From Gertrude Stein to The Fabric of Technology

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Why Americans flocked to devour this faux memoir of Stein’s own Parisian life, replete with anecdotes about Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway etc., is perhaps self-explanatory. She was lifting the lid on some of the best-known cultural figures of the twentieth century, and – in so doing – managed to enrage them. Hemingway labelled the book ‘pitiable’, Matisse whinged about how his wife was represented, and Stein’s own brother, Leo, called it ‘a farrago of lies’. None of these outbursts were ideal quotes for the book jacket, but Stein burned her bridges with good reason. She desired fame and money, and for years had been carefully cultivating friendships with influential people in American publishing. Now she had the opportunity to call in her favours.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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Personally, I much prefer to think in terms not of systems but of a web of interactions. This allows me to see how stresses on one thread affect all others. The image also acknowledges the inherent strength of a web and recognizes the existence of patterns and designs. Anyone who has ever woven or knitted knows that one can change patterns, but only at particular points and only in a particular way so as not to destroy the fabric itself. When women writers speak about reweaving the web of life they mean exactly this kind of pattern change. Not only do they know that such changes can be achieved but, more importantly, they know there are other patterns. The web of technology can indeed be woven differently, but even to discuss such intentional changes of pattern requires an examination of the features of the current pattern and an understanding of the origins and the purpose of the present design.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

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Why Americans flocked to devour this faux memoir of Stein’s own Parisian life, replete with anecdotes about Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway etc., is perhaps self-explanatory. She was lifting the lid on some of the best-known cultural figures of the twentieth century, and – in so doing – managed to enrage them. Hemingway labelled the book ‘pitiable’, Matisse whinged about how his wife was represented, and Stein’s own brother, Leo, called it ‘a farrago of lies’. None of these outbursts were ideal quotes for the book jacket, but Stein burned her bridges with good reason. She desired fame and money, and for years had been carefully cultivating friendships with influential people in American publishing. Now she had the opportunity to call in her favours.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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But, while American intellectuals debated if her work had any merit, the general public was quietly being primed to think about Gertrude Stein as a famous person. Her friend Carl Van Vechten wrote to her regularly from America, boosting Stein’s ego with reports of her influence: ‘your name pops up in current journalism with great frequency. You are as famous in America as any historical character – and if you came over I think you might get as great a reception as, say, Jenny Lind [the Swedish opera sensation brought over by P. T. Barnum].’
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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Stein didn’t bounce from obscurity to fame, she redefined her existing reputation by swapping mockery for acclaim. She became something new; Stein was the modernist Miley Cyrus, minus the twerking.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

similarity = 0.841024159609273

What Books Were Penned by Female Authors?

Woolf recognised, lay the problem of money. Women enjoyed no freedoms—including freedom of the spirit—because they did not control their own income: “Women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves,” she wrote.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

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The husband and wife author team Will and Ariel Durant even applied this tactic to their own body of work. Having spent more than fifty years researching and writing their eleven-volume magnum opus, The Story of Civilization, they distilled it all down into a quick, 100-page problem-solver called The Lessons of History. Despite the latter requiring roughly a fiftieth of the time to write, its sales have outstripped those of all their other books combined. Why? Because it offered readers an outcome instead of just a story. Your book’s promise should appear in (or at least be strongly implied by) its title and/or subtitle. My all-time favorite nonfiction title is How to Stay Alive in the Woods, by Bradford Angier. Can you guess what that book is promising? Are you able to judge its relevance to your needs and goals? Do you know which of your friends might enjoy hearing about it? Absolutely.
-- Write Useful Books: A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction

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I wasn’t fully prepared, though, to feel what I did when I set foot inside the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School and was ushered to an auditorium where about two hundred students had gathered to watch some of their peers perform and then hear me speak. The school was named after a pioneering doctor who also became the first female mayor elected in England. The building itself was nothing special—a boxy brick building on a nondescript street. But as I settled into a folding chair onstage and started watching the performance—which included a Shakespeare scene, a modern dance, and a chorus singing a beautiful rendition of a Whitney Houston song—something inside me began to quake. I almost felt myself falling backward into my own past. You had only to look around at the faces in the room to know that despite their strengths these girls would need to work hard to be seen. There were girls in hijab, girls for whom English was a second language, girls whose skin made up every shade of brown. I knew they’d have to push back against the stereotypes that would get put on them, all the ways they’d be defined before they’d had a chance to define themselves. They’d need to fight the invisibility that comes with being poor, female, and of color. They’d have to work to find their voices and not be diminished, to keep themselves from getting beaten down. They would have to work just to learn.
-- Becoming

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What Did Women Historically Do to Make Income?

