Rethinking Repair An Essay by Steven J. Jackson sjackson.infosci.cornell.edu This chapter is an exercise in broken world thinking. It asks what happens when we take erosion, breakdown, and decay, rather than novelty, growth, and progress, as our starting points in thinking through the nature, use, and effects of information technology and new media. The modern infrastructural idealThe fulcrum of these two worldsA creature of bones, not wordsThe world is always breakingA side that goes unrecognized+8 More 104. Site RepairMakers and MakingMaintenance and Care repair
Misinterpretation as inspiration A lot of people think dreams and drugs involve some magical inspiration. I think otherwise. I rarely get inspired by dreams or drugs, but I have my own secret source of inspiration: mishearing other people. Somebody says something, I misinterpret it, and the misinterpretation is quite interesting – more interesting than anything I would have come up with on my own if asked to generate an interesting idea. Maybe it’s a clever joke or turn of phrase. Maybe it’s a neat idea. Sometimes I misunderstand people’s entire positions, and end up with positions much more interesting than the ones they were trying to push. Scott Alexander, Negative Creativity slatestarcodex.com Mondegreen mistakesinterestdrugsdreamscreativitymondegreens