A Little Of What’s Been Lost

[Maurice “Mo”] Pinel dedicated a fair portion of his life to disseminating his ideas, and he left behind artifacts such as his YouTube videos that will forever serve as repositories of his eccentric wisdom.  But there was so much he never managed to articulate, so much teaching he still had left to do.  And because he operated in a field that withered a great deal during his decades of involvement, there is perhaps no one left with his breadth of experience nor his bone-deep sense of bowling’s elemental splendor.
This is what the mercilessness of the pandemic has abruptly robbed from us:  tens of thousands of men and women whose rare and hard-won knowledge can never be replicated.  This is how artisanal skills are forgotten, how dialects vanish, how the stories meant to sustain us ebb away from our collective memory.  And it’s all happening at a pace far faster than we can grieve.
After meditating on all that’s been lost, I could come up with only one fitting way to honor what Mo’s time here meant.  As I write these words, I stand precisely 12 days away from being fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.  I plan to celebrate by taking my kids bowling.
—     Brendan I. Koerner
From his article:  “One Man’s Amazing Journey to the Center of the Bowling Ball“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  July / August 2021
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2018	Pity The Nation (Part 1)
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2017	Sharp-Edged Beauty
2016	Start, Keep, Finish
2015	Lifetime Friends
2014	Acknowledgement
2013	Longevity, Tenacity and Diversity
2012	What Reagan Really Cared About
2011	Seeming Sane (Or Not)

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Bees And Flowers

If you put a computer in front of children and remove all other adult restrictions, they will self-organize around it like bees around a flower.
—    Sugata Mitra
As quoted by:  Joshua Davis
From his article:  “Free Thinkers“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  November 2013
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On This Day In:
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2020	Too High For #45
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2018	Have Thee Paid Yet?
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2017	Hopefully, I’m Good Company
2016	Maybe Not Most
2015	Differences That Matter
2014	But Sometimes It Takes A Village
2013	Laughter > Grief
2012	Pioneers
2011	It Is Free

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School Needs

In 1970 the top three skills required by the Fortune 500 were the three Rs:  reading, writing, and arithmetic.  In 1999 the top three skills in demand were teamwork, problem-solving, and inter-personal skills.  We need schools that are developing these skills.
—    Linda Darling-Hammond
Professor, Stanford University
Quoted by:  Joshua Davis
From his article:  “Free Thinkers“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  November 2013
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On This Day In:
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2020	I’m Just Being Skeptical
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2017	Trump Supporters Will Always Find An Excuse
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2015	A Last Request
2014	It Matters
2013	And You Are?
2012	Not Too Late
2011	Persistence
2009	Health Care?

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Fundamentally Rooted Routine

And yet the dominant model of public education is still fundamentally rooted in the industrial revolution that spawned it, when workplaces valued punctuality, regularity, attention, and silence above all else.
…
We don’t openly profess those values nowadays, but our educational system — which routinely tests kids on their ability to recall information and demonstrate mastery of a narrow  set of skills — doubles down on the view that students are material to be processed, programmed, and quality-tested.
—    Joshua Davis
From his article:  “Free Thinkers“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  November 2013
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On This Day In:
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2017	A Good Habit
2016	The Minds Of Trumpism
2015	Expressing Nonsense
2014	A Real Fight
2013	Unravelling
2012	I Resolve
2011	Practice, Practice, Practice
2009	Phoenix Trip (July ’09)

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Might Still Flicker Or Shine

