added by Ian Vanagas and · updated 1y ago
A Big Little Idea Called Legibility
- High-modernist (think Bauhaus and Le Corbusier) aesthetics necessarily lead to simplification, since a reality that serves many purposes presents itself as illegible to a vision informed by a singular purpose. Any elements that are non-functional with respect to the singular purpose tend to confuse, and are therefore eliminated during the attempt t... See more
from A Big Little Idea Called Legibility by Venkatesh Rao
Ian Vanagas added 2y ago
- Perhaps no other civilization, either in antiquity or today, was so fond of legible and governable social realities (than the Roman empire).
from A Big Little Idea Called Legibility by Venkatesh Rao
Ian Vanagas added 2y ago
- Choice architecture (described as “Libertarian Paternalism” by its advocates) seems to merely dress up authoritarian high-modernism with a thin coat of caution and empirical experimentation. The basic and dangerous “I am more scientific/rational than thou” paternalism is still the central dogma.
from A Big Little Idea Called Legibility by Venkatesh Rao
Ian Vanagas added 2y ago
- The more I examined these efforts at sedentarization, the more I came to see them as a state’s attempt to make a society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion. Having begun to think in these terms, I began to see legibility as a central problem i... See more
from A Big Little Idea Called Legibility by Venkatesh Rao
Ian Vanagas added 2y ago
- The state is not actually interested in the rich functional structure and complex behavior of the very organic entities that it governs (and indeed, is part of, rather than “above”). It merely views them as resources that must be organized in order to yield optimal returns according to a centralized, narrow, and strictly utilitarian logic.
from A Big Little Idea Called Legibility by Venkatesh Rao
Ian Vanagas added 2y ago