Issue 383
A notebook about how we work, and learn, and love and live.
"The only way out is spiritual, intellectual, and emotional revolution in which, finally, we learn to experience first hand the interloping connections between person and person, organism and organism, action and consequence."
- Gregory Bateson
I won't bore or depress you with a litany of horrors and disasters that are occurring worldwide. But as Gregory Bateson says, the only answers are found in understanding the inalienable connections, not separations, between each other, life forms, and our actions and their consequences. In this experiment called life on Earth we are a species blessed with consciousness and cursed with inexperience in using it. We can do this.
Happy Friday.
Futures Thinking
“Being optimistic puts you in alignment with the long arc of history, and a part of something much bigger than yourself.”
The syllabus for most of my education was defined by The Whole Earth Catalog, so Kevin Kelly has always been more than a teacher to me, he's been a dean. He edited the final versions of The Catalog, played significant editorial roles in the Whole Earth Review, and in Signal, a Whole Earth Catalog about communications. Then Louis Rossetto hired him to help launch WIRED, and the rest, well, I'm still learning from him.
Buoyed by the systems view that The Whole Earth Catalog showed me, Kelly, circa 2021, has a lot of reasons for optimism to share. In a world reduced to ridiculous simplicity by the likes of CNN and FoxNews, his perspective provides reasoned and intelligent reason to embrace optimism.
Article: Kevin Kelly: The Case for Optimism
Communication, Linguistics
Dozens of traditional cultures use a whistled form of their native language for long-distance communication.
"A man in Laruns, southwestern France, whistling as a form of speech. Like others in the Canary Islands and elsewhere, local people have learned to whistle their language to communicate across long distances. Linguists are studying whistled speech to help understand which sound elements are essential to comprehension." (Iroz Gaizka / AFP Via Getty Images)
"Tourists visiting La Gomera and El Hierro in the Canary Islands can often hear locals communicating over long distances by whistling — not a tune, but the Spanish language. 'Good whistlers can understand all the messages,' says David Díaz Reyes, an independent ethnomusicologist and whistled-language researcher and teacher who lives in the islands. 'We can say, ‘And now I am making an interview with a Canadian guy.’
"The locals are communicating in Silbo, one of the last vestiges of a much more widespread use of whistled languages. In at least 80 cultures worldwide, people have developed whistled versions of the local language when the circumstances call for it. To linguists, such adaptations are more than just a curiosity: By studying whistled languages, they hope to learn more about how our brains extract meaning from the complex sound patterns of speech. Whistling may even provide a glimpse of one of the most dramatic leaps forward in human evolution: the origin of language itself."
Article: More Than 80 Cultures Still Speak in Whistles
Persuasion
To stimulate a shift in thinking, steer clear of the influencers. Instead target small groups of people on the “outer edge” or fringe of a network.
"What strategy do we take if we want to use an online or real world neighborhood network to ‘plant’ a new idea? Is there anyone in a social network who is effective at transmitting new beliefs? The new study delivers a surprising answer: yes, and it’s the people you’d least expect to have any pull. To stimulate a shift in thinking, target small groups of people in the 'outer edge' or fringe of a network."
Article: Study Finds Surprising Source of Social Influence
Learning
Your mind is an ongoing construction of your brain, your body, and the surrounding world.
"What is your mind? It’s a strange question, perhaps, but if pressed, you might describe it as the part of yourself that makes you who you are—your consciousness, dreams, emotions, and memories. Scientists believed for a long time that such aspects of the mind had specific brain locations, like a circuit for fear, a region for memory, and so on.
"But in recent years we’ve learned that the human brain is actually a master of deception, and your experiences and actions do not reveal its inner workings. Your mind is in fact an ongoing construction of your brain, your body, and the surrounding world.
"In every moment, as you see, think, feel, and navigate the world around you, your perception of these things is built from three ingredients. One is the signals we receive from the outside world, called sense data. Light waves enter your retinas to be experienced as blooming gardens and starry skies. Changes in pressure reach your cochlea and skin and become the voices and hugs of loved ones. Chemicals arrive in your nose and mouth and are transformed into sweetness and spice.
"A second ingredient of your experience is sense data from events inside your body, like the blood rushing through your veins and arteries, your lungs expanding and contracting, and your stomach gurgling. Much of this symphony is silent and outside your awareness, thank goodness. If you could feel every inner tug and rumble directly, you’d never pay attention to anything outside your skin.
"Finally, a third ingredient is past experience. Without this, the sense data around and inside you would be meaningless noise. It would be like being bombarded by the sounds of a language that you don’t speak, so you can’t even tell where one word ends and the next begins. Your brain uses what you’ve seen, done, and learned in the past to explain sense data in the present, plan your next action, and predict what’s coming next. This all happens automatically and invisibly, faster than you can snap your fingers.
"These three ingredients might not be the whole story, and there may be other routes to create other kinds of minds—say, in a futuristic machine. But a human mind is constructed by a brain in constant conversation, moment by unique moment, with a body and the outside world."
Article: This is How Your Brain Makes Your Mind
Creative Process, Photography
"For me, it's about highlighting what I want to love."
