SpaceXponential

This, I believe, is what happened to many of America’s key institutions in the mid-to-late 2010s. They got stupider en masse because social media instilled in their members a chronic fear of getting darted. The shift was most pronounced in universities, scholarly associations, creative industries, and political organizations at every level... See more

Mountain climbers educated in the Alps discovered the vertical walls of granite in Yosemite in the 1930s and began to scale these monoliths. By 1941 climbers occupied a new permanent camp set up in the north side of Yosemite Valley, Camp 4. ... the geography of this scenius is unremarkable. Camp 4 is a nondescript, bland, dusty campground. Building... See more

The geography of scenius is nurtured by several factors:

Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the... See more

The biggest compliment for us is when someone describes Are.na as healthy. We want to cultivate a culture about being curious and going deeper when necessary. We think the feeling of, “I’m interested in this weird topic and I’m going to see how far that interest goes” is way better than, for instance, putting up a picture and getting 50 likes or... See more

What Eno likes about 77 Million Paintings is that he has no idea what will appear on screen, nor what aesthetic effects will be produced. "That's pretty interesting. But what interests me more is the way people experience them. My shows are not narratives. Nothing much happens yet people come and stay for hours in a contemplative state. I thought,... See more