Multimodal transport
King’s Cross Station, London.
Quote of the Day
”Always tell the truth and no one will believe you.”
- Ronald Knox
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Bach | Italian Concerto BWV 971 (orchestral version, Alessandrini)
If this isn’t a great way to start the day, then I don’t know what is.
Long Read of the Day
The PKD Dystopia
When, decades ago, I started thinking about the implications of the Internet the two most persuasive visions of our future seemed to be those of two Old Etonians — George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Orwell thought that we would be destroyed by the things we fear, while Huxley imagined that we would be undone by the things that delight us.
Then along came surveillance capitalism with Google, Facebook & Co and Edward Snowden revealed the comprehensiveness of state surveillance and I thought that the two nightmares had converged — that we had acquired two dystopias for the price of one.
Henry Farrell, though, came to a different conclusion — that the world we inhabit looks a bit like the world envisaged in the writings of Philip K. Dick. This recent, characteristically thought-provoking essay, of his updates that nicely. Which is why I think it’s well worth your time.
My commonplace booklet
How to Take Notes (& Why)
Years ago, on one of the little coffins-with-wings that shuttle you from Cedar Rapids to whichever hub will send you where you actually want to go, the man sitting beside me asked me what I was doing. I was doing what generally I’m always doing when I travel: strenuously trying to seem the sort of person who isn’t spoken to on planes, and also marking up a book. But what are you marking it up for, he pursued, as I knew he would; the problem with talking to people on planes is that they don’t stop. He had never understood it, he said, back in high school and college when he had teachers who wanted him to mark up his books, he didn’t see the point. It just slowed you down…
Lovely mini-essay on a subject dear to my heart – note-taking.
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