Saving this to watch later. I've been doing a good job of separating myself from the attention economy. The one downside being that it has made me even more painfully aware of how sucked into it...
Saving this to watch later. I've been doing a good job of separating myself from the attention economy. The one downside being that it has made me even more painfully aware of how sucked into it everyone around me is. It certainly makes for a lonely world.
I have a few observations about this. Actually, I'm slightly reluctant to comment at all because I realize that making a comment about it is actually participating in the attention economy. But...
I have a few observations about this. Actually, I'm slightly reluctant to comment at all because I realize that making a comment about it is actually participating in the attention economy. But anyway.
First, this seems a little bit Buddhist to me. Or at least in the realm of meditation, where you accept what is instead of trying to change things.
Second, I've been thinking about consumerism and advertisement and capitalism a lot lately and how much my local library is a great counter to it. You can just go in there and look at some books. It's information without the information economy.
There's nobody there telling you that you should be reading more books than you are.
There's nobody to compare yourself to.
There's nothing that says "Hey, you liked this book, so you probably also like this book".
There's nobody asking me to smash like and subscribe.
Nobody bugs me if I don't go to the library for a few weeks, or if I come two times a day for a while.
Sometimes there are community events there, like Poetry readings. There is a park there where you can just look at some ducks.
You can get digital books and DVDs if you want. The digital books have "artificial scarcity" because the authors need to be paid, and that's not perfect but it's ok. The digital books have DRM I guess but it isn't too obtrusive. And anyway, I can just go get a paper book if I want, and nobody knows if I really read it or what page I was on at 10 pm last night.
All in all it's a pretty great place and we really shouldn't let anyone ever take it away.
It is essentially mindfulness: introspection (learning to recognize internal thoughts and feelings clearly and understanding where those thoughts and feelings come from and learning how to get...
you accept what is instead of trying to change things
It is essentially mindfulness: introspection (learning to recognize internal thoughts and feelings clearly and understanding where those thoughts and feelings come from and learning how to get more of them or less of them as you desire) and then self-reflexivity (evaluating actions and their impact on oneself and the world, over time).
And it is about having the non-work time and the privacy to use and improve those two skills. A society that values and supports growing mindfulness. Being okay with regenerative non-productivity to the point of erring on the side of some unproductivity. There are different qualities of productivity and different qualities of leisure time. Some is high-quality and some is low-quality. For many people it takes a lot of low-quality time to plan and effectively use your high-quality (most salient) moments.
Maintenance-oriented work with its slow improvement is less sexy than moving fast and breaking things but we should regard both with the same amount of reverence and skepticism. Cultures that reject order are unpredictable and unstable. Cultures that reject chaos are often rigid and inflexible--weak to changes--reality changes and people fall through the cracks of bureaucracy. Brittle systems.
Robust / efficient / productive systems have conflicting independent parts. The power of each part in the system comes from its pressure on the other systems and the equal-and-opposite pressure of the other systems against it: balanced by pushing against the other. Neither 100% chaos nor 100% order.
Interesting watch, I especially liked the discussion around public spaces. I live in an area rampant with urban sprawl and it gets a little disheartening to see how willingly our city discards...
Interesting watch, I especially liked the discussion around public spaces.
I live in an area rampant with urban sprawl and it gets a little disheartening to see how willingly our city discards what is deemed as “wasted space”
Saving this to watch later. I've been doing a good job of separating myself from the attention economy. The one downside being that it has made me even more painfully aware of how sucked into it everyone around me is. It certainly makes for a lonely world.
I have a few observations about this. Actually, I'm slightly reluctant to comment at all because I realize that making a comment about it is actually participating in the attention economy. But anyway.
First, this seems a little bit Buddhist to me. Or at least in the realm of meditation, where you accept what is instead of trying to change things.
Second, I've been thinking about consumerism and advertisement and capitalism a lot lately and how much my local library is a great counter to it. You can just go in there and look at some books. It's information without the information economy.
There's nobody there telling you that you should be reading more books than you are.
There's nobody to compare yourself to.
There's nothing that says "Hey, you liked this book, so you probably also like this book".
There's nobody asking me to smash like and subscribe.
Nobody bugs me if I don't go to the library for a few weeks, or if I come two times a day for a while.
Sometimes there are community events there, like Poetry readings. There is a park there where you can just look at some ducks.
You can get digital books and DVDs if you want. The digital books have "artificial scarcity" because the authors need to be paid, and that's not perfect but it's ok. The digital books have DRM I guess but it isn't too obtrusive. And anyway, I can just go get a paper book if I want, and nobody knows if I really read it or what page I was on at 10 pm last night.
All in all it's a pretty great place and we really shouldn't let anyone ever take it away.
It is essentially mindfulness: introspection (learning to recognize internal thoughts and feelings clearly and understanding where those thoughts and feelings come from and learning how to get more of them or less of them as you desire) and then self-reflexivity (evaluating actions and their impact on oneself and the world, over time).
And it is about having the non-work time and the privacy to use and improve those two skills. A society that values and supports growing mindfulness. Being okay with regenerative non-productivity to the point of erring on the side of some unproductivity. There are different qualities of productivity and different qualities of leisure time. Some is high-quality and some is low-quality. For many people it takes a lot of low-quality time to plan and effectively use your high-quality (most salient) moments.
Maintenance-oriented work with its slow improvement is less sexy than moving fast and breaking things but we should regard both with the same amount of reverence and skepticism. Cultures that reject order are unpredictable and unstable. Cultures that reject chaos are often rigid and inflexible--weak to changes--reality changes and people fall through the cracks of bureaucracy. Brittle systems.
Robust / efficient / productive systems have conflicting independent parts. The power of each part in the system comes from its pressure on the other systems and the equal-and-opposite pressure of the other systems against it: balanced by pushing against the other. Neither 100% chaos nor 100% order.
Interesting watch, I especially liked the discussion around public spaces.
I live in an area rampant with urban sprawl and it gets a little disheartening to see how willingly our city discards what is deemed as “wasted space”
thought provoking. thanks for sharing.