change
What others want them to be
The subtlest slightest kinds of differences
Focus on the rate of change
When we hit our lowest point
Interlocking
Scales of change
A directional quality
A gradual refinement
All things change
The authors of this prognostication evidently assumed that the introduction of the sewing machine would result in more sewing – and easier sewing – by those who had always sewn. They would do the work they had always done in an unchanged setting. Reality turned out to be quite different.
It should be evident by now that there is no such thing as "just introducing" a new gadget to do one particular task. It is foolish to assume that everything else in such a situation will remain the same; all things change when one thing changes.
Ever, Never
EVER PRESENT, NEVER TWICE THE SAME EVER CHANGING, NEVER LESS THAN WHOLE
We change them and are changed
"We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed."
— Frank Bidart, Borges and I
How Buildings Learn
A Book by Stewart BrandBe A (Re)Visitor
An Article by Rob WalkerI was thinking about this not long ago while reading in Petapixel an essay by a photographer named Scott Reither, “Long Form Study: Why Photographers Should Repeatedly Revisit A Scene.” In it, he described photographing one particular stretch of beach, over and over, throughout his career.
Of course that landscape has changed over time, and of course he’s had moments when he felt he’d captured the same territory so many times there was nothing left to see.
But there was always something more to see — maybe because of a change in Reither’s life, rather than in the physical environment.
The Sheaves
A Poem by Edwin Arlington RobinsonWhere long the shadows of the wind had rolled,
Green wheat was yielding to the change assigned;
And as by some vast magic undivined
The world was turning slowly into gold.
Like nothing that was ever bought or sold
It waited there, the body and the mind;
And with a mighty meaning of a kind
That tells the more the more it is not told.So in a land where all days are not fair,
Fair days went on till on another day
A thousand golden sheaves were lying there,
Shining and still, but not for long to stay—
As if a thousand girls with golden hair
Might rise from where they slept and go away.Theory of Change
An Essay by Aaron SwartzA theory of change is the opposite of a theory of action — it works backwards from the goal, in concrete steps, to figure out what you can do to achieve it. To develop a theory of change, you need to start at the end and repeatedly ask yourself, “Concretely, how does one achieve that?”
When decades happen
A Quote by Vladmir LeninThere are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen.
Ancient magicians as innovation consultants
The Codex Justinianus (534 AD), being the book of law for ancient Rome at that time, banned magicians and, in doing so, itemised the types:
- A haruspex is one who prognosticates from sacrificed animals and their internal organs;
- a mathematicus, one who reads the course of the stars;
- a hariolus, a soothsayer, inhaling vapors, as at Delphi;
- augurs, who read the future by the flight and sound of birds;
- a vates, an inspired person - prophet;
- chaldeans and magus are general names for magicians;
- maleficus means an enchanter or poisoner.
I happen to have spent my career in a number of fields that promise to have some kind of claim to supernatural powers: design, innovation, startups…
It’s not hard to run through a few archetypes of the people in those worlds, and map them onto types of ancient magician.
- Those like Steve Jobs (with his famous Reality Distortion Field) who can convincingly tell a story of the future, and by doing so, bring it about by getting others to follow them – prophets.
- Inhaling the vapours and pronouncing gnomic truths? You’ll find all the thought leaders you want in Delphi, sorry, on LinkedIn.
- Those with a good intuition about the future who bring it to life with theatre, and putting people in a state of great excitement so they respond – ad planners. Haruspex.
- Those who have the golden mane of charisma: enchanters. Startup founders.
- People with a great aptitude for systems and numbers, who can tell by intuition what will happen, from systems that stump the rest of us. We call them analysts now. MBAs. Perhaps the same aptitude drew them to read the stars before? Mathematicus.