Most people rush after pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.

– Søren Kierkegaard

Featured artist: SAMji

Dense Discovery
Dense Discovery
 

Welcome to Issue 304!

Sep 3 2024 | Link to this issue

The allure of tech-powered ‘smart homes’ lies in their promise of convenience, a life where automation takes the reins and frees us from mundane tasks. But as Simon Sarris observed in DD295, this convenience comes at a hidden cost: layers of complexity that ultimately create what he calls “an air of unreality”. We surrender basic functions to systems that often obscure more than they simplify.

In her essay The home as a place of production, Karen Rosenkranz takes this critique further (see also her book in the Books section below). She suggests that the pursuit of ‘smart’ comfort in our homes is not just misguided but disempowering.

“To create environments in which humans can truly thrive, we need to be guided by different principles than just comfort and ease. A small first step would be to become a little more self-sufficient again. Learning how to solve shit by ourselves and within our communities will help us to reclaim some level of agency.”

In Rosenkranz’s view, a truly smart home is not one filled with digital conveniences but one that reconnects us to the physical and the tangible. It’s a home of production, not productivity.

“[A home] where some sort of knowledge work is done to generate part of the income, in tandem with some food production and preservation. It is a place for a multitude of activities, a place where we can acquire practical skills like gardening, woodworking or sewing. This home of the future is one of reduced complexity, a place filled with fewer things, but things we know how to care for and repair. It is a place that connects us to the outside, the weather, the seasons, also when that’s not always comfortable. Maybe it stimulates us to spend more time outside.”

In a world where algorithms can automate everything, the act of making something with our hands becomes not just valuable but essential, and therapeutic: “Our meditation apps might become redundant if we spend half an hour a day actually making something.”

Rosenkranz’s perspective is particularly relevant as AI becomes ever more ubiquitous. As she poignantly notes, “We only need to fear being replaced by robots, if we live like robots.” The resurgence of interest in crafts, repair and self-sufficiency is not a trend but a necessary counterbalance to the creeping digital dominance in our lives. Increased self-sufficiency would also strengthen our resilience in the face of turbulent times.

While I appreciate the convenience of certain smart gadgets in my own home, it’s crucial to recognise when technology begins to make us lazy rather than empowering us. Though my city life may limit how fully I can embrace Rosenkranz’s vision, I’m inspired by the idea of a home that challenges us to engage more deeply with the world around us. This is the essence of a smart home: a space that fosters resilience, creativity and productive making, rather than just delivering comfort and ease. – Kai

 

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Grow Your Audience FasterSPONSOR

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Typefully →

A beautiful content creation and scheduling app

Growing consistently on social media can be incredibly hard. Typefully is a beautiful app that helps you create and publish your best content on Linkedin, Threads, X and more. It even gives you personalised ideas and writing suggestions with Al. Start growing your audience now.

 

Apps & Sites

Linkero →

Mini landing page builder

Linkero is a landing page builder with flexible content blocks: from text, photos and videos to timelines, maps and socials. Create a simple mini homepage for yourself, your band or other hobby interest. Friends of DD enjoy a 20% discount. Become a Friend to access specials like this.

Outside →

Shared countdown calendar

This little iOS app lets you display a countdown calendar widget for any event or date. Great as a reminder for upcoming birthdays, anniversaries or holidays. It also includes a built-in feature to help you find shared availability with friends.

Ebookany →

Any content as ebook

When you find a great new blog or valuable online resource, keeping every piece of content open as a tab usually means you’ll never get around to reading it. Ebookany turns a list of URLs (or an RSS feed) into an customisable ebook you can send to your Kindle/eReader or email address.

PodSnacks →

Bite-sized podcast summaries

Subscribe to your podcast through PodSnacks and receive emails with bite-sized summaries whenever a new episode is released. I’m still in two minds about AI tools like this. They have handy use cases, but they also take away from the serendipitous nature of podcasts. Friends of DD enjoy a 10% discount on one year of Pro. Become a Friend to access specials like this.

 

Worthy Five: Grace Burrowes

Five recommendations by historical genre fiction author & recovering child welfare attorney Grace Burrowes

A question worth asking:

What is the problem we are trying to solve? If I think the problem is your impatience, and you think the problem is my hypersensitivity, we won’t get very far. If the problem is how we can more effectively communicate – a neutral but accurate description of our dilemma – we’re off to a much more promising start.

A concept worth understanding:

The difference between expressive and receptive language skills. As an attorney and author, I frequently come across people who can talk a great game. So articulate! So impressive! It took me a long time to realise these same people often don’t listen well. They struggle to grasp subtext, to synthesise new and old material, to absorb analogies and symbols, and to retain what you tell them. Their receptive language skills are as underdeveloped as their expressive language skills are stellar.

