Futures Thinking
Why should business leaders imagine utopia?
Image by Tom Hume via CC
"Utopia inspires people to change the world. It’s all about imagining a better society. Because it is fantasy, it can free us from the constraints of taken-for-granted norms and give us insights into other ways of being and doing. If we translate our utopian imaginings into principles to live by, it also helps us set goals.
"If we don’t imagine the future we want, we’re never going to get there. Instead, the future will be influenced by people who did imagine it but maybe whose values are different from our own." - Charlene Zietsma
Article: Why Business Should Imagine Utopia
How We Live
What can we learn from the "flyover" states?
A pre-Civil War cemetery beside a two-lane road near Freeport, Ill., in 2018. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
"Thanks to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 — the nation’s finest act of statecraft prior to the Constitution — the region that would become the Midwest’s 12 states, all west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas) never, with the exception of Missouri, had slavery. Instead, these states had the crackling entrepreneurial energy that Alexis de Tocqueville, floating down the Ohio in Jacksonian America, saw to his right, in Ohio, but not to his left, in slaveholding Kentucky.
"In 'The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900,' Jon K. Lauck, editor of Middle West Review, recalls that historian Frederick Jackson Turner (born in Wisconsin in 1861) said, 'It is in the Middle West that society has formed on lines least like Europe,' with fewer hierarchies and less deference: Kossuth County, Iowa, is named after a Hungarian revolutionary. Lauck, professor of history and political science at the University of South Dakota, notes that even Wisconsin-born (in 1867) Frank Lloyd Wright’s 'Prairie Style' was a Midwestern declaration of architectural independence." - George Will
Opinion: In Unsettled Times, Look to Midwestern Values
Personal Productivity
"Less, but better"
Greg McKeown has a radical proposal. At the start of the new year our focus shouldn't be how to get more things done, it should be on how to get the right things done. Writing in Sloww, Kyle Kowalski, has very succinctly summarized McKeown's guide on how to do so.
"Let’s kick things off with the Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less elevator pitch:
"Definition: Author Greg McKeown says the most fitting definition of essentialism is 'less but better.'
"Basic Value Proposition: 'Only once you give yourself the permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.'
"One Takeaway: 'If you take one thing away from this book, I hope you will remember this: whatever decision or challenge or crossroads you face in your life, simply ask yourself, ‘What is essential?’ Eliminate everything else.'” - Kyle Kowalski
Book Summary: 10 Life & Work Hacks from “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown
Communication, Media
A new journal that is reviewed by kids aged 8 -15 takes direct aim at a long-standing problem in science — poor communication between professionals and the public.
"The idea that would become Frontiers for Young Minds began with an offhand remark by Robert T. Knight, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley.
"Shortly before the start of the 2007 Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, a dozen or so members became embroiled in a big debate over the review process for scientific papers, both how they were reviewed and how decisions were made about which ones to accept.
“'Maybe we should put kids in charge,' Knight suggested, thinking children could do a fine job, and without all of the drama adults manage to generate. 'This thing would work a lot better.'” - Mark Johnson
Article: Kid-Edited Journal Pushes Scientists for Clear Writing on Complex Topics
Learning
Important things rarely have one cause, and four other things we can learn from Covid-19
"Part of what’s made Covid dangerous is that we got so good at preventing pandemics in the last century that few people before January 2020 assumed an infectious disease would ever impact their lives." Image Joint Base San Antonio via CC
"There are two kinds of history to learn from.
"One is the specific events. What did this person do right? What did that country do wrong? What ideas worked? What strategies failed?
"It’s most of what we pay attention to, because specific stories are easy to find.
"But their usefulness is limited.
"The second kind of history to learn from are the broad behaviors that show up again and again, in multiple fields and different eras. They are the 30,000-foot takeaways from events that hide layers below the main story, often going ignored.
"How do people think about risk? How do they react to surprise? What motivates them, and causes them to be overconfident, or too pessimistic? Those broad lessons are important because we know they’ll be relevant in the future. They’ll apply to nearly everyone, and in many fields. The same rule of thumb works in the other direction: the broader the lesson, the more useful it is for the future.
"Let me offer one of those lessons from Covid-19. I think it’s one of the most important lessons of history:" - Morgan Housel
Article: The Big Lessons from History
AI, Learning
Marketers and agency execs say that they don’t see ChatGPT taking copywriting jobs, but that it will likely be a tool advertisers use to "help the creative process".
"Freelance creative director David Wecal has been testing the capabilities of ChatGPT...So far, Wecal has found it to be 'a tool to develop logic' that could possibly help craft social posts or news releases but it 'doesn’t bring any style or humanity or a unique perspective,' he said. Industry professionals who have used ChatGPT (which is offering a 'free research preview' according to a window that pops up when you sign up) say they’ve used it for brainstorms or to help them get past writers’ block." - Kristina Monllos
Article: Marketing Briefing: How Marketers Are Finding Ways to Use the Latest Buzzy AI Tool, ChatGPT
Design
An online archive of critical writing about design
"Reading Design is an online archive of critical writing about design. The idea is to embrace the whole of design, from architecture and urbanism to product, fashion, graphics and beyond. The texts featured here date from the nineteenth century right up to the present moment but each one contains something which remains relevant, surprising or interesting to us today."
Website: Reading Design
One-liners
Article: Tight-knit communities are a secret weapon against climate change.
Article: University of Maine 3D-prints prototype house with natural materials, making it fully recyclable.
Article: Students who study abroad show more civic engagement.
Article: Dolly Parton is giving free books to children under 5.
Playlist
Certain artists change forever how we think of a medium. Jeff Beck, who died this week at the age of 68, was one of those special people. With totally unique phrasing and attack, he reinvented the electric guitar and the sounds it can make. With complete control of the whammy bar and the volume knob, and an unparalleled ability to bend strings, he built entire melodic phrases out of single notes.
On her Substack page Patti Smith said: "Tonight we lost Jeff Beck. He was quiet as moccasined feet, yet mercurial, innovative, impossible to categorize. One of the masters of my generation. A guitarist in the highest sense."
He was still at the peak of his powers. He had just concluded a US tour with Jonny Depp, performing in Reno on November 12, '22 in support of their collaborative album ’18’.
Video: Jeff Beck - A Day In The Life
Image of the Week
John LaMacchia, “Red Knot” (2016), from the series Birds of America
"John James Audubon’s Birds of America series captures the wondrous appearances and behaviors of North American avians, recording 435 species in their natural habitats. Those environments, though, have changed in the nearly 200 years since the plates’ publication, as artist John LaMacchia makes explicit in his ongoing series of glicée prints of the same name. A contemporary update of Audubon’s watercolors, which were made between 1827 and 1838, LaMacchia’s images seamlessly integrate human trash into the bird portraits, presenting the reality of nature corrupted. In one, a plastic convenience store bag hangs on a branch below a bright Red Knot like a Christmas tree ornament; in another, a double-crested cormorant stands with elegance despite its deadly neckpiece — a notorious six-pack ring." - Claire Voon
Article: Audubon’s ‘Birds of America,’ Updated for Our Polluted World
What's Love & Work?
Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.
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