Letters Remain

  • Media Usage Over Time (1800–2020)

    Accepting its unscientific’ness, Thomas Baekdal presents an inforgraphic depicting the usage of different types of media over time—from 1800 to 2020.

    In the past 210 years we have seen an amazing evolution of information. […] But 2009 is also going to be the start of the next revolution. Because everything we know is about to change.

    The first and most dramatic change is the concept of Social News. Social news is quickly taking over our need for staying up-to-date with what goes on in the world. News is no longer being reported by journalists, now it comes from everyone. And it is being reported directly from the source to you – bypassing the traditional media channels.

    […] Websites have a much lesser role, as their primary function will be to serve as a hub for all the activities that you do elsewhere. It is the place where people get the raw material for use in other places. And the websites and social networks will merge into one. Your website and blog is your social profile.

    via @mikearauz / @BBHLabs

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • What Maketh A Man?

    The Observer asks what five ‘brilliant’ writers believe ‘makes a man’. Jackie Collins goes for talent, Tony Parsons votes for pride, and Jonathan Coe says chivalry… and confusion?

    If I’m confused about masculinity, in any case, I think that puts me in pretty safe company – the company of every other thinking male in the country. Because after the New Man debacle came the 1990s wastelands of Lad Culture, and where does that leave us now? Our sexual politics are in the same state as our national politics: confused, moribund, rudderless. Is it time to try to recover some essentials, to see if there might possibly have been some virtue in that baby we so ruthlessly threw out with all the chauvinist bathwater?

    It’s actually a good question to ask of yourself; What makes me a (wo)man?

    As I said last month, according to Esquire I may not be all man.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • George Carlin’s Last Interview

    Shorty before his death last year, comedian George Carlin gave what was to become his last wide-ranging interview—with Jay Dixit, senior editor of Psychology Today.

    Carlin discusses many things in this interview; from detailing his method for coming up with material to his use of technology and this on the advantages of being an older comedian:

    A 20-year-old has a limited amount of data they’ve experienced, either seeing or listening to the world. At 70 it’s a much richer storage area; the matrix inside is more textured, and has more contours to it. So, observations made by a 20-year-old are compared against a data set that is incomplete. Observations made by a 60-year-old are compared against a much richer data set. And the observations have more resonance, they’re richer.

    […] Now at this age, I have a network of knowledge and data and observations and feelings and values and evaluations in me that do things automatically. And then when I sit down to consciously write, that’s when I bring the craftsmanship. That’s when I pull everything together and say, how can I best express that? And then as you write, you find more, ’cause the mind is looking for further connections. And these things just flow into your head and you write them. And the writing is the really wonderful part. A lot of this is discovery. A lot of things are lying around waiting to be discovered and that’s our job; to just notice them and bring them to life.

    Thanks, Andy

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Perils of Pop Psychology

    In response to Jane O’Grady’s Open Democracy article critiquing the ‘neuro-social-sciences’, Julian Sanchez outlines his thoughts on the perils of pop psychology:

    There are arguments that simply can’t be made in the span of even a longish newspaper or magazine article. If one is writing for a lay audience, in fact, I feel pretty confident that it’s not even possible to clearly lay out the contested questions, or what precisely the various positions on them are, in that allotment of space. At best, an untrained reader of O’Grady’s piece would come away simply befuddled and unsure what she was getting on about. Some, to judge by the comments, appear to believe they have learned something from it, which suggests that O’Grady has given them the unhealthy illusion of knowing something.

    Pop psychology and philosophy succeed only in furthering confirmation bias and the Dunning-Kruger effect among readers, Sanchez believes:

    This brings us around to some of my longstanding ambivalence about blogging and journalism more generally: “Discourse at this level can’t possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.”

    […] People who actually know something are more likely to be fairly tentative and circumspect, while people ill-informed enough to think everything is quite simple will be confident they know all they need to.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Rethinking Prison Design

    Justice Center Leoben is a fantastically-designed prison in Austria that can’t be ignored. Designed by architect Joseph Hohensinn, views on the prison are varied and emphatic. The New York Times takes a tour of the prison, offering some novel thoughts on imprisonment and rehabilitation.

    Before the prison opened, late in 2004, [Joseph Hohensinn] had a solid career building public housing. Now he is the Man Who Built That Prison, a distinction that dismays him slightly, if only because, as he says, “One always has mixed feelings about having one work singled out for attention.”

    Leoben has received quite a lot of attention. In America, its public profile has been limited to [mockery], but in Europe, Hohensinn’s design has become more of a model […]. It is the opening statement in a debate about what it means to construct a better prison.