The central contention of physics has it that the building blocks of the universe will endure even if, or even when, the humans who tally them, and the planet we live on, all die.  To see into the deathless universe is to try to see nothing so flamboyant as [William] Wordsworth’s favorite daffodils and walnut groves, but to peer into the coldest spaces, the black holes and the fractional electric charge of theoretical subatomic particles.  These entities have no blood flow, of course, but also no DNA;  they’re not susceptible to pandemics, however virulent, or the dividends and ravages of carbon.  They don’t live, so they don’t die.  To model the universe as precisely as possible is to try to see the one thing that even the strictest atheist agrees is everlasting — to try to achieve, in a lab, an intimation of immortality.
Back to the living world that’s under our feet.  [Carlo] Rovelli is right to caution against the potential delusions of those who are greedy for eurekas.  But, as a fellow physicist with a radical streak, he is also sympathetic to their ambitions, a drive to “learn something unexpected about the fundamental laws of nature.”  To Rovelli, whose latest book describes quantum mechanics as an almost psychedelic experience, a truly radical discovery entails the observation of phenomena that fall outside three existing frameworks in physics:  quantum theory, the Standard Model of particle physics, and general relativity.  Only by blowing up one of those frameworks can one achieve the kind of immortality that scientists get, the glory of someone like Einstein or Heisenberg.
But to keep looking, as Rovelli has, as Fermilab has with this study on the muon’s magnetism, is also to apprehend hints.  To follow hints.  In that way, the physicist’s work and the poet’s are the same.  And if Wordsworth is right, immortality can be found, of all places, in the hint — the staggering proposition by nature itself that, in spite of all the dying around us, something of all we love might be imperishable, might still flicker or shine or wobble when the rest of our world is gone.
—     Virginia Heffernan
From her article:  “Muonstruck“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  June 2021
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On This Day In:
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2019	Beautiful Rules
2018	Skepticism
2017	WWGD?
2016	Growing Greatness
2015	When It Is Darkest
2014	Knowledge And Doubt
2013	Three Thoughts
2012	Gentle Reader
2011	Leave The Light On For Me Anyway

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Whatever One Can

One does whatever one can for oneness that is greater than self.
—     R. A. Lafferty
Quoted by:  Jason Kehe
From his article:  “A Gigantical Tale Of Laffervescent Genius“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  June 2021
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2018	To Reach The Next Threshold
2017	Streaking Tales
2016	Singular Reality
2015	He Says It’s Hard To Get There From Here
2014	Question From A Founding Father
2013	Make Heroes
2012	See And Hold
2011	Am Not, Are So

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Completely Reasonable To Worry

What I’m suggesting is that there’s a self-fulfilling element to conversations about automation.  It’s not so much that machines are relieving us of activities that are intrinsically rote and mechanical;  it’s more that a skill comes to seem rote and mechanical when a machine learns to do it.  An ability only begins to appear “worthless,” as you put it, when it can be executed by highly profitable technologies.  At the moment, our talents and aptitudes are being made obsolete at such a rate that many people, like you, are uneasy about where this trajectory might end.
…
We consumers are not asked to vote or weigh in on the new devices, features, and apps that will inevitably shape our lives.  It’s completely reasonable to worry that you might look up at some point and find yourself at a historical destination that you never consciously chose.
All of which is to say, you’re right to pause and question this technology.  Given how quick we are to adapt to and assimilate novel forms of automation, it’s doubly important to consider whether a given skill is something you’re willing to relinquish.  In that spirit, I’m going to avoid prescribing anything concrete (what is advice but one more automated solution?) and instead encourage you to continue thinking about what you are prepared to give up.  Are there certain boundaries that you’re not willing to cross?  Or is your humanity just a moving target, its definition staked on whatever remains after the rest has been offloaded onto devices?  The willingness to think through these questions, consider their consequences, and commit to a course of — literal — action is itself virtuous and worthwhile.  It’s one thing, at least for the time being, that we alone can do.
—   Meghan O’Gieblyn
From her “advice” column:  “Dear Cloud Support: My Car Is Making Me Feel Useless!“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  May 2021
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2019	Indian Myth
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2018	Nothing
2017	Approval First
2016	In Search Of Words
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2015	At What Price?
2014	Intricate And Subtle Order
2013	Attention To Detail
2012	Aequanimitas!
2011	Consider This

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One Hour Per Year

If we’re going to live together, the [tech] giants and me, I’d like to ask them something.  Humbly. If you’re a product manager working on a feed or search interface inside of a giant tech company, you have access to hundreds of billions of hours of human attention.  Could you help your users spend one hour a year learning about what’s coming for the world, climate-wise, with a small dose of civics to go with it?
Because, if you did, that would be 2 or 3 billion hours of shared experience.  Two to 3 billion hours of people learning how important it is that we come together calmly.  And that is a beautiful canvas of time upon which to paint a future.  It would be one hell of a product.  We’re counting on you.
We have no choice.  You won.
Billions of us need help making millions, billions of decisions.  Decisions about whether to upgrade HVAC systems, or how to fuel our shipping, or what to plant in the backyard.  Sometimes it feels like the paradigm has inverted.  Technology was the mold growing across human systems.  Software was eating the world.  Now it feels like humans are the mold growing on technology.
I said that there’s no next big thing.  But deep in my soft, uncynical heart, where I keep my most embarrassing predictions, I do know what it is.  The next big thing is us.  Just plain old people.  Humans using language.  Humans accepting limits.  I can’t help you turn it into Q4 results.  I don’t know how to invest in it, nor who should run the conference series.  Nor could I tell you who should host the podcast.
I just know that it’s got to be our turn.  I love technology, but this is faith.
—     Paul Ford
From his article:  “The Great Unbundling“
Appearing in:  Wired Magzine;  dtd:  May 2021
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2018	Small Things
2017	Clear And Warm To Me
2016	Ripple
2015	Amazing Or Full Of Wonder?
2014	Are You Confused?
2013	But The Odds Are Against It
2012	Far Better Off With Books
2011	Timid And Fainthearted