Woolf recognised, lay the problem of money. Women enjoyed no freedoms—including freedom of the spirit—because they did not control their own income: “Women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves,” she wrote.
-- Status Anxiety (Vintage International)

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A long time ago most goods were produced outside the circuit of commercial transactions—in other words, outside the market. They were produced in a manner closer to how we divide labor within our home. This of course does not necessarily mean that the world was a better, more ethical place. For centuries if not millennia, women were given the worst tasks within patriarchal, sexist households, not to mention the serfs and the slaves, who did all the drudgery in real or virtual shackles. The very fact that most work, most production, took place within the confines of the extended household gave rise to the word oikonomia, which comprises two words: oikos (“household”) and nomoi (“laws, rules, constraints”). This is the etymology of “economy,” which literally means something like the “laws of running, or managing, a household.”
-- Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works--and How It Fails

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Women have never been freer, richer, or more powerful. In 1970, just 4 percent of women earned more than their husbands; today, 29 percent earn more than their male spouses. Today, girls match or outperform boys in education in the developed world. Spousal homicides have declined since the 1960s thanks to better policing as well as more protections for victims, such as restraining orders, shelters for victims, and automatic arrests of suspects of domestic violence.
-- San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

similarity = 0.815357813020172

What Are Household Tasks?

In essence, tidying ought to be the act of restoring balance among people, their possessions, and the house they live in.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

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If you live with your family, you could ask them, “Is there something you need that you were planning to buy?” before you start tidying, and then if you happen to come across exactly what they need, give it to them as a gift.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

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Tidying means taking each item in your hand, asking yourself whether it sparks joy, and deciding on this basis whether or not to keep it. By repeating this process hundreds and thousands of times, we naturally hone our decision-making skills.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

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How Do We Decide to Keep an Item or Not?

I recommend you dispose of anything that does not fall into one of three categories: currently in use, needed for a limited period of time, or must be kept indefinitely.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

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We should also note that this “one in, one out” rule holds only for items of the same type. For example, if we buy a new jacket, we part with an old jacket. It doesn’t make sense to buy a new microwave oven and throw away an old eraser, right?
-- Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

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Tidying means taking each item in your hand, asking yourself whether it sparks joy, and deciding on this basis whether or not to keep it. By repeating this process hundreds and thousands of times, we naturally hone our decision-making skills.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

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When Do I Get Rid of My Jacket?

I am especially set for clothes. I have reached the time of life where all I want is to wear out the clothes I have and never get another thing. I think many men of a certain age will nod in agreement when I say there is a real satisfaction when you wear something out and can finally discard it—a feeling of a job well done. It’s not always easy. I have an L.L.Bean shirt that I have been trying to wear out for nearly twenty years. I wear that shirt up to two dozen times a month. I have washed the car with it. I have used it to clean the grate on the barbecue. I hate that shirt. I didn’t actually particularly like it the day I bought it. But I will wear it out if it kills me.
-- The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

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“Would I want to wear this right away if the temperature suddenly changed?”
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

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Discard it if you have it for the sake of appearance.
-- Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

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How Do I Not Wear Out Clothing?

I am especially set for clothes. I have reached the time of life where all I want is to wear out the clothes I have and never get another thing. I think many men of a certain age will nod in agreement when I say there is a real satisfaction when you wear something out and can finally discard it—a feeling of a job well done. It’s not always easy. I have an L.L.Bean shirt that I have been trying to wear out for nearly twenty years. I wear that shirt up to two dozen times a month. I have washed the car with it. I have used it to clean the grate on the barbecue. I hate that shirt. I didn’t actually particularly like it the day I bought it. But I will wear it out if it kills me.
-- The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

similarity = 0.841295646043948

The trick is not to overcategorize. Divide your clothes roughly into “cotton-like” and “wool-like” materials when you put them in the drawer.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.827728933929146

Put out your exercise clothes the night before you exercise so you wear them first thing in the morning and are ready to go (alternatively, sleep in your exercise clothes).
-- Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding

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How Do I Create Cotton Like or Wool Like Clothing?