    I’m all in favour of prison complexes such as this, and my reasons why can easily be encapsulated in two quotes: one from Hohensinn himself, and the other—carved into a concrete wall of the prison—from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:

    “They are criminals, but they are also human beings. The more normal a life you give them here, the less necessary it is to resocialize them when they leave.”
    “All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”

    As the article states, it’s still too soon to tell if such an approach is ‘correct’, but before we can answer that question we have others we need to debate. Some I found myself asking:

    • Does imprisonment work?
    • If you trust a criminal with a better environment, will he prove trustworthy?
    • Do ‘comfortable’ prisons encourage crime?
    • What do we want prisons to actually do?
    • What exactly does ‘imprisonment’ constitute?

    At first glance these may seem obvious, but with further examination they’re quite complex questions.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Body Language and Our Egocentric Blind Spot

    BPS Research Digest reports on a study illustrating our apparent inability to read insights into our personalities from watching a video of our own body language. We are, however, quite adept at making revealing insights on others from similar videos, suggesting we have a sort of “egocentric blind spot”.

    Why can’t we use a video of ourselves to improve the accuracy of our self-perception? One answer could lie in cognitive dissonance – the need for us to hold consistent beliefs about ourselves. People may well be extremely reluctant to revise their self-perceptions, even in the face of powerful objective evidence.

    In my mind I am linking this with an article from The Naked Speaker persuading you to video your speeches so that you don’t miss out on valuable feedback; something I haven’t done for the few speeches I have given and a piece of advice I definitely plan on implementing.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Iran Political System Infographic

    Nicolas Rapp—an Art Director for the Associated Press—has produced a timely and simple infographic depicting Iran’s “complex and unusual political system”.

    Iran’s political system combines elements of democracy and religion. Institutions controlled by the Supreme Leader [elected by the Assembly of Experts] are balanced by an elected president and parliament.

    Wikipedia’s Politics of Iran article (and the accompanying infographic) also helped my understanding, as did the BBC’s take on the issue.

    via Infectious Greed

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Frugality and Entrepreneurship

    Inc. Magazine has a (possibly too lengthy) profile, complete with the expected insights, of Paul Graham—author of Hackers and Painters, co-founder of Y Combinator, and all-round entrepreneurship guru.

    Cheap meals are, in a strange way, part of Y Combinator’s formula for start-up success. Graham wants founders to spend as little money as possible. Live cheaply enough, he believes, and you can become cash-flow positive without going on a lot of sales calls or spending too much time talking to investors. Graham calls this “ramen profitability” and says it allows companies to say no to bad investment terms and forces them to think about long-term viability. […] “That culture of frugality and discipline is really important for the Y Combinator mindset,” says Sam Altman, founder of Loopt, a graduate of Y Combinator’s first class. “The start-ups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.”

    […] Despite having spent five years painting, Graham long ago put away his brushes. None of his work is on display in his home in Palo Alto, and he’s none too eager to talk about matters of technique or style. But one thing painting taught him was the value of living frugally. “It taught me how to do cheap in a cool way,” Graham says. Artists, Graham discovered, don’t pretend to be rich; they live in sparsely decorated lofts and wear cool vintage clothes. “A start-up is that philosophy applied to business.”

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Teaching Children to Argue

    With a primer on each of the “three basic tools of argument” (logos, ethos and pathos), Jay Heinrichs gives a cogent argument for why you should teach your children to argue.

    I had long equated arguing with fighting, but in rhetoric they are very different things. An argument is good; a fight is not. Whereas the goal of a fight is to dominate your opponent, in an argument you succeed when you bring your audience over to your side.

    […] Why on earth would any parent want that? Because persuasion is powerful. Rhetoric originated in the lawsuits of ancient Greece, when citizens who weren’t good at persuading could lose their houses — or their lives. It was a staple of education until the early 1800s, teaching society’s elite how to debate, make public decisions, and reach consensus.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Art Direction for David Foster Wallace’s Books

    Marie Mundaca on her art direction for a number of David Foster Wallace’s books:

    It’s a little odd to design interiors for fiction and literary non-fiction. It’s just text—what is there to do? There are the obvious things, like leaving enough space at the margins. Basically, the designer’s job is to pick a font that enhances what she thinks the book conveys, make all the text fit in the amount of pages editorial thinks it will take up, and decide what to do with the chapter openers and any strange elements, like lists and subheads. Designing Oblivion was easy: I picked a classic font that fit a lot of words on the page but was still easy to read. I wanted to emphasize the density of the thoughts, but still allow the reader the opportunity to linger on the page. I decided on generous gutter and outer margins, and a slightly longer than average lines-per-page count to highlight the structural aspects of the book. Oblivion opens and closes with stories that feature giant, imposing women. They reminded me of caryatids —the columns in female form that stand outside ancient Greek temples. The pages are the columns of that temple. The words are what readers come to worship, meditate, ponder.

    Consider the Lobster was a little different. Most of the book was very typical, but there was one particular essay called Host that required some special treatment.

    Mundaca talks passionately about the design of Wallace’s Host and how well the essay was presented in The Atlantic.

    I found this quote particularly affecting:

    I always knew we would work on another book together. I didn’t know that he’d be dead when that happened.

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    Lloyd Morgan