Category: Reading

Books, & links to all kinds of stuff I found interesting

[Link] The Spread of Improvement

Anton Howes in this excerpt from 2017 describes why innovation accelerated in Britain, what he attributes to:

the emergence and spread of an improving mentality, tracing its transmission from person to person and across the country. The mentality was not a technique, skill, or special understanding, but a frame of mind: innovators saw room for improvement where others saw none. The mentality could be received by anyone, and it could be applied to any field – anything, after all, could be better.

But what led to innovation’s acceleration was not just that the mentality spread: over the course of the eighteenth century innovators became increasingly committed to spreading the mentality further – they became innovation’s evangelists. By creating new institutions and adopting social norms conducive to openness and active sharing, innovators ensured the
continued dissemination of innovation, giving rise to modern economic growth in Britain and abroad.

 

[Link] Surviving A Fire

Bob Fulghum has faced many a challenge in his life, & a fire that swept through his neighbourhood hasn’t gotten him or his attitude down.

The first question was “What were my valuables?” Not much.
Just me and my memories and my attitude.
And I saved those.
As for “stuff”?
I always turn to the words of the 4th Century Greek philosopher, Epictetus, for perspective.
He said: When a neighbor breaks a bowl, we readily say,  ‘These things happen.’ When your own bowl breaks, you should respond in the same way as when another person’s bowl breaks.  Carry that understanding over to worldly consequences.

[Link] A Project of One’s Own

Paul Graham’s reminder:

Many kids experience the excitement of working on projects of their own. The hard part is making this converge with the work you do as an adult. And our customs make it harder. We treat “playing” and “hobbies” as qualitatively different from “work”. It’s not clear to a kid building a treehouse that there’s a direct (though long) route from that to architecture or engineering. And instead of pointing out the route, we conceal it, by implicitly treating the stuff kids do as different from real work.