relevance

It took me most of my young life to figure this out. After growing up as a precocious political junkie I got jaded pretty early. I grew up in a rural conservative family but somehow, deep-down I’m an urban technophile who often hopes there’s no problem that walkable neighbourhoods and Twitter hashtags can’t solve. In [...]

{ 4 comments }

Bibliography

by Brian on 08-04-2010

in creativity,education,media,science

Here’s the completely unrequested bibliography for Truth, Will & Relevance (minus a few cosmetic references): Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams, 1918. Ariely, Dan; Norton, Michael; “Conceptual Consumption.” Annual Review of Psychology, 60. 2009. Argyris, Chris; Schön, Donald. Theory in Practice. 1974. Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. 1869. Barzun, Jacques. Of Human Freedom. 1939. Barzun, Jacques. Clio [...]

{ 0 comments }

A recent tweet reminded me of Clay Shirky’s excellent observation: Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Kevin Kelly called it The Shirky Principle, using the example of unions to illustrate: Unions were a brilliant solution to the problem of capital management which tended to exploit uncapitalized workers. But [...]

{ 1 comment }

Tastes Like Authenticity

by Brian on 06-09-2010

in economics,media,science

There are some valuable lessons in Andrew Potter’s Authenticity Hoax — lessons most people probably don’t want and won’t accept. Here’s some of the synopsis from the AuthHoax blog (I don’t see the need to rewrite it): For many, the search for the authentic is a powerful source of meaning in a secular age, fostering [...]

{ 0 comments }

Picking up the Thinking in the 21st Century thread again… I’m nearing the end of the most philosophical stuff. It all turns on this one… Just a reminder to read this as a proposal — a basis for refinement and elaboration (not to mention citations and evidence), not presuming finality. A few weeks ago I [...]

{ 5 comments }

The premise of this series is to work out a new way of looking at our changing world» Part of the reason we’ve had so much difficulty making sense of the complex events of the past decade is that our ways of thinking — specifically, the metaphors, analogies, and images we resort to — have [...]

{ 0 comments }

In the process of summarizing my last post, Jeff Jarvis suggested I was “searching for a metaphor for what I’ve been calling beta-think.” He’s exactly right — though I wasn’t aware of it when I started writing — so I’m going to take that up with a bit more brevity and focus. The search for [...]

{ 2 comments }

The Best Disinfectant

by OpenConceptual on 07-14-2009

in commentary

This morning I realized I was a little unfair to Glen Pearson in my last post at BrianFrank.ca. I excerpted a bit of his blog as a jumping-off point, but the rest of my post didn’t really have much to do with what he wrote. I kind of left it hanging there as if he didn’t [...]

{ 0 comments }

Hipsters and Signaling

by Brian on 05-24-2009

in creativity,culture

Richard Florida responds to my last post by referencing a 1948 essay by Anatole Broyard, “A Portrait of the Hipster,” via this article: Broyard was less enthusiastic about these supposed new rebels, and saw the attempts to escape from the restraints of society through narcotics, jazz, and general disaffiliation, as merely ways to a new conformity. [...]

{ 0 comments }