The trick is not to overcategorize. Divide your clothes roughly into “cotton-like” and “wool-like” materials when you put them in the drawer.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.823739392432724

My standard is this: hang any clothes that look like they would be happier hung up, such as those made with soft materials that flutter in the breeze or highly tailored cuts, which protest at being folded. These we should hang willingly.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.777753636302986

The goal is to fold each piece of clothing into a simple, smooth rectangle. First, fold each lengthwise side of the garment toward the center (such as the left-hand, then right-hand, sides of a shirt) and tuck the sleeves in to make a long rectangular shape. It doesn’t matter how you fold the sleeves. Next, pick up one short end of the rectangle and fold it toward the other short end. Then fold again, in the same manner, in halves or in thirds.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

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How Do I Repair Wool Like Clothing?

The trick is not to overcategorize. Divide your clothes roughly into “cotton-like” and “wool-like” materials when you put them in the drawer.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.800035747849278

My standard is this: hang any clothes that look like they would be happier hung up, such as those made with soft materials that flutter in the breeze or highly tailored cuts, which protest at being folded. These we should hang willingly.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.767397472855179

The goal is to fold each piece of clothing into a simple, smooth rectangle. First, fold each lengthwise side of the garment toward the center (such as the left-hand, then right-hand, sides of a shirt) and tuck the sleeves in to make a long rectangular shape. It doesn’t matter how you fold the sleeves. Next, pick up one short end of the rectangle and fold it toward the other short end. Then fold again, in the same manner, in halves or in thirds.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.759944426771654

What Does it Mean to Get Clothing Tailored?

When clothes fit well, we hardly notice them. But when anything is out of place, it suddenly makes us uncomfortable. So too when things “fit”—or don’t—with our social and self-images. Any deviation from what’s considered appropriate to our stations and subcultures is liable to raise eyebrows, and without a good reason or backstory, we’re unlikely to feel good about it. If you’re a high-powered executive, imagine wearing your old high school backpack to work. If you’re a bohemian artist, imagine bringing the Financial Times to an open-mic night. If you’re a working-class union member, imagine ordering kale salad with tofu at a restaurant.
-- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

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For Held, fashion was a public performance and she lamented: ‘I live at the dressmaker’s … I am being moulded into clothes, all day long. I get no rest. For three months last summer I have been fitted, and draped, and assassinated by clothes. And then you marvel that they fit!’23 Such a complaint was laced with irony: she knew full well that fashion was one of the sources of her power.
-- Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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And the real trick of athleisure is the way it can physically suggest that you were made to do this—that you’re the kind of person who thinks that putting in expensive hard work for a high-functioning, maximally attractive consumer existence is about as good a way to pass your time on earth as there is. There’s a phenomenon, Weigel noted, called “enclothed cognition,” in which clothes that come with cultural scripts can actually alter cognitive function.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

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What Culture Do We Insert into Our Clothing?

When clothes fit well, we hardly notice them. But when anything is out of place, it suddenly makes us uncomfortable. So too when things “fit”—or don’t—with our social and self-images. Any deviation from what’s considered appropriate to our stations and subcultures is liable to raise eyebrows, and without a good reason or backstory, we’re unlikely to feel good about it. If you’re a high-powered executive, imagine wearing your old high school backpack to work. If you’re a bohemian artist, imagine bringing the Financial Times to an open-mic night. If you’re a working-class union member, imagine ordering kale salad with tofu at a restaurant.
-- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

similarity = 0.834626048727621

And the real trick of athleisure is the way it can physically suggest that you were made to do this—that you’re the kind of person who thinks that putting in expensive hard work for a high-functioning, maximally attractive consumer existence is about as good a way to pass your time on earth as there is. There’s a phenomenon, Weigel noted, called “enclothed cognition,” in which clothes that come with cultural scripts can actually alter cognitive function.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

similarity = 0.812659407849442

Today there’s a stigma to wearing uniforms, in part because it suppresses our individuality. But the very concept of “individuality” is just signaling by another name.20 The main reason we like wearing unique clothes is to differentiate and distinguish ourselves from our peers.
-- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

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How Do Clothing Choices Make the Society?

