Category: ideas

In the centuries prior to western industrialisation, stools or benches were common household furnishings, but chairs were special-occasion objects, usually the exclusive property of the wealthy and powerful. The era of mass manufacturing in the 19th century, and the rapid social and economic changes that came with it, brought chairs into daily life for the first time. Industrial jobs, with their repetitive tasks, required a seated posture, and the high demand for chairs that this created in turn made them available and affordable to middle-class people in Europe and the US. – The Guardian

If we cured all the world’s cancers, made the perfect smartphone and achieved the ideal form of representative government, but everyone was just as miserable after as they were before, then — did any of it matter? I think it is at least plausible that happiness, in some nebulous and hard-to-define but nonetheless real sense, is the most important thing in the universe. – Unherd

“To skim to inform” is the new norm for reading. What goes missing are deep reading processes which require a quality of attention increasingly at risk in a culture and on a medium in which constant distraction bifurcates our attention. These processes include connecting background knowledge to new information, making analogies, drawing inferences, examining truth value, passing over into the perspectives of others (expanding empathy and knowledge), and integrating everything into critical analysis. Deep reading is our species’ bridge to insight and novel thought. – The Guardian

While it is certainly not inevitable that children lose their sense of wonder as they grow up, and while adults are in principle as capable of experiencing wonder as children, it is to be expected that, as the world becomes more and more familiar to children as they age, they will experience wonder less readily. It increasingly requires effort to see how extraordinary the world and everything in it is. Familiarity – even if it implies no real understanding at all – can dull the sense of mystery. – Psyche

Someone’s social dignity can be damaged whether or not she accepts her society’s standards. One way this can happen is if she is a member of different social groups with conflicting standards. – The Conversation

The outcome of the debate over AI’s inventorship status and other intellectual property rights could have substantial consequences, particularly for creative industries. – Vice

The anthropologist Marc Augé gave the name non-place to the escalating homogeneity of urban spaces. In non-places, history, identity, and human relation are not on offer. Non-places used to be relegated to the fringes of cities in retail parks or airports, or contained inside shopping malls. But they have spread. Everywhere looks like everywhere else and, as a result, anywhere feels like nowhere in particular. – The Atlantic

In complex systems, the last thing that happened is almost never informative about what’s coming next. The world is always changing – partly due to factors outside our control and partly due to our own interventions. – Aeon

“College degrees are out of reach for many Americans, and you shouldn’t need a college diploma to have economic security,” writes Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs at Google. “We need new, accessible job-training solutions–from enhanced vocational programs to online education–to help America recover and rebuild.” – Inc.

As the pandemic exposes massive historical cracks in the U.S. along class and race lines, it also exposes what state universities have been dealing with for a few decades – and it’s causing serious crises. “How does one advertise an education, or the quality of a school’s faculty? Most students are, almost by definition, not in a position to assess a professor’s expertise. … What a school can advertise, through glossy pamphlets, professionally produced websites, and those iconic tours, are campus amenities: rock-climbing walls, state-of-the-art gyms, and ample dining options. University leadership, looking to compete for students, promises a fun student life, in place of an educational one.” And that’s not something one find on Zoom. – The Atlantic