Power & Control 101

"Human consciousness emerges on the interface between three components of animal behaviour:

Communication

Play

Use of tools

Behaviour, in this context, is a biological adjustment by means of movements and all kinds of movement-related physiological activity

Communication and play yields symbolic games and, more importantly, language

Interaction between s... See more

rituals are to time what home is to space: they render time habitable - byung-chul han

"In a typical new-product-development process, market researchers comb through historical data, form multiple hypotheses, and check them through experimentation. That allows the researchers to identify a value proposition, which can then be developed and rolled out. The process may take many months.

Anomaly-driven innovation is very different. To be... See more

Rebecca Solnit’s 2004 book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. In the book, Solnit writes about how the urgency of the political moment (then, the Bush Administration and the so-called “War on Terror”) calls for letting go of any fixed ideology. 

“To be anti doctrinal is to open yourself up to new and unexpected alliances, to new... See more

How to criticize something you disagree with

Here are social psychologist Anatol Rapoport’s rules for criticizing something:

You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are ... See more

"Play: Play, therefore, introduces something that can be called “second reality” (Vygotsky, 1978). In this reality the life is going on as if it is the “primary reality,” but with the nice difference that whenever I don’t like what happens, I simply stop the process and go out, or start it anew. This makes play suspiciously like consciousness

Tools:... See more

Solnit argues that leftist organizers suffer from clinging to fixed views on the strategies and practices that lead to liberation. In fact, the idea that these fixed strategies and practices will lead to a static utopia is the delusion of permanence. Instead, organizers should adopt a view of process, responding to the needs of the moment. She quot... See more

Embrace ambiguity. Anomalies usually don’t point to obvious actions. They fall into gaps that are not well explained by current models, and the data supporting them may not be clear-cut. Established businesses often have difficulty embracing this kind of ambiguity, as is demonstrated by the adage “What gets measured gets managed.”

But ambiguity crea... See more

For example, when given an opportunity to buy the patents for the telephone shortly after it was invented, William Orton, the president of Western Union (then the dominant telegraph company), reportedly dismissed the device as an “electrical toy.” The view prevailing at the time was that the telephone would be used merely for short updates—a purpos... See more