When clothes fit well, we hardly notice them. But when anything is out of place, it suddenly makes us uncomfortable. So too when things “fit”—or don’t—with our social and self-images. Any deviation from what’s considered appropriate to our stations and subcultures is liable to raise eyebrows, and without a good reason or backstory, we’re unlikely to feel good about it. If you’re a high-powered executive, imagine wearing your old high school backpack to work. If you’re a bohemian artist, imagine bringing the Financial Times to an open-mic night. If you’re a working-class union member, imagine ordering kale salad with tofu at a restaurant.
-- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

similarity = 0.857930230827964

Clothes, like people, can relax more freely when in the company of others who are very similar in type, and therefore organizing them by category helps them feel more comfortable and secure.
-- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

similarity = 0.837620620242664

And the real trick of athleisure is the way it can physically suggest that you were made to do this—that you’re the kind of person who thinks that putting in expensive hard work for a high-functioning, maximally attractive consumer existence is about as good a way to pass your time on earth as there is. There’s a phenomenon, Weigel noted, called “enclothed cognition,” in which clothes that come with cultural scripts can actually alter cognitive function.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

similarity = 0.837045371943636

What is the Financial Times?

These stories of financial excess, from the diving company bubble to the dot-com mania, are not just entertaining yarns, they are also a mortal warning to all investors. There will always be speculative markets in which the old rules seem to go out the window. Learn to recognize the signs: technological or financial “displacement,” excessive use of credit, amnesia for the last bubble, and the flood of new investors who swallow plausible stories in place of doing the hard math. When this happens, keep a close hold on your wallet and remember John Templeton’s famous warning: The four most expensive words in the English language are, “This time, it’s different.”
-- The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (Personal Finance & Investment)

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The mid-1960s, when Jensen’s study was published in the Journal of Finance, was about the last time that the average college-educated person could get through an academic finance article without falling asleep. Vast improvements in statistical and computational sophistication in financial research meant that, in most cases, the results were impossible to translate into plain English. In Twain’s words, financial research had become “chloroform in print.”
-- The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (Personal Finance & Investment)

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The incompetence of the British government served to complicate matters; some officials quickly realized the dangers of revealing too much information, while others thought that being open with the newspapers was a good way to maintain morale and show that the government was responsive to public enthusiasm for the war. Inevitably, the government and the Times were soon at loggerheads. The British commander in chief, General Simpson, complained: ‘‘Our spies give us all manner of reports, while the enemy never spends a farthing for information. He gets it all for five pence from a London paper.’’
-- The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers

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What Was Dot Com Mania?

Finally, Pets.com is, by most measures, the epitome of the dot-com boom-and-bust cycle—an example of prioritizing uncontrolled and overfunded growth while doing things like selling products far below cost (which obviously isn’t sustainable). Pets.com spent more than $17 million on advertising involving sock puppets in the second quarter of 2000 alone; meanwhile, their revenue (not profit) at that time was only $8.8 million. Pets.com was spending based on growth it hoped to see, not on where the company was currently at, and it ended up losing an estimated $300 million in investment capital along the way.
-- Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business

similarity = 0.768713923207912

These stories of financial excess, from the diving company bubble to the dot-com mania, are not just entertaining yarns, they are also a mortal warning to all investors. There will always be speculative markets in which the old rules seem to go out the window. Learn to recognize the signs: technological or financial “displacement,” excessive use of credit, amnesia for the last bubble, and the flood of new investors who swallow plausible stories in place of doing the hard math. When this happens, keep a close hold on your wallet and remember John Templeton’s famous warning: The four most expensive words in the English language are, “This time, it’s different.”
-- The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (Personal Finance & Investment)

similarity = 0.767694886484072

Beyond its three chapters on financial manias, Extraordinary Popular Delusions also contained three long chapters on religious manias: one each on biblical prophecy, the Crusades, and the pursuit of witches. While religious and financial manias might seem to have little in common, the underlying forces that give them rise are identical: the desire to improve one’s well-being in this life or the next. And the factors that amplify the contagion of financial and religious mass delusions are also similar: the hardwired human propensity to imitate, to fabricate and consume compelling narratives, and to seek status.
-- The Delusions Of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups

similarity = 0.763657385206292

What is pets.com?

