Upstream #212
thunderbolts ⚡️, psychotechnology 🧠, bruner 👩🎨, luxury 🎁, honey 🍯.
Hey. Howdy. Sorry. This is a little late. But sure look it. Been holidaying. It was lovely. Still running too. Works been super busy too. Hope you’re well. Right. Shut it. Let’s go.
"There was one quality of mind which seemed to be of special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries. It was the power of never letting exceptions pass unnoticed."
Francis Darwin on his father
culture // thunderbolts ⚡️
Went to see the new Marvel movie Thunderbolts this weekend. Without giving any spoilers away, it introduces some big themes around mental health and loneliness. For Marvel, it's quite a statement. Re-presenting one of the most dominant cultural trends of our time. Zoe Scamon put together a great deck on the Solitude Generation, describing the issues young people face (and highlighting emerging green shoots). And Co-Matter wrote a good piece about the inside out. How our culture has moved from seeing the first picture of earth from space, which gave us a sense of global extroverted-ness and connectedness. To one that's now far more introverted and introspective, where often the only control we can find, is with ourselves and our own bodies. You mightn’t be able to change the world, but you can do a morning skin routine or 10,000 steps etc. Rob Henderson meanwhile wrote about The Age of Social Paradox, a new book by social psychologist William Von Hippel. In it, he argues that humans are driven by two needs, autonomy (controlling our own lives) and connection (our need to belong), but modern lifestyles have elevated autonomy at the expense of connection. Social media obviously playing a huge part. The books subheading "when finding what you want, means losing what you need” says it all.
brands // psychotechnology 🧠
We've lived in the everything together all at once era for a while now. We choke on trends and fads. Fashion moves at dizzying speeds. So much so, that strategy and brand strategy can feel ephemeral and all a bit fidget spinner. But what people think and believe, how they feel, what they want, all these things run much deeper. Always have. So beyond tech, beyond fad, sits the real forces shaping our belief systems and changing our worlds. Jasmine Bina wrote about that, describing it as Psychotechnology (interesting deck too). She breaks the opportunity for brands and marketing as three things;
Big Ideas (that drive beliefs and span across culture in meaningful ways),
Market Conditioning (the capacity to re-shape and re-frame categories)
Units of Culture (the shift in how we measure value in culture)
So much change, so much distraction. Good to remember the things that matter.
creativity // bruner 👩🎨
Enjoyed reading this piece about psychologist Jerome Bruner and his ideas about creativity. Bruner believed that the “essence of creativity is figuring out how to use what you already know, in order to go beyond what you already think” and this he believed could be done by staying true to his 6 Pillars of Creativity (all timeless and excellent):
Detachment & commitment - forget about what exists, commit to replacing it.
Passion & decorum - let impulses & self expression out, but respect the creative act.
Freedom to be dominated by the object - let it become something of itself, out there.
Deferral & immediacy - desire and excitement to do, plus the patience to stick at it.
The internal drama - you not only working on creation, it is working on you.
The dilemma of abilities - existing skills & knowledge, while essential, constrain us.
Navigating these, could deliver the hallmark of a good creative endeavour, which he believed was “effective surprise”, or an idea which smacks you sideways—but then makes perfect sense. Nice to be reminded of some of the basics of creative thinking.
technology // luxury humans 🎁
In 2021, a researcher called Daniel Kokotajlo, shared some incredibly accurate predictions about AI (ht Bruce Paisley). He was then hired by OpenAI. But subsequently left, citing lack of safety. This month, he updated those predictions which were covered in the NYT. Scary stuff. AI is 2 to 3 years from surpassing human intelligence. By Sept 2027, it will deliver a year's improvement in a week (exponential). Pair that with this piece on AI in higher education. How AI will provide continuous learning and improvement and a personalised student experience (already here). And “given a choice between an AI-taught virtual class with a high degree of accessibility and personalisation or a brick-and-mortar, human-taught class at the same time every week with little or no flexibility, which will fill up first?”. AI already compiles literature reviews in seconds. Soon it’ll develop hypotheses, scrape data, and write a full-fledged academic paper in minutes. And if AI can design cars and discover drugs, will professors be safe? It’s why everyone's worried about work. But maybe as this piece writes, we should look at humans as luxury goods. When AI can do everything, when answers are immediate, questions and curiosity become more valuable. When we have access to everything, all the time, curation and judgement become key. Well, at least for now.
Five random (ish) things:
Extraordinary everyday items 😲.
Muji’s manifesto house 🏡.
Amazing indoor sky diving 🪂.
What an image 😔
Have a break 🤳.
watching // jungle 🎵
Some soul music for the weekend that’s in it from Loaded Honey. Nice tune, nice video. Enjoy the weekend. Over and out.