("JP")

I’ve recently been exploring the metaphor of work as trace – that it isn’t so much about what we put out into the world as how we put it out; that the thing we really ought to care about, the thing that ultimately matters, is the intention from which the work emerges. The rest is all mirror, representation, resemblance.

I’ve started to think of “cultural artifacts” and “memes” as particles in a chaotic pressure chamber of social forces. I want to introduce the concept of the meme as “radioactive cultural product” – radioactive because of two properties: radiation and half-life .

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” Million dollar words!

Why are rising labor costs expressed as less detail/ornamentation? Some kinds of activities — performing a string quartet is the canonical example — just intrinsically require a certain amount of labor. No amount of economic growth will alter the fact that it takes four musicians about 15 minutes each to play Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. But why does... See more