Finishing the Bostonians
This is the ultimate trapdoor in the hall of fame; to become a prisoner of one's own persona. The desire for recognition in an increasingly atomized world lures us to be who strangers wish us to be. And with personal development so arduous and lonely, there is ease and comfort in crowdsourcing your identity. But amid such temptations, it's worth re... See more
Gurwinder • The Perils of Audience Capture
We simply cannot trust that sides of our deep selves will have counterparts in those we meet, and so remain silent and shy, struggling to believe that the imposing, competent strangers we encounter can have any of the vulnerabilities, perversions and idiocies we’re so intimately familiar with inside our own characters. Ideally, the task of culture
... See moreAlain De Botton • The School of Life: An Emotional Education
Books you read are sending you input. Your friends modeling behaviors for you. Newspapers. Tools. People you follow on Twitter. The architecture of a Gothic church beaming serenity into you—that is input too.
At the same time, you are also sending output to other nodes. Now, I am sending these ideas into my pocket notebook, which will send them to m... See more
At the same time, you are also sending output to other nodes. Now, I am sending these ideas into my pocket notebook, which will send them to m... See more
Henrik Karlsson • First We Shape Our Social Graph; Then It Shapes Us
Am I who I think I am, or am I who others perceive me to be? And if enough others start seeing someone else as me, who am I, then?
Naomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

"My site is really a record of my becoming who I am. I started so early in my 20s. I didn’t know who I was. I wasn’t doing that much reading then. And it eventually became that. Right now, I rarely read the internet at all. I spend most of my days buried in book piles and letters and diaries and old philosophy books and what not. There’s this term ... See more