This is a brilliant ad for the iPhone. In it Harlem-based photographer, Mark Clennon, shows how he visualizes, directs, shoots and crops. And with the help of Apple sponsored editors he does it all in 5 minutes and 20 seconds. This is marketing — content marketing — at it's best. I learn. The brand wins.
Article: New ‘Today at Apple’ Session Shows How to Shoot ‘Powerful’ Portrait Photos on iPhone
How We Work
Harvard Business Review published a good chart to help decide the format for your meetings.
"As company leaders grapple with what a return to the office should look like, they should take the opportunity to think carefully about which parts of work should be done in person, which should be virtual, and which can benefit from a mix, then can design toward that ideal. The author offers six questions to ask as you plot out your team’s work plan. Given all that we’ve overcome throughout the past 15 months, it would be a shame if we didn’t take advantage of every single hard-earned pearl of wisdom around work, life, and the nexus of the two. Let’s harness our new perspectives on time, technology, and togetherness to rethink how we work — and specifically, how we gather."
Article: When Do We Actually Need to Meet in Person?
Graphic Design
What you see on a book cover is the product of intermingling cultural and economic forces.
"Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby (designed by Random House’s Rachel Ake Keuch) has been one of the most consequential pieces of mainstream fiction to publish this year: a modern relationship story that offers a view into urban trans culture. It’s a singular book wrapped in a familiar package: neon color palette, sans serif title, ambiguous silhouettes. If you look too hastily at the window of a McNally Jackson or Strand bookstore, you might mistake Peters’ novel for Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half (designed by Lauren Peters-Collaer), Desmond Cole’s The Skin We’re In (designed by Terri Nimmo), Ilana Masad’s All My Mother’s Lovers (designed by Lynn Buckley) or countless other memoirs and pieces of literary fiction published within the past two years.
"I’ve been calling this particular trend the unicorn frappuccino cover, due to its resemblance to Starbucks’ coffeeless drink that went viral back in 2017. The bright, nebulous style has become so pervasive that folks outside the design community have commented on its prevalence, and writers in myriad publications have reported on various iterations of it. It is current proof that as with any other kind of graphic or textile design, book jackets are part of a trend cycle, borrowing from looks of the past, and absorbing styles from the present."
Article: The Endless Life Cycle of Book Cover Trends
Oneliners
Article: Deeply Empathetic People Process Music Differently in Their Brains
Article: An Audacious Case for an Ancient Building Style: The Courtyard
Article: Computer Models Of Civilization Offer Routes To Ending Global Warming
Article: Netflix Just Put Hit Documentary 'The Social Dilemma' on YouTube for Free
Playlist
Early this month Charlie Watts, the heart of The Rolling Stones rhythm section since 1963, announced that he would not rejoin the band's No Filter tour in September, which had been put on hold during the pandemic. Then, this week his family announced that he had died at the age of 80.
About him Keith Richards once said "I want to be buried next to Charlie Watts. The hardest job in a band is that of the drummer. I think I’ve improved as a musician just to be able to play with him. My goal is to become as cool as he is.“
Watts, Mick Jagger and Richards are the only musicians to have played on all of The Rolling Stones' 30 studio records, and on all 33 live recordings.
Lesser known is the fact that he was always a major fan of jazz, considering Charlie Parker a guiding light. He was self-taught, learning to play by playing along to the artists who created be-bop on vinyl. In 1991 he formed The Charlie Watts Quintet, releasing a tribute album to Parker called, From One Charlie. It is lovely.
Album: From One Charlie
This is such beautiful music. Here the band covers George and Ira Gershwin's, I've Got a Crush on You, with Bernard Fowler singing the lines more often associated with Frank Sinatra. Just look at the smile on Charlie's face. He was truly in his element.
Video: Charlie Watts Quintet - I've Got A Crush On You (feat. Bernard Fowler)
The band, again with Bernard Fowler singing lines that Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Helen Merrill and Linda Rondstadt had immortalized, covering the song What's New, on David Letterman.
Video: Charlie Watts Quintet: What´s New (David Letterman)
Article: How Rolling Stones Drummer Charlie Watts Infused One of the Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Bands with a Little Jazz
R.I.P., Charlie. Thank you for sharing your beautiful self with us. I agree with Keith. I want to be as cool as you.
Image of the Week
The image of the week was painted and shot by Juan Rivas of Pontevedra, Spain. "Adding to an impressive collection of public art created over the years, the artist painted snapshots of the local landscapes on light posts, road signs, and similar existing structures.
"The main idea behind Rivas' unexpected interventions is to mark the point of view and capture both the subtle changes that happen through the day as well as street art's ephemeral nature. In order to achieve those, he is working from his own photographs of a certain location, freezing its light and color setting to a very particular moment. By doing this, the artist is showcasing the never ending cycle of light and shadow play which revolves in front of our eyes, mostly unnoticed, triggering our curiosity and urge to discover the differences between the reality and depicted image."
His work reminds me of what Rob Walker, author of The Art of Noticing, reminds us to do: "The idea is to pay attention to the stuff we would normally overlook.
Article: Juan Rivas' Ephemeral Landscape Interventions @ Asalto Alfamén, Zaragoza
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