A newsletter worth subscribing to:

Bill McKibben’s The Crucial Years is a personal, fact-based take on the global, often overwhelming challenge of climate change as the struggle plays out in the US, with plenty of encouraging news mixed in along with the daunting kind.

A piece of advice worth passing on:

‘Be kind, tell the truth.’ by Ram Dass. If I can live up to this prime directive, I’m doing OK. (Big if...)

A quote worth repeating:

‘Don’t make decisions when you’re tired’, my mum used to say. What mum didn’t realise is that in sleep, the subconscious can ruminate on the situation, and while things might not look brighter in the morning, they could look crucially different.

(Did you know? Friends of DD can respond to and engage with guest contributors like Grace Burrowes in one click.)

 

Books & Accessories

Exercised →

The unnatural necessity of physical activity

Paleoanthropologist Daniel E. Lieberman explores the paradox of exercise, explaining how physical activity, though unnatural for humans in evolutionary terms, is essential for modern health. Lieberman delves into the science behind why we resist exercise and how it brings significant physical and mental rewards. “As our increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases such as diabetes, Lieberman audaciously argues that to become more active we need to do more than medicalize and commodify exercise.”

City Quitters →

Creatives pursuing a post-urban life

Not just since the lockdown era is the country life newly appealing for city dwellers. In City Quitters, Karen Rosenkranz shares a collection of essays by creatives who have left the city for the country, exploring the challenges and rewards of a rural life. “City Quitters sheds a light on what rural life is like today with all its joys and challenges and how creatives thrive outside urban spaces and traditional consumption cycles.”

 

Overheard on Mastodon

I respect how pistachios make you do a little bit of work.

@[email protected]

 

Food for Thought

The home as a place of production →

Read

The ‘smart home’ prioritises comfort and convenience at the cost of personal agency and meaningful living, argues Karen Rosenkranz. Homes should be spaces of (relative) self-sufficiency and hands-on creativity, fostering resilience and a deeper connection to life’s essential processes. “Our meditation apps might become redundant if we spend half an hour a day actually making something.” (via)

Stop Looking At Each Other →

Read

Sherry Ning with an important observation: we talk a lot about how much we share of ourselves online but not enough about how much we watch others do so, leading to judgment and false personas. “The danger of social media isn’t that we are being watched, it’s that we become the watchers. We turn into each other’s audience, judging from afar. We become each other’s data harvesters, knowing who went where, at when and with whom. We even become each other’s digital oppressors: we form a limited perception of who we think someone is based on what they post, and when they do something that doesn’t conform to the imposed image of them, we punish them. ‘You fell off.’ ‘I was a fan but you went too far.’ ‘Unfollowed.’”

The Quiet Power of Car-Free Neighborhoods →

Read

Cities like Leipzig in Germany show that reducing vehicle traffic creates vibrant, tranquil spaces that attract more visitors and boost local businesses. But a lesser known side effect is the major health benefit of less noise. “In Denmark, a multiyear study of 2 million people aged 60 and over found that fully 11% of dementia diagnoses could be attributed to roadway noise.”

 

Aesthetically Pleasing

British photographer James Mollison created the series The Disciples: 56 photo montages of music fans outside concerts.

Tapedeck.org showcases the beauty and weirdness of the classic cassette tape design. “There’s an amazing range of designs, starting from the early ’60s functional cassette designs, moving through the colourful playfulness of the ’70s audio tapes to amazing shape variations during the ’80s and ’90s.”

Check out the stunning winners of The Ocean Photographer of the Year“a celebration of our beautiful blue planet, as well as a platform to highlight the many plights it is facing”. (Top by Florian Ledoux, bottom by Zhang Xiang)

The graceful Tuppence includes a marvelous selection of catch words, swash capitals, ligatures, arrows, and over a hundred beautiful ornaments

 

Notable Numbers

630,000

The iconic fedora hat Harrison Ford wore in Indiana Jones – The Temple of Doom fetched $630,000 at a recent auction.

4.3

In 2023, over 12,000 different lobbyists in the US spent a record $4.3 billion on lobbying activities, according to Open Secrets, a non-profit research group tracking money in US politics. This was up from $4.1 billion in 2022 – and the highest annual total so far.

57.2

Overall consumer spending on video games in the US totalled $57.2 billion in 2023. This includes profits from all video game content categories, video game hardware and video game accessories.

 

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The Week in a GIF

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