The case for the hybrid

"The problem with deep specialization is that specialists tend to get stuck in their own points of view. They’ve been taught to focus so narrowly that they can’t look at a problem from different angles. And in the modern workspace we desperately need people with the ability to see big picture solutions." https://hbr.org/2012/05/in-defense-of-polymaths

"I have a theory that nobody understands talent any more than we understand electricity. So I think we’ve done a real disservice to young people by telling them, “Oh, you be careful. You’ll be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none.” It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/growing-up-maya-angelou-79582387/

"What polymaths realize by studying the different branches is that many of them have the same foundation, and if this foundation is deeply understood then all they need to do is apply that ingrained knowledge to a different context rather than do the work of surface-level specialization" https://medium.com/@ztrana/the-expert-generalist-why-the-future-belongs-to-polymaths-46b0e9edc7bc

"If being a generalist was the path to mediocrity, why did the most comprehensive study of the most significant scientists in all of history uncover that 15 of the 20 were polymaths? Newton. Galileo. Aristotle. Kepler. Descartes. Huygens. Laplace. Faraday. Pasteur. Ptolemy. Hooke. Leibniz. Euler. Darwin. Maxwell — all polymaths." https://observer.com/2018/05/people-with-too-many-interests-more-likely-successful-polymath-entrepreneurship-antifragile/

Design

11 years ago, Chipchase revolutionized research and design
"She then uses the airtime for her phone and completes the transaction by giving the man’s mother the money, minus a small commission. “It’s a rather ingenious practice,” Chipchase says, “an example of grass-roots innovation, in which people create new uses for technology based on need."
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html

The overlap and hybridization of writer and designer
"This is perhaps design’s integral role: to help define narrative. I’ve often heard designers refer to themselves as “storytellers”; let’s not forget that the best storytellers have a way with words."
https://design.blog/2017/03/16/fatimah-kabba-on-the-other-unicorn-skill-writing/

John Maeda
"It’s helped me see what a lot of folks had been telling me for a while: that in this new era of computational design, traditional design education has become irrelevant"
https://qz.com/1585165/john-maeda-on-the-importance-of-computational-design/

"Digital design is just behavioral economics with a presentation layer."
https://twitter.com/mulegirl/status/1127974576015663104

The Innovators Dilemma reframed by John Maeda
"Startups are great, but we can learn a lot from “end-ups,” too"
https://design.co/2013/02/03/startups-are-great-but-we-can-learn-a-lot-from-end-ups-too/#more-1229

Business and Technology

"What does Machine Learning look like?"
https://www.graphcore.ai/posts/what-does-machine-learning-look-like

The 4 Stages of 0->1 Products
https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/the-4-stages-of-0-1-products-cdb8236dbf66

"we think about it too much in terms of tools and recipes, when really we should think about it more in terms of process knowledge and technical experience."
https://danwang.co/how-technology-grows/

"we ought to focus on promoting creativity and drive as a means to propel growth."
https://danwang.co/definite-optimism-as-human-capital/

"An inversion of nature: how air conditioning created the modern city" https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/aug/14/how-air-conditioning-created-modern-city

Radically recontextualizing our world

Rem Koolhaas
"If space-junk is the human debris that litters the universe, junk-space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet. The product of modernization is not modern architecture but Junkspace."
https://www.readingdesign.org/junkspace

Gilles Deleuze
"Deleuze is open, associative, connective. Deleuze is digital, affirmative, productive, innovative. In him, we have a blueprint for navigating the 21st century."
http://htmlgiant.com/random/the-beginners-guide-to-deleuze/

The museum as artwork - The Museum of Jurassic Technology
"when I process this place, I tend to think of it as performance art, one that includes you and your response to it as part of the performance. It is a constantly-in-process work of art."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/an-afternoon-in-the-museum-of-jurassic-technology-the-strangest-museum-in-america

Gilles Deleuze
https://aeon.co/essays/a-creative-multiplicity-the-philosophy-of-deleuze-and-guattari

Nassim Taleb
What is it to be Anti-Fragile?
https://fs.blog/2014/04/antifragile-a-definition/

Daniel Kahneman :: Psychologist as Behavioral Economist
"the processes that we’re aware of tend to be deliberate and sequential, but the associative networks that lies behind it and that brings ideas forward into consciousness, we’re really not aware of it." https://www.cfr.org/event/conversation-daniel-kahneman

Being human

The unknown
"The journey, which would pass through the South Pole, was more than a thousand miles, and would traverse what is arguably the most brutal environment in the world." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness

“The next thing he can recall was finding himself in a free fall, miles above Earth’s surface. He was in a roughly stable position — not tumbling. But to see the planet’s horizon, he had to look up, because he was facing downward toward a vast desert landscape.” https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/29/427473040/spaceship-2-pilot-was-thrown-from-the-vehicle-high-in-atmosphere

"Cycling is an excruciating sport—a rider’s power is only as great as his capacity to endure pain—and it is often remarked that the best cyclists experience their physical agonies as a relief from private torments." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/07/11/climbers-philip-gourevitch

Art that barely uses the tools of art
https://www.vulture.com/2018/04/cy-twombly-powerful-art-that-barely-uses-the-tools-of-art.html