Finally, Pets.com is, by most measures, the epitome of the dot-com boom-and-bust cycle—an example of prioritizing uncontrolled and overfunded growth while doing things like selling products far below cost (which obviously isn’t sustainable). Pets.com spent more than $17 million on advertising involving sock puppets in the second quarter of 2000 alone; meanwhile, their revenue (not profit) at that time was only $8.8 million. Pets.com was spending based on growth it hoped to see, not on where the company was currently at, and it ended up losing an estimated $300 million in investment capital along the way.
-- Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business

similarity = 0.830685261639809

Whatever you’re into, there’s a website for that. We all play “a fractional part in some quite trivial matter,” as Kierkegaard says. And this is soothing.
-- The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

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Now she was out of school and totally lost, barely surviving in a kitchenless apartment on the Lower East Side. Her only source of income was a job she’d found on Craigslist. Jack’s Dawgs, a chain of downtown hot dog stands, had received straight Ds in a recent health inspection. So the owner, Jack Potenzone, was paying Laura to improve the chain’s public image. Each day she went online and posted a hundred positive comments on food sites, using fictitious screen names. “I don’t know how Jack’s Dawgs got such a bad rap,” read a typical review. “Their stores are spotless, welcoming, and there are no rats.” Her boss had instructed her to insert the phrase “there are no rats” in every single one of her posts. “That way,” he explained, “people will think we don’t have rats.”
-- What in God's Name: A Novel

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How Do We All Interact on the Web?

In America, before the internet, the division between our public and private lives was usually tied to our physical location—our work and our home. The context in which we were communicating with our friends and family was clear. At work, we were professionals, and at home we were husbands, wives, sons, or daughters. On the internet, we organize information by its popularity in an attempt to determine its validity. If a website has been referenced by many other websites, then it is generally determined to be more valuable or accurate. Feelings expressed on social media are quantified, validated, and distributed in a similar fashion. Popular expression becomes the most valuable expression. Social media businesses represent an aggressive expansion of capitalism into our personal relationships. We are asked to perform for our friends, to create things they like, to work on a “personal brand”—and brands teach us that authenticity is the result of consistency. We must honor our “true self” and represent the same self to all of our friends or risk being discredited. But humanity cannot be true or false. We are full of contradictions and we change. That is the joy of human life. We are not brands; it is simply not in our nature.
-- How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

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Before perception AI, our interactions with the online world had to squeeze through two very narrow chokepoints: the keyboards on our computers or the screen on our smartphones.
-- AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

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As a medium, the internet is defined by a built-in performance incentive. In real life, you can walk around living life and be visible to other people. But you can’t just walk around and be visible on the internet—for anyone to see you, you have to act.
-- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

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Why Have the Economics of Technologies Changed What it Means to Be Human?

The revolutions in biotech and infotech will give us control of the world inside us and will enable us to engineer and manufacture life. We will learn how to design brains, extend lives, and kill thoughts at our discretion. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system. Similarly, it will be easier to redirect the flow of our minds than to divine what that will do to our personal psychology or to our social systems.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

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Most technologies do not fundamentally change us. Consider the contemporary smartphone. It’s a flashlight, a music player, a camera, a game console, a fare card, a remote control, a library, a television, a cookbook, a computer—all in one. It hasn’t enabled us to do much that’s fundamentally new, but it has combined more than a dozen preexisting devices into one, increasing efficiency and access. Important? Ridiculously. But such improvement-based techs do not fundamentally change who we are. Transport technologies, on the other hand, profoundly alter our relationship with our geography. Today you can jump continents in a few hours. It wasn’t always this way. In fact, it was almost never this way. Until a couple hundred years ago, it was rare for any of us to venture more than a few miles from home. The six millennia of human history has quite literally been a slow, agonizing crawl along a long, long road.
-- The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

similarity = 0.853567456281093

The partnership of technology and people makes us smarter, stronger, and better able to live in the modern world. We have become reliant on the technology and we can no longer function without it. The dependence is even stronger today than ever before, including mechanical, physical things such as housing, clothing, heating, food preparation and storage, and transportation. Now this range of dependencies is extended to information services as well: communication, news, entertainment, education, and social interaction. When things work, we are informed, comfortable, and effective. When things break, we may no longer be able to function. This dependence upon technology is very old, but every decade, the impact covers more and more activities.
-- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

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Why Do We Feel the Need to Make New Technology without Understanding the Complex Systems They Are Part Of?

