Kickoff For July 14, 2025
Now that I'm ensconced, more or less, in my new home I'll be able to focus a bit more on this letter in the coming weeks. It's nice to not have the spectre of the stress of shifting house and unpacking hanging over me!
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
“How you design the beep is important.” Behind the movement for calmer gadgets — Wherein we dive into the world of calm technology and learn a bit about the challenges involved in creating apps and devices that don't blast us with jarring notifications.
From the article:
The way technology gadgets are designed largely relies on things like blue, often LED, lights, flat resistive or capacitive touch input, and software. Some, like Amber Case, founder of the Calm Tech Institute, believe that these design choices distract from devices' purpose and functionality and are calling for a new approach to product design.
Boredom gets a bad rap. But science says it can actually be good for us — Wherein we learn a bit about the science behind why we get bored, and discover that perhaps we should embrace boredom as something worthwhile and beneficial.
From the article:
In small doses, boredom is the necessary counterbalance to the overstimulated world in which we live. It can offer unique benefits for our nervous system and our mental health. This is opposed to long periods of boredom where increased default mode network activity may be associated with depression.
Most of us will leave behind a large ‘digital legacy’ when we die. Here’s how to plan what happens to it — Wherein Bjorn Nansen explores something previous generations never had to deal with, and offers some tips about how to take control of all of that before shuffling off this mortal coil.
From the article:
All of this raises both practical and ethical questions about identity, privacy, and corporate power over our digital afterlives. Who has the right to access, delete, or transform this data?
In praise of the lecture — Wherein Alexandra Wilson argues that being physically present in a lecture hall offers far more to students than material provided online or recorded lectures.
From the article:
But when done well, lectures can be utterly illuminating, when you are listening to a brilliant speaker discuss a topic about which they have more knowledge than anyone else in the world. Why wouldn’t a student who has signed up to study with such an expert want to hear them speak, and be there in the room, with the possibility of asking them to clarify and expand? What has happened to basic intellectual curiosity?
Should you ever cut ties with your parents? — Wherein Miram Frankel explores the not-uncommon phenomenon of estrangement from one's parents, the effects that it has, and why it happens.
From the article:
When we are children, the power and the responsibility of the relationship lies entirely with our parents. But this changes as we get older. Teenagers often need to blame and criticise their parents in a natural process of distancing, explains Cowley. "But once you become a full adult you cannot blame all your problems on your parents," he argues.
There Are Alternatives — Wherein David Ciepley explores the idea of the stewardship economy and how that can be an alternative and antidote to rampant neoliberal capitalism.
From the article:
All of this percolating experimentation with stewardship control reflects a growing frustration among entrepreneurs with the neoliberal corporation—the firm that orients itself strictly to its stockholders and stock price—which is increasingly seen as an obstacle to building a great and good company.