Brian Thomas Clark

We rush because we’re late. We also rush because we want to move quickly away from discomfort. We rush to come up with solutions to problems that would benefit from more sustained consideration. We rush into obligations or decisions or relationships because we want things settled.

By the time the Voice had assumed its current semi-undead form, following a 2020 resurrection, the creeping irrelevance of any bounded and singular context—including that of a town, much less “the biggest media town in America”—had become the kind of thing a person might fail to notice while engaged in the ruthless business of noticing everything... See more

II. Process

I overheard something nice around the office a few months ago.

“ You don ’ t reach a moment of digital transformation . You just keep transforming.”

Speaks to a lot of the nature of work projects, strategy, possibly life too (it’s certainly true in therapy, minus the digital part). Essentially it’s a more clever-sounding way of saying... See more

Another reason for all the division: the self itself is fragmented. As Yancey Strickler says, we are in the era of the post-individual. Strickler’s essay is deep and illuminating, but it is best summarized by a Sean Monahan quote he includes in the article: “Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality.... See more

Every carefully tended knowledge garden is a fingerprint of consciousness: A unique archipelago of interests, insights and inspirations that could never be replicated, even by the most sophisticated AI.

By thoughtfully collecting and connecting the ideas that move us, we not only create an invaluable external memory system (which can be great for... See more

Our oldest and closest friends – those we might call meaningful – have seen us at close quarters. They know our flaws, our faults, our failures; all the things that might make us less than admirable. They don’t like us in spite of these, but because of them. In the end, friendship is an acknowledgement of our imperfect humanity; built not through... See more

A decade ago, you paid for a smartphone to get 24/7 access to a world that, while demanding of your attention and full of advertising, was made up of a greater share of pleasurable, novel, or at least elective stuff: social media; entertainment; communication with friends; a bit of freedom from your desk at work, if you wanted it. (It provided... See more