The revolutions in biotech and infotech will give us control of the world inside us and will enable us to engineer and manufacture life. We will learn how to design brains, extend lives, and kill thoughts at our discretion. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system. Similarly, it will be easier to redirect the flow of our minds than to divine what that will do to our personal psychology or to our social systems.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.852304409312803

The reason that technological progress exacerbates our feelings of impatience is that each new advance seems to bring us closer to the point of transcending our limits; it seems to promise that this time, finally, we might be able to make things go fast enough for us to feel completely in control of our unfolding time.
-- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

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There is a complex feedback loop between technology and the people who use it. A changing consciousness calls for a changing technology, and a changing technology changes consciousness.
-- Does Writing Have a Future? (Electronic Mediations Book 33)

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What is the Feedback Loop Between Technology and Humans?

There is a complex feedback loop between technology and the people who use it. A changing consciousness calls for a changing technology, and a changing technology changes consciousness.
-- Does Writing Have a Future? (Electronic Mediations Book 33)

similarity = 0.906465810766004

The partnership of technology and people makes us smarter, stronger, and better able to live in the modern world. We have become reliant on the technology and we can no longer function without it. The dependence is even stronger today than ever before, including mechanical, physical things such as housing, clothing, heating, food preparation and storage, and transportation. Now this range of dependencies is extended to information services as well: communication, news, entertainment, education, and social interaction. When things work, we are informed, comfortable, and effective. When things break, we may no longer be able to function. This dependence upon technology is very old, but every decade, the impact covers more and more activities.
-- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

similarity = 0.85530171606131

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.851811107861467

How Do We View Humans in Relation to Technology?

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.877851024243231

Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. People are seen as sources of problems while technology is seen as a source of solutions.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.857255379825745

The partnership of technology and people makes us smarter, stronger, and better able to live in the modern world. We have become reliant on the technology and we can no longer function without it. The dependence is even stronger today than ever before, including mechanical, physical things such as housing, clothing, heating, food preparation and storage, and transportation. Now this range of dependencies is extended to information services as well: communication, news, entertainment, education, and social interaction. When things work, we are informed, comfortable, and effective. When things break, we may no longer be able to function. This dependence upon technology is very old, but every decade, the impact covers more and more activities.
-- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

similarity = 0.855879536870311

What is the Context in Which Technology is Made for Groups of People?

When I talked earlier about the need to look at technology in context, I meant the context of nature and people. When predictions turn out to be as wrong as many of those in The World in 1984, it is because context is not a passive medium but a dynamic counterpart. The responses of people, individually and collectively, and the responses of nature are often underrated in the formulation of plans and predictions. Electrical engineers speak about inductive coupling: A changing field induces a current, which may induce a counter-current. Change produces changes, often in different dimensions and magnitudes. Maybe what the real world of technology needs more than anything else are citizens with a sense of humility — the humility of Kepler or Newton, who studied the universe but knew that they were not asked to run it.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.843372246676831

Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. People are seen as sources of problems while technology is seen as a source of solutions.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.841004285336324

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.834633945186502

What Are the Risks of Technology Induced Change on People?

There is a complex feedback loop between technology and the people who use it. A changing consciousness calls for a changing technology, and a changing technology changes consciousness.
-- Does Writing Have a Future? (Electronic Mediations Book 33)

similarity = 0.846392099531913

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.844216368039636

The revolutions in biotech and infotech will give us control of the world inside us and will enable us to engineer and manufacture life. We will learn how to design brains, extend lives, and kill thoughts at our discretion. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system. Similarly, it will be easier to redirect the flow of our minds than to divine what that will do to our personal psychology or to our social systems.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.840999483992594

How Should We Visualize the Systems of Technology We Create to Not Cause Problems?

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.842107501167143

real systems engineering problems are almost impossible to exhibit in proper realistic detail; instead, toy situations and stories must be used, which, while eliminating much detail, do not distort things too much.
-- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

similarity = 0.831677040240927

Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. People are seen as sources of problems while technology is seen as a source of solutions.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

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The Real World of Technology?