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Looking For Treasure Troves

The key to discoveries is to look at those places where there is still a paradox.  It’s like the tip of an iceberg.  If there is a point of dissatisfaction, take a closer look at it.  You are likely to find a treasure trove underneath.
—    Erdal Arikan
Quoted by:  Steven Levy
From the article:  “The Man Who Conquered Noise“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine
Dtd:  Dec. 2020
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2021	True Originality
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2018	What Else Matters?
2017	Slow Go
2016	A Tiny Ripple Of Hope
2015	Liberating Books
2014	Discover God
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Just That Strange Peace

When asked how we will know when the internet is becoming conscious, [Christof] Koch [Ph.D] replied that the surest sign will be when “it displays independent behavior.”  It’s hard to imagine what exactly this might look like.  But considering that this process will also involve the waning of human consciousness, you might look inward, at the state of your own psyche.
The early stages of this process will likely be subtle.  You might feel a bit scattered, your attention pulled in multiple directions, such that you begin to suspect that the philosophers are right, that the unified self is an illusion.  You may occasionally succumb to the delusion that everyone you know sounds the same, as though their individual minds, filtered through the familiar syntax of tweets and memes, have fused into a single voice.  You might find yourself engaging in behaviors that are not in your self-interest, mechanically following the dictate to share and spread personal information, even though you know the real beneficiary is not you or your friends, but the system itself.
The great merging, when it comes, might feel — and I confess I find this most probable — like nothing at all.  There will be no explosion, no heavenly trumpet, just that strange peace that is known to overcome tourists standing in Times Square, or walking the Las Vegas strip, a surrender to overstimulation that is not unlike the numbness that sets in after hours of scrolling and clicking.  In such moments, the noise is so total it becomes indistinguishable from silence, and even there, amidst the crowd, it is possible to experience a holy solitude, as though you are standing all alone, in the center of a great cathedral.
From an article written by:  Meghan O’Gieblyn
The article:  “Is the Internet Conscious? If It were, How Would We Know?“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine
Dtd:  Dec 2020
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2016	Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall
2015	Restraint At The Inn
2014	To Not Discovering
2013	I Have Less To Say
2012	Not The Best Prediction I’ve Ever Read

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Likely To Be Subtle

When asked how we will know when the internet is becoming conscious, (Christof) Koch replied that the surest sign will be when “it displays independent behavior.”  It’s hard to imagine what exactly this might look like.  But considering that this process will also involve the waning of human consciousness, you might look inward, at the state of your own psyche.
The early stages of this process will likely be subtle.  You might feel a bit scattered, your attention pulled in multiple directions, such that you begin to suspect that the philosophers are right, that the unified self is an illusion.  You may occasionally succumb to the delusion that everyone you know sounds the same, as though their individual minds, filtered through the familiar syntax of tweets and memes, have fused into a single voice.  You might find yourself engaging in behaviors that are not in your self-interest, mechanically following the dictate to share and spread personal information, even though you know the real beneficiary is not you or your friends, but the system itself.
The great merging, when it comes, might feel — and I confess I find this most probable — like nothing at all.  There will be no explosion, no heavenly trumpet, just that strange peace that is known to overcome tourists standing in Times Square, or walking the Las Vegas strip, a surrender to over-stimulation that is not unlike the numbness that sets in after hours of scrolling and clicking.  In such moments, the noise is so total it becomes indistinguishable from silence, and even there, amidst the crowd, it is possible to experience a holy solitude, as though you are standing all alone, in the center of a great cathedral.
—     Meghan O’Gieblyn
From the article:  “Is The Internet Conscious?“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  Dec 2020
The article also appears online at:  https://www.wired.com/story/is-the-internet-conscious-if-it-were-how-would-we-know/
(I don’t guarantee the printed article matches the online version    —    KMAB)
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2018	Passed Too Swiftly
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2015	Titles And Reputations
2014	Unfolding
2013	Again
2012	Needs
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2011	Potter & Prejudice
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Hold That Thought

