Collections
Collecting and archiving are ways to reclaim and own our attention—they are acts of meaning-making. These practices are rituals: habits and skills tha
people don’t buy products when they understand them. they buy products when they feel understood.
I met many aspiring artists in my early 20s. Observing their trajectories since then, I've learned that long-shot careers in the arts (famous singer,
Winston Churchill hit the nail on the head when he said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
I think writers want to change their realities in some way. You want to show what’s lovable and beautiful and so you sift through your life and you ca
Once I write a story, it’s gone, it’s like it’s not mine anymore. And I’m not tempted to edit it or change it.
But I also tell them that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time. And sometimes
Take what you can of criticism, but stick with your own gut feelings. That’s really, really important. I was discouraged for a long time before I came
The late surgeon Sherwin Nuland, in his classic book How We Die, lamented, “The necessity of nature’s final victory was expected and accepted in gener
As for the exclusive hold that elders once had on knowledge and wisdom, that, too, has eroded, thanks to technologies of communication—starting with w
The veneration of elders may be gone, but not because it has been replaced by veneration of youth. It’s been replaced by veneration of the independent
Our reverence for independence takes no account of the reality of what happens in life: sooner or later, independence will become impossible. Serious
a personally fulfilling and socially useful life of the mind
The internet taught us to consume everything. Save everything. Remember everything. But wisdom isn't about remembering more. It's about knowing what t
A digital communal garden. Shared beauty and care.
My wife is a painter, and I’ve been paying a lot of attention to her journey these past few years, because she has never put her work online. She migh
Making a living from your work comes so much later in the process of being an artist. The first layer of needs for an artist is to have something that
A digital garden is a framework for speculation around how online space can be designed from the imagination of gardens. Here, the values of gardens,
I don’t have to care about algorithms if I have people who care about me. And I get people to care about me by first demonstrating that I care about t
We continue to ask the same questions that were asked by Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and others. We may not accept their answers and it's very likely
Among the oldest and still most fundamental questions are: what is justice? What are the goals of a decent society? How should a citizen be educated?
Perhaps the oldest and most fundamental question that I wish to examine in the course of this semester is the question: what is a regime? What are reg
"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates confidently, defiantly asserts to his listeners, to his audience. Nothing else matters for him.
