SpaceXponential
@spacexponential
Conscientious Questioner
SpaceXponential
In the 20th century, America built the most capable knowledge-producing institutions in human history. In the past decade, they got stupider en masse. In his book The Constitution of Knowledge, Jonathan Rauch describes the historical breakthrough in which Western societies developed an “epistemic operating system”—that is, a set of institutions... See more
Jonathan Haidt • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
Most of what the crypto world calls art is entertainment, or fashionable assets. They snatch your attention. They care more about making a tweet or a headline declaring they SOLD OUT, they set a HISTORICAL RECORD, and they tell you this is the art’s value. But the value of what? Monetary value is not a good indicator of the aesthetic value, the... See more
Wendi Yan • An Artist in Crypto
Science holds all knowledge as tentative and uncertain.
While people tend to accept this in theory, the metaphor of Facts connotes certainty and permanence, and inspires a fervor often indistinguishable from religious fundamentalism.
The metaphor of Facts thus creates a countercurrent to the spirit of science in public discourse and everyday life.
Mike Elias • Wittgenstein’s Revenge
In a way, crypto only magnifies or exposes the historically intimate ties between art, status and money. When we are in the thick of operating in the art system, it’s easy to forget how the aesthetic value, historical value, monetary value are actively negotiated for each art object. What web3 did was simply render art as a literal currency.
Wendi Yan • An Artist in Crypto
Now, though, I realize that this confusion stems from making the same mistake I did in that old analysis of Facebook: I was looking to the real world as a guide to understanding the Internet, when it was in fact inevitable that the Internet would, over time, come to impact the real world. Some of that impact will be fleeting, like many of the... See more
Stratechery • Mistakes and Memes
“Meaningless” is how some people put it. It’s just too easy to peek under the hood and realize there’s no master plan or final destination.
Molly Mielke • callings
The geography of scenius is nurtured by several factors:
Kevin Kelly • Scenius, or Communal Genius
A university museum worthy of its name must become at least as much a laboratory as, say, a university library. An archive must become a place of teaching and hands‐on learning. The classroom must become a place of hands‐on engagement with the material remains of the past where the tasks of processing, annotating, and sequencing are integral to... See more
Todd Presner • The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0
Del.icio.us made us realize the importance of archiving casual web (and other) research. That process has a lot of positive effects that are hard to explain until you’ve built a habit out of it. For one, there’s a self-discovery that happens when you revisit things you’ve accumulated over a period of time. You look back and begin to recognize... See more