“I sort of have this joke theory,” Brooks says, “that consciousness is put there by God, so that he has this very quick interface to find out what we’re thinking about.”
—     Rodney Brooks
Quoted by:  Virginia Heffernan
In her article:  “Clean Conscience“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  Nov 2020
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2021	Hold That Thought
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2016	Show Willing
2015	If He Only Knew…
2014	Dared To Love
2013	Strong Kung-Fu
2012	Two Tribes
2011	Made Any Assumptions Lately?

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Access Is Good

Democracy is not partisan.  That’s where I begin this conversation.  Who I choose once I’m inside the voting booth is my business.  Ensuring my ability to get inside is the responsibility of government.  I’m a progressive Democrat in part because I want the system to be fair.  We should not be guaranteed victory, but we should be guaranteed access.  Anyone who believes in our democracy should hold that to be a good.
—    Stacey Abrams
Quoted by:  Gilad Edelman
In an interview:  “Stacey Abrams on How We’ll Beat Back Voter Suppression“
Published in:  Wired Magazine
Dtd:  15 September 2020
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2018	Worry (x2)
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2016	Power Inside
2015	Sometimes I Feel Small
2014	It Slipped Away
2013	Corollary
2012	Working Retired
2011	The Web Is Not Authoritative! (Really?)

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Families

…
The nuclear family, in its brief heyday, was fundamentally an economic strategy, one that made it easier to control the supply of workers and organize childcare and domestic work so that women were doing as much of it as possible for free.  This arrangement no longer makes economic or emotional sense — and millennials know it.  Almost half of us, after all, grew up with parents who were divorced, or in single-parent households.  But the nuclear family remains the only form of family with cultural legitimacy.
…
Here’s the lesson I had to learn:  “Traditional” nuclear families today are no more stable or secure, no more or less likely to lead to lasting happiness, than “alternative” households.  In “The Sirens of Titan“, Kurt Vonnegut spends hundreds of pages coming to the conclusion that the purpose — or at least a purpose — “of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”  The problem with found families is exactly the same as the problem with every other sort of family.  There is no perfect structure, no single set of rules, that can guarantee that people will always be decent to each other, will never have growing up to do, and that nobody will ever get their heart broken ever again.
…
And that, I suppose, is what family means.
It means you love whoever is around to love.  That doesn’t mean you have to like them all the time.  Love takes work.  Living together takes work.  Sick and tired of waiting around in the antechamber of socially sanctioned adulthood, millennials are setting up home right here.  We are not waiting for our “real lives” to start.  We may never have the security or stability we were raised to desire, but we can still have commitment and community.  For me, this is my real life.  These are the households and relationships where I have grown up, learned how to take care of myself and other people, had my heart and brain and favorite mugs broken.  These are our real lives, brief and beautiful, stupid and unlikely, and we would live them far better if we were given permission — beyond the wish fulfillment of fiction — to believe in them.
—    Laurie Penny
From her article:  “Live Wrong And Prosper: It’s The Future Of Families“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  July / Aug 2020
Online at:  https://www.wired.com/story/live-wrong-prosper-covid-19-future-of-families/
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2014	Pass The Soul
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2010	I’m Feeling Patriotic… (Well, more than usual, anyway.)
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False Freedom And Failure

“For a lot of people a car means freedom and social status,” says Janette Sadik-Khan.  “But if a city provides you no choice but to drive, a car isn’t freedom, it’s dependence.  If you have no choice but to drive for every trip, it’s not your fault.  Your city has failed.”
—    Janette Sadik-Khan
Head of New York City’s Department of Transportation
Quoted by:  Adam Rogers
In his article:  “Road Warriors“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  Apr 2020
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On This Day In:
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2015	Still Trying
2014	Destiny, n.
2013	No Apologies
2012	Utterly Convinced
2011	A Key To Effectiveness

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