Ideas

“We inhabit a dystopian reality, which may account for the dearth of dystopian fiction. Yet the novels of Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell continue to cast a powerful spell. All of them end in defeat for the protagonists, but in each case a possibility of revolt remains.” – New Statesman

There is no shortage of theories about what makes an object aesthetically pleasing. Ideas about proportion, harmony, symmetry, order, complexity and balance have all been studied by psychologists in great depth. The theories go as far back as 1876—in the early days of experimental psychology—when German psychologist Gustav Fechner provided evidence that people prefer rectangles with sides in proportion to the golden ratio (if you’re curious, that ratio is about 1.6:1). – Scientific American

“Think of something… mundane: ‘How are you?’ Virtually no one expects to hear anything but: ‘Good, thanks. And you?’ Withholding information has become the norm. Even when there is no direct question to answer, our interactions are replete with curated comments. The truth can be so hard to come by that many of us believe that our workplaces, and the people we encounter in them, are awash in bullshit.” – Psyche

In other words, modern science became possible only once scholars began to talk with craftspeople. Science began with public engagement. – Aeon

“The most important promise underlying much of the canon inaugurated by Future Shock is that with the right foresight, readers can not only prepare for what’s coming, but also profit from it. This whiff of insider trading presents the future as a commodity, an exercise in temporal arbitrage in which knowledge of new developments yields a financial edge.” – The Atlantic

Derek Thompson: “Last year, I wrote about how even a modest remote-work revolution—no more than 10 percent of Americans working remotely full time after the pandemic is over—could affect the U.S. labor force (e.g.: fewer hotel workers) and party politics (e.g.: more southern Democrats). But the more I researched remote work and spoke with experts, the more I realized I had only scratched the surface of its implications for the future of the economy, the geography of opportunity, and the fate of innovation. Here are four more predictions.” – The Atlantic

“What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users join extremist groups, and then perpetuating an algorithm that recommends even more?” – Wired

Understandably, much of the energy directed toward the problems of pandemic social life has been spent on keeping people tied to their families and closest friends. These other relationships have withered largely unremarked on after the places that hosted them closed. The pandemic has evaporated entire categories of friendship, and by doing so, depleted the joys that make up a human life—and buoy human health. But that does present an opportunity. In the coming months, as we begin to add people back into our lives, we’ll now know what it’s like to be without them. – The Atlantic

So try these strategies instead. – The New York Times

“At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement — the longer the better — and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible. Too many are still asking the question, ‘how much can we get away with?,’ when they need to be asking, ‘what are the consequences’?” – MacRumors

“The internet contains, for better or worse, a significant amount of humanity’s intellectual and creative outputs. It’s also a cesspool of outrageous falsehoods. Having access to so much information, then, is useful only if you’re able to separate the wheat from the chaff. For instance, the amount of information related to COVID-19 has been called an ‘infodemic’ by the World Health Organization: there is so much information that it’s impossible to keep up with all of it, and often difficult to determine what to believe.” – Psyche

A recent study invited college students to talk about their emotions via an online chat with either a person or a “chatbot” (in reality, the chatbot was operated by a person rather than AI). The students felt better after talking about their feelings; it made almost no difference whether they thought they were talking to a real person or to a bot. – New Statesman

“If you’re a prodigy with a great gift for something, you can simply do it – yet might not be aware of why and how. And you don’t ask questions. Indeed, the geniuses I met seemed too preoccupied with committing acts of genius to consider the cause of their creative output. Maybe an outsider looking in has a clearer overview of how the magic gets done.” – Aeon

Trump failed to purge all the old élites, largely because he was forced to depend on them, and the Proud Boys never came close to matching the ferocity and reach of the Red Guards. Nevertheless, Trump’s most devoted followers, whether assaulting his opponents or bombarding the headquarters in Washington, D.C., took their society to the brink of civil war while their chairman openly delighted in chaos under heaven. – The New Yorker

Despite the long tradition of anti-urbanism in the U.S. that always seems to see the demise of cities just around the corner, they will survive because they are one of humanity’s greatest inventions. – The Conversation

This expanding cornucopia of tech and entertainment has served as a compensatory narrative of progress and advancement for an empire in decline. The future seems more and more constrained, materially, but, on the flip side, you are freer and freer to build your own virtual worlds and get lost in them. – Artnet

We are neurochemically predisposed to find our dreams meaningful, which may suggest that they do have a pedagogical function. Even the common advice to make an important decision only after you “sleep on it” might be worth revising, to “dream on it.” The fact that dreams often generate powerful emotions and deploy narrative structures further strengthens the notion that they perhaps represent a kind of theater of the unconscious, one not always intent on providing concrete solutions so much as making sense and meaning out of our experiences. – Washington Post

In April 2020, during the first wave of COVID-19, Amsterdam’s city government announced it would recover from the crisis, and avoid future ones, by embracing the theory of “doughnut economics.” – Time

“The art of creating the connections and building communities of others who also come to believe and amplify them is a virtuous circle that keeps growing and strengthening increasingly wacky beliefs.” – Post Alley

“Every cultural message we get is that happiness can be read off a scorecard of money, education, experiences, relationships, and prestige. Want the happiest life? Check the boxes of success and adventure, and do it as early as possible! Then move on to the next set of boxes. She who dies with the most checked boxes wins, right? Wrong. I don’t mean that accomplishment and ambition are bad, but that they are simply not the drivers of our happiness.” – The Atlantic

“From the American Revolution until the late 20th century, the American elite was divided among regional oligarchies. It is only in the last generation that these regional patriciates have been absorbed into a single, increasingly homogeneous national oligarchy, with the same accent, manners, values, and educational backgrounds from Boston to Austin and San Francisco to New York and Atlanta. This is a truly epochal development.” – Tablet

It’s an urgent question for many in lockdown – and in the UK, “whether we are in lockdown or not, four fifths of the UK population lives in an urban environment and one in eight homes do not have a garden.”- BBC

The producer of the Celebrating America gala had to be very cautious, and very (very) flexible: “Our plans were carved in Jello. Everything was moldable. In a way, it makes it tenfold harder, but in a way it’s a little freeing because you’re not stuck into shoehorning into the things that exist. The pandemic also caused us to figure out how to not draw a crowd and how to build a show without drawing a crowd, which is against every instinct we have.” – Variety

Over the past few decades, this ethos of cheerless duty has been overtaken by the imperative to love your work. Graduation speakers, human resources departments, and motivational memes keep telling us we ought to merge passion with profession. But work remains stubbornly unlovable. Especially for workers in the United States, the hours are long, wages have not remotely kept up with productivity, and job security is minimal. – The New Republic