Is there a good way of knowing things you can use? I've been asking myself this question more frequently as of late.
On one hand, you can train yourself to ask better questions. Which is especially useful about topics that are right under everyone's nose. Take the internet, for example. We consider it infrastructure. Like with the roadways, we rarely challenge the changes to it. But this is failure of the imagination (or pure laziness).
Wondering about the premise
could give you
a new frame of reference.
So I asked on your behalf: Is the Internet a significant break from the past? And if so, how should we think about what we do with it? According to the latest statistics, 4.95 billion people use the internet today. Europe and North America are the regions with the highest use, at around 90 percent of the population, or 9 out of 10 people. Just one out of four people go online in the Middle East and Africa.
The internet has been a lifeline for many during the pandemic. [Pew] But I argue in my article that as more and more of the Internet is less than open and transparent, optionality ( the value of additional optional investment opportunities after the initial investment) has its costs.
We can thank producers for the current infodemic. Which involves a very narrow set of topics, taking attention away from many others deserving of dialogue. Too much filler, too little nutrition: it's any wonder we know what's actually going on at all.
Would we be where we are all discussing one news item on repeat, if ordinary people had actual power in social media platforms decisions?
Topics like burnout, productivity, hybrid work, Elon Musk, and those under the general banner of The Current Issue are hiding more interesting conversations. For example, I'm looking more into the limits of business (1), artificial intelligence (2) and its consequences, with a nod to the future of work (3). Go beyond the hype and you can find a saner, more nuanced discussion of the issues.
Other under-reported and talked about things we could use include scientific innovation on climate-change mitigation, water in relation to life and land, and infrastructure (like the internet) and governance—both being middle layersbetween culture and commerce. The slower the change to a layer of civilization, the more opportunities to research and study the effects on adjacent layers and their pace.
Here's my take on Stewart Brand's famous schematic that underpins so much of my work.
Another diagram I use often shows how the parts from culture to distribution go together to make your whole communication program. I've listed this and other tools on my website because awareness is your friend. Thinking tools are one way to have knowledge you can use.
To replace social media, which takes much more than it gives than the early days, I favor open platforms. Many of you are familiar with Farnam Street. I was one of the early influential promoters of that community. You get tons of value even if you're not a paying member. Though you get much more when you are.
I mentioned in my last letter that I've been working on the business model for a platform based in Europe. I'll have some updates on how that's going in the next few months. But thinking about closed / open and membership as a creator led me to an interesting article by Tomas Pueyo on The Future of Substack. He starts with Medium. I often get questions about using Medium vs. a blog on your website, so bear with the long intro, because you'll learn something you can use.
As a creator, the issue of not wanting to lose the direct relationship with readers is a big one. But when we put collaboration opportunities on the scale, then you rebalance the value. As a solo-preneurt, I know there's tremendous power in pooling energies with like-hearted people. I've tried a few partnerships in the last couple of years that didn't pan out. But I remain optimistic that when values align, people can get behind select principles and collaborate successfully.
It's a similar take to why build a company. An entire market made of single of very small businesses is much more difficult to sustain. Cohesion and not competition is the way, it's always been. Maintaining the ability to continually create and recreate a business uses energy. Together, we can create more socially useful energy; we can find a point of leverage at the intersection of the combination of experience and expertise. The main concern is thus to regenerate resources, not to own them.
Philosophy can help forge a new vocabulary that goes beyond purely economic boundaries to feel and internalize the vitality of a business, along with its ability to maintain value over time. Money is at the crux of all these things that don't communicate with each other – policies, strategies, business models, priorities, etc.
I worked in financial services for fifteen years. But it occurred to me that though I gained a deeper appreciation of the nature of risk vs. uncertainty, I never looked into the history of money beyond the elementary. It's never too late to learn. Since books are the most complete form of reference, that's where I turned to understand money.
I'm taking the advice I'd give myself 10, 5, and 1 year ago, starting with some structured time off to reset with a long, interesting trip. I might still publish a few articles here in the next couple of weeks. You can also catch up on previous, unread issues here.
Read different to think different
Or, you can follow in my footsteps and read different to think different. Is the concept of normality limiting? As a thin concept, it doesn't reflect the full spectrum of human potential. The burden of justifying change is on the people who question the status quo. My track record in this regard dates back to pre-kindergarten.
Here's what I'm reading now:
1. How We Became Human by Tim Dean — social change has picked up dramatically with the disruption of continuity of culture (and class). We need more constructive questions about norms. So we can learn to push back on our unreflective sense of the world. Dean explores the intersection of biology, genetics, psychology and philosophy and how they contributed to forming a narrative morality at odds with the change in our current environment.
2. What's Normal?: Reconciling Biology and Culture by Allan V. Horwitz — a comprehensive exploration of the intersection of two bodies of thought we don't normally associate. Given the persistent overuse of the expression “the new normal” in the last couple of years, this is required reading. Rather than offering a neat framework, Horwitz reframes the cultural conditioning that made courage good and cowardice bad. Biological function and cultural dynamics are mutually impacted.
3. The End of Normal: Identity in a Biocultural Era by Lennard J. Davis — as is often the case, we start looking into certain questions when they impact us directly. The son of deaf parents, Davis discovered that disability is a socially-constructed thing. Normal is a relatively recent word. Except for Normal schools, which is where they taught teachers. The word comes from the carpenter's L-shaped square tool. Davis says, “narrative is a form of normalizing.” And so it is.
4. Normal Sucks: How to Live, Learn, and Thrive, Outside the Lines by Jonathan Mooney — continuing with the exploration to call out how we've conflated what is right with what is fact. The resulting worship of normality masks a more troubling idea: that different is deficient. The concept was created by a powerful system with an economic imperative: to enforce the standard. Which is exactly the problem.
I'm grateful to Dr. Paul Mason for the reading list and more food for productive thought. His idioms of normality podcast should be required listening. I'll have much more to say after the mini-sabbatical to reflect, reimagine, and renew.