their necks to take in the skyscrapers. Impressive, I admit, but I was more interested in the text that a fellow passenger repeatedly typed out and deleted, fascinated that a person could carefully compose a message to send to someone and then take it back, the only record of it being my observation.
I don't do a written journal, but often I do a sketch journal of my day and it's the very small things that've happened around me or to me that I notice and draw about.As I leave my phone behind or in my bag more and more and just be while having to wait, I notice more and find more that is funny, interesting, or strange about what's right around me.
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Instead, I see a technique like this for what it is: another tool in the cupboard. It’s all any technique could ever be! And yet we seem desperate for some system that could save us – for the productivity trick or morning routine or life philosophy that would make everything run smoothly at last, so long as we kept following it.
I don't worry a lot about productivity these days, but I do really like the way Burkeman talks about different tools you can use for getting things done. I'm a person who likes lists and I usually let a lot of things pile up and then spend a morning or afternoon going through and tackling as many as I can (today was one of those days). But I fully realize that there are other ways to get things done too and at different times during my life I've hopped around from what works for that time.