Over the last six months, as I’ve been looking for things that will interest me, I’ve done it coldly. I’ve kept a list of things that makes me say, “Hm. That’s interesting.” That is, I’ve looked for things that match the pattern of how an Interesting Idea is supposed to look. But I’ve forgotten to ask myself what feels interesting, as in, “I can’t... See more
Such self-assessments are no great problem at your age. You're young and moving up. The drama of your own rise is enough. But when you reach middle age, when your energies aren't what they used to be, then you'll begin to wonder what it all added up to; you'll begin to look for the figure in the carpet of your life. I have some simple advice for... See more
Similarly, in his analysis of the architectural profession in the 1980s, Robert Gutman notes that architects were increasingly pressured by clients to economically justify the aesthetic elements of their designs, in part because clients were increasingly organizations rather than individuals:
The historian and biographer extends this backwards in time. Now youth find models of honor not only among the living but among dead. To study the great men of a community’s past is to study what greatness means in that community. That I think is half the purpose of these biographies of Roosevelt and Rockefeller, Feynman and Oppenheimer, Licklider... See more
I've shared this before, and I'll share it again in future, simply because I think about it so often. Imagine if this was your creative space... https://t.co/FFws2m3ZLQ