Hobbyist Academia #26
The underlying act of writing this newsletter is curation. I have curated a precise corner of the Internet for myself, honing my content diet over years based on my interests and the people, companies, groups, and organizations whose work and journeys I follow.
These days, I lean increasingly toward emails I can subscribe to over social media pages I must follow and then rely on an algorithm to deliver via a feed. On the one hand, a feed offers a perceived opportunity for serendipitous discovery. On the other hand, I drown scrolling through feeds and the attention economy has me right where it wants me.
A recent edition of Ingrid Fetell Lee’s newsletter The Joyletter talks about a social media break she’s been taking recently, and the impending possibility of Instagram introducing ads that cannot be skipped. She goes on to reflect that maybe the user experience on apps like Instagram will become so unenjoyable that we as users will actually stop engaging, and these apps will fade away entirely.
With this newsletter, I bring you a selection of the best things I’ve read, listened to, heard about, engaged and interacted with, or made a note to save for later. If your interests overlap with mine, at the intersection of digital sociology, design, business, and personal development, my hope is that my acts of curation allow you to stay engaged with topics you care about without being tethered to scrolling through feeds.
What’s more, curation goes beyond selection and the inherent element of taste and value judgment therein. It is also my role to observe trends and draw connections within the space of my corner of the Internet. The thread I began with Ingrid Fetell Lee’s observations about social media continues with a connection to an exciting new announcement from New_Public.
Engage and Interact
New_Public is a not-for-profit research and development lab working on reimagining what digital public spaces can be, to the holistic benefit of people, communities, and society. They recently announced the Local Lab, an initiative that aims to restore social trust by equipping the volunteer moderators of hyper local digital spaces (like a neighborhood Facebook group) with the tools they need to be successful.
The Future Today Institute has released their annual Tech Trends Report. They’re an advisory firm that helps clients set strategy for success in a rapidly changing world. Sitting at nearly a thousand pages, this isn’t quite something you’d sit down and read in its entirety, but it’s a great reference to look up market predictions by industry.
Listen
A recent episode of the The Atlantic podcast How to Know What’s Real discusses how elements and experiences of physical places translate (and don’t) to digital spaces. The hosts speak with researcher and sociology professor Danah Boyd in “How to Live in a Digital City,” recommended via Priya Parker’s newsletter.
Read
A recent issue of Design Lobster explores the idea of ugly design in a way that my brain immediately related to the piece I shared a few weeks ago about the growing homogeneity of visual culture. If you missed it, it’s in the first Read section from Hobbyist Academia #25. (There were two Read sections last time- I had so many reading things to recommend I had to divide them into Longer and Shorter.) Both pieces actually drew inspiration from a third essay that preceded them both, The Age of Average by Alex Murell.
I also enjoyed the Generalist World essay that was published this week and that is popping up all over the digital spaces I inhabit. The topic is the new Adaptive Economy; it’s where we go after the knowledge economy we know today ceases to make sense or exist. It’s a great, actionable read that will make you think about the evolving role of technology in our lives and how macro trends will shape individual realities for those of us working in the business world.
Watch
In Priya Parker’s recent fireside chat with Phil Libin (of Evernote and mmhmm), she takes her signature principles about designing better gatherings and applies them to remote work. They touch on how and when in-person work makes sense (and doesn’t) as they discuss how to explore, uncover, and ultimately create meaning in the way we meet and work. It’s about the length of an episode of a TV drama- something about that analogy really works for me.
Save This for Later
Adam Grant sent out his summer book recommendations a couple weeks ago, and I got to browse for new titles in person at an indie bookstore in Washington, DC. The books I list here are often the accumulation of one-off discoveries, so it’s a fun exercise to decide which books from a list or a room belong on the Hobbyist Academia reading list.
The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America by Sara B. Franklin
Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas
How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis
Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott
How to Protect Bookstores and Why: The Present and Future of Bookselling by Danny Caine
Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together by Kevin Ervin Kelley
Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections by Anna Goldfarb
[I will receive a small commission should you purchase a book using the Bookshop links included in the newsletter. Bookshop is an Amazon-alternative online bookseller that supports independent bookstores in your local community.]