The real world of technology is a very complex system. And nothing in my survey or its highlights should be interpreted as technological determinism or as a belief in the autonomy of technology per se. What needs to be emphasized is that technologies are developed and used within a particular social, economic, and political context.1 They arise out of a social structure, they are grafted on to it, and they may reinforce it or destroy it, often in ways that are neither foreseen nor foreseeable. In this complex world neither the option that “everything is possible” nor the option that “everything is preordained” exists.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.881404517576951

The real world of technology seems to involve an inherent trust in machines and devices (“production is under control“) and a basic apprehension of people (“growth is chancy, one can never be sure of the outcome“). If we do not wish to visualize people as sources of problems and machines and devices as sources of solutions, then we need to consider machines and devices as cohabitants of this earth within the limiting parameters applied to human populations.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.879330640535132

Today’s real world of technology is characterized by the dominance of prescriptive technologies. Prescriptive technologies are not restricted to materials production. They are used in administrative and economic activities and in many aspects of governance, and on them rests the real world of technology in which we live. While we should not forget that these prescriptive technologies are often exceedingly effective and efficient, they come with an enormous social mortgage. The mortgage means that we live in a culture of compliance, that we are ever more conditioned to accept orthodoxy as normal, and to accept that there is only one way of doing “it.“
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.866961124216113

How Do Technologies Affect the Context of the Network?

When I talked earlier about the need to look at technology in context, I meant the context of nature and people. When predictions turn out to be as wrong as many of those in The World in 1984, it is because context is not a passive medium but a dynamic counterpart. The responses of people, individually and collectively, and the responses of nature are often underrated in the formulation of plans and predictions. Electrical engineers speak about inductive coupling: A changing field induces a current, which may induce a counter-current. Change produces changes, often in different dimensions and magnitudes. Maybe what the real world of technology needs more than anything else are citizens with a sense of humility — the humility of Kepler or Newton, who studied the universe but knew that they were not asked to run it.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.845925452538962

The real world of technology is a very complex system. And nothing in my survey or its highlights should be interpreted as technological determinism or as a belief in the autonomy of technology per se. What needs to be emphasized is that technologies are developed and used within a particular social, economic, and political context.1 They arise out of a social structure, they are grafted on to it, and they may reinforce it or destroy it, often in ways that are neither foreseen nor foreseeable. In this complex world neither the option that “everything is possible” nor the option that “everything is preordained” exists.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.84486450594026

A second factor is the reconsideration of the meaning of technology. Modern data networks serve as an example. Newspapers, magazines, and books were once thought of as part of the publishing industry, very different from radio and television broadcasting. All of these were different from movies and music. But once the Internet took hold, along with enhanced and inexpensive computer power and displays, it became clear that all of these disparate industries were really just different forms of information providers, so that all could be conveyed to customers by a single medium.
-- The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

similarity = 0.837045158977821

What is the Web of Social Structures That Are Affected by Technology?

Personally, I much prefer to think in terms not of systems but of a web of interactions. This allows me to see how stresses on one thread affect all others. The image also acknowledges the inherent strength of a web and recognizes the existence of patterns and designs. Anyone who has ever woven or knitted knows that one can change patterns, but only at particular points and only in a particular way so as not to destroy the fabric itself. When women writers speak about reweaving the web of life,5 they mean exactly this kind of pattern change. Not only do they know that such changes can be achieved but, more importantly, they know there are other patterns. The web of technology can indeed be woven differently, but even to discuss such intentional changes of pattern requires an examination of the features of the current pattern and an understanding of the origins and the purpose of the present design.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.850831501860522

The real world of technology is a very complex system. And nothing in my survey or its highlights should be interpreted as technological determinism or as a belief in the autonomy of technology per se. What needs to be emphasized is that technologies are developed and used within a particular social, economic, and political context.1 They arise out of a social structure, they are grafted on to it, and they may reinforce it or destroy it, often in ways that are neither foreseen nor foreseeable. In this complex world neither the option that “everything is possible” nor the option that “everything is preordained” exists.
-- The Real World of Technology (CBC Massey Lectures)

similarity = 0.836434689690511

The so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions in the Arab world started in hopeful online communities, but once they emerged into the messy offline world, they were commandeered by religious fanatics and military juntas. If Facebook now aims to instigate a global revolution, it will have to do a much better job in bridging the gap between online and offline. It and the other online giants tend to view humans as audiovisual animals—a pair of eyes and a pair of ears connected to ten fingers, a screen, and a credit card. A crucial step toward uniting humankind is to appreciate that humans have bodies.
-- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

similarity = 0.831338754358519

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