Brian Sholis

Sometimes you find ideas for the future in stories from the past. This book is the best survey I know of covering adult education, which is pretty much what all education was in many of the decades it covers. The description:

- “She advocates for temporal neutrality—a habit of mind that gives the past, the present, and the future equal weight.”

A humane and mind-opening look at people's creativity, paired with a trenchant call for others—and the systems we all create—to recognize it and support them. “The failure to see disabled people as creative, collective forces worthy of our attention means that they’re left to make life work in a way that’s mostly invisible. Recognizing the... See more

"Any maximizing, economistic approach to living becomes a kind of hoarding as the means and ends reverse and it tips over into irrationality. It’s hoarding when I keep opening tabs, when I try to get to the end of my RSS article queue, when I use iTunes play counts to organize my listening habits, when I buy books I won’t live to read, when all... See more

- "A dedication to the public domain demonstrates that the brand exists to contribute to culture, rather than extract from it."

- “In arguing that faculty radicalism is often illusory I do not mean to suggest that it doesn’t matter. On the contrary, it probably matters more than we generally think, just because elites probably matter more than we generally think.”

* "I find that people often believe they have a writing technique problem, when, actually, what they have is a sincerity problem."

- "the structure of the online environment right now seems to demand that superstar reviewers put up frequent updates. … But if you’re reviewing the kind of thing that is subtle, that takes a long time to really get to know, then the context of review has drifted really far from the context of use. So we’re evolving this perverse ecosystem centered... See more