Kickoff For September 12, 2022
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Monday Kickoff, a collection of what I’ve found interesting, informative, and insightful on the web over the last seven days.
Let’s get this Monday started with these links:
Technology
The smart city is a perpetually unrealized utopia, wherein Chris Salter argues that smart cities aren’t a boon to the people living in them because of assumptions that data is more important than the people who created it, we reduce the scope and potential of what diverse human bodies can bring to the “smart city”.
The giant hangar poised for an aviation revolution, wherein we get a glimpse into a project with the goal of reviving the airship in the 21st century, and get a look at the challenges that the project faces.
Is your smartphone ruining your memory? A special report on the rise of ‘digital amnesia’, wherein Rebecca Seal takes us into the current thinking and research about how using technology to offload our memories is affecting our brains and our relationships with our environments.
Ideas
The art of listening, wherein we learn about active listening, which grants us one of the most accessible and most powerful forms of connection we have.
What is a Life?, wherein Venkatesh Rao explores that question and shows us that the answer isn’t as straightforward as it may seem.
Reading Ourselves to Death, wherein Kit Wilson examines how, during many of our waking hours, we’re awash in text, and how that’s changing our perception of the world and of ourselves.
Odds and Ends
I’m nearly 60. Here’s what I’ve learned about growing old so far, wherein Tim Dowling takes a mildly-humorous look at aging, but also nails a few truths about getting older.
The Theft of the Commons, wherein Eula Biss looks at how the concept of private property developed over the ages, and what it means today.
The Prehistory of the Fairy Realm, wherein Ronald Hutton looks at the belief in tiny, magical forest beings in the Great Britain of the past, and how that developed into a belief of a single established fairy realm which interacts with the human world.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.