The dawn of the post-literate society

If the literate world was characterised by complexity and innovation, the post literate world is characterised by simplicity, ignorance and stagnation. It is probably not an accident that the decline of literacy has ushered in an obsession with cultural “nostalgia”; a desire to endlessly recycle the cultural forms of the past: the television shows and styles of the nineties, for instance, or the fashions of the early 2000s.

Our culture is being transformed into a smartphone wasteland.

Cut off from the cultural riches of the past we are condemned to live in a narcissistic eternal present. Deprived of the critical tools to question and develop the insights of those who went before us, we are condemned to endlessly repeat and pastiche ourselves, superhero film by superhero film, repetitive pop song by repetitive pop song.

James Marriott, Cultural Capital

Magical systems thinking

Gall's Law:
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.

As in the years after the Second World War, the temptation will be to use this vast increase in computational power and intelligence to ‘solve’ systems design for once and for all. But the same laws that limited Forrester continue to bind: ‘NEW SYSTEMS CREATE NEW PROBLEMS’ and ‘THE SYSTEM ALWAYS KICKS BACK’. As systems become more complex, they become more chaotic, not less. The best solution remains humility, and a simple system that works.

Ed Bradon, Works in Progress