Over the last little while. I've been toying with starting a limited-edition email letter. The idea is for the letter to run for 12 months. This will be a paid letter and will focus on a single topic.

Details are a bit sparse at the moment, but I'll keep you informed as the idea develops (or if it falls to pieces!).

With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:

How Common is Multiple Invention? — There are times when more than one person has the same or similar idea. Often, it's not the first or even the best of those ideas that succeeds but the ones that are acted upon the fastest.

From the article:

The frequency of multiple invention is a useful thing to know, because it can give us clues about the nature of technological progress. A very low rate of multiple invention suggests that progress might be driven by a small number of “genius” inventors (what we might call the Great Man Theory of technological progress), and that it might be highly historically contingent (if you re-rolled the dice of history, maybe you get a totally new set of inventions and a different technological palette). A high rate of multiple invention suggests that progress is more a function of broad historical forces (that inventions appear when the conditions are right), and that progress is less contingent (if you re-rolled the dice of history, you’d get a similar progression of inventions). And if the rate of multiple invention is changing over time, perhaps the nature of technological progress is changing as well.

The Golden Age of Japanese Pencils, 1952-1967 — A loving ode to a time, and a couple of manufacturers, who helped bring high-quality writing implements from Japan to the global stage.

From the article:

It may sound excessive to create a national standard for pencils, but these everyday products were very important to Japan's economic strategy. In the highly regulated postwar days, the government prioritized light industry, which produces consumer goods like pencils. That policy decision gave the pencil companies a head start in securing resources and capital. Even more importantly, as the decade went on, Japanese consumers simply had more money to spend. From 1950 to 1960, average wages in Japan rose by 250%.

The Tyranny of Now — The idea that media (social or otherwise) can disrupt isn't a new one. Its roots lie in soil tilled almost 80 years ago by a theorist that the general public doesn't know.

From the article:

Contemporary society was, in its obsession with conquering space, losing its sense of time, Innis believed. With information flooding in from near and far, people were falling victim to “present-mindedness.” They were so busy consuming new information that they had no time to step back and view the information in a broad historical and cultural context. Overwhelmed by immediate concerns and diversions, they shunned the hard, slow work of interpretation.

Building Brasília — A fascinating peek into the whys and hows of carving Brazil's capital out of a site in the centre of the country. It was an amazing feat of planning and construction, though one that wasn't without a human cost.

From the article:

Yet not all the motivations for the construction of Brasília were political; some were mystical, even religious. One of its founding myths tells of a dream that Saint John Bosco had in 1883, in which he prophesized that the promised land would be built on the site where Brasília now stands.