I want to take a step backward. Who remembers the last email they sent yesterday? No one. Or the last text message. Emperor Hadrian used to say, “The daily business, the daily life, the daily chores, kills the human being.“ I’m not interested in daily chores. We have now swapped information for knowledge, which is not the same thing. I do not want to know. I’m not online. I don’t even have a computer.
Om has an incredible interview with Brunello Cucinelli on Pi.co, which I’d recommend for everyone but especially people interested in design or entrepreneurship.
Thanks for sharing Matt, wonderful read. Got me to slow down and look around Elliot Bay and to the mountains as I walked off the ferry into Seattle this AM.
I too will be 60 soon. It’s not an altogether bad thing but like Cucinelli it causes one to reflect and look at how we can help/empower the younger people on our teams as well as to the big picture.
thanks for the tip, nice read. I did not even know my fellow countryman Cucinelli…
You might want to check Adriano Olivetti’s life (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/adriano-olivetti-century-too/id731675599?mt=11 or to get a glimpse http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2012/01/the-italian-soul-of-steve-jobs.html), another very inspiring person (disclaimer: I was born and raised in Ivrea, the town once known for Olivetti and now for Arduino… 🙂
For most people, living the daily, recording the daily, experiencing the daily is all there is going to be. The daily forms the texture of their little if inconsequential lives. I don’t think this is a new phenomenon. The computer and the internet has just rehashed the old problem in a new form. It’s not the information overload that is the culprit. It’s what we do with the information that needs to be rethought. Hence, I’m always skeptical of modes of thought that reject the most recent inventions (computers, internet) in favour of some imagined, old, idyllic way of life that never was. Taking a step back is always desirable and necessary. It’s just that that’s a luxury and a privilege that most people don’t have. It is so fitting that the quote is from the Emperor himself while his sweeper or his cook might have made those daily chores the masterpieces of their lives as he pondered over the differences between knowledge and information.
Most people will not go to Mars or design a rocket. What if they live a little (vicariously) via information online?