Hobbyist Academia #40
New year, expanded content! Starting next week, I’m going to add a weekly Monday edition of the newsletter. Connector Field Notes will be a home for my shorter form thoughts and ideas- stories, strategies, and observations about being a connector in a hybrid world. I share this content on LinkedIn already, and I wanted to share it here too.
This every other Wednesday format will continue focusing on media recommendations- things to read, listen to, engage and interact with, watch, and attend at the intersection of digital sociology, design, business, and personal development. In other words, my signature academic approach to how to be a connector. I’ll also start each edition off with thoughts about connection, how to systematize being a connector, or some building in public updates about the newsletter and the actual system I’m developing.
Sometimes, I’ll send longer form special editions on the in-between Wednesdays, like interviews, spotlights, and original essays.
If you’ve been here since the beginning, thanks for sticking around while I figure this out!
Read
I read two interesting articles about the rise of the group chat as a sort of in-between form of digital communication, halfway between texting someone one on one and the abyss that social media feeds and algorithms have become. We all follow far more people on social media than we actually care to maintain personal relationships with offline. The group chat may be a solution, offering us more room for context, nuance, and higher quality digital interactions, though it does still contribute to the “always online” phenomenon created by smartphones. Read more about the phenomenon of people running from Twitter to group chats and the social dynamics of the group chat.
In an age of digital transformation and spending seemingly endless time consuming information on our screens, and the resulting social isolation and loneliness, people are looking toward people instead of brands. According to Scott Galloway and his podcast co-host Ed Elson, this explains the rise of influencers and how our parasocial relationships with them are shaping markets and culture.
I enjoyed a recent edition of Sentiers, a curation-based newsletter that calls itself a “futures thinking observatory”. I particularly enjoyed commentaries on shaping the future by consciously taking control of your approach to it, applying critical sensemaking to connect dots and use the friction-full edges of uncertainty to drive change, and framing our experience of the world as an interface.
Watch
Dr. Angel Acosta of the Acosta Institute recently interviewed author and thought leader Maggie Jackson about how to embrace uncertainty. I’m particularly interested in how uncertainty can help us deepen our connections to each other.
Listen
Tim Leberecht, founder of the House of Beautiful Business, recently joined the first episode of Frederik Pferdt’s new podcast The Future is How. Among other ideas, they discuss how the lens of beauty can shape our connections and how to cultivate intimacy.
Save This for Later
Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure by Maggie Jackon (including this one again given her recent interview included above)
The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World by Nichola Raihani
[I will receive a small commission should you purchase a book using the Bookshop links included in the newsletter or through my Bookshop collection, where you can find almost all the books I’ve included in the newsletter so far. Bookshop is an Amazon-alternative online bookseller that supports independent bookstores in your local community.]