The Masters, Knowledge Debt, Sustainable Packaging
Issue 372
by David Wells – Nashville TN
From the Editor
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem has not been closed for Easter in over a 100 years. And yet this week, people of faith globally have faced new realities as their time honored traditions for Passover, Good Friday and Easter services are disrupted by the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. Very little of life has been left untouched by this crisis.
Yet as many of us round the 1 month mark of social distancing / staying at home, our thoughts naturally have begun to shift forward to the eventual lifting of restrictions and the restoration of some sense of normalcy. To that end, there are have been a tremendous number of pieces contemplating what the ‘new normal’ will be.
To that end, I published a longer thought piece this week – taking a bit of a contrarian stance on the near-universal refrain that major life changes are in store for us all afterwards.
See here – Why Your Life Won’t Change Much Post COVID-19, but Society Will
There is much speculation about how society will change following the ultimate resolution of the COVID-19 crisis. Call me a skeptic, but I am not convinced that is how humans actually change their behavior. For the vast majority of people, this crisis will lead to an extreme desire for a return to normalcy, due to a phenomenon known as “socioemotional selectivity theory.”
All this is not to say change won’t happen after the virus – it just not in the place where we think. Instead, I would argue that this virus is hopefully the final nail in the coffin in this era of human history and how we govern and manage society.
To risk vastly over-simplifying the course of history, the story of the last several hundred years has been that major crises mark the end of eras of history and accepted ways of human functioning. For the last almost 20 years we have been in a period of inter-regnum between the old world and the new world to come.
This period has seen numerous on-going crises that have revealed to us the fragility of existing human structures in addressing the world to come.
Yet as many of us round the 1 month mark of social distancing / staying at home, our thoughts naturally have begun to shift forward to the eventual lifting of restrictions and the restoration of some sense of normalcy. To that end, there are have been a tremendous number of pieces contemplating what the ‘new normal’ will be.
To that end, I published a longer thought piece this week – taking a bit of a contrarian stance on the near-universal refrain that major life changes are in store for us all afterwards.
See here – Why Your Life Won’t Change Much Post COVID-19, but Society Will
There is much speculation about how society will change following the ultimate resolution of the COVID-19 crisis. Call me a skeptic, but I am not convinced that is how humans actually change their behavior. For the vast majority of people, this crisis will lead to an extreme desire for a return to normalcy, due to a phenomenon known as “socioemotional selectivity theory.”
All this is not to say change won’t happen after the virus – it just not in the place where we think. Instead, I would argue that this virus is hopefully the final nail in the coffin in this era of human history and how we govern and manage society.
To risk vastly over-simplifying the course of history, the story of the last several hundred years has been that major crises mark the end of eras of history and accepted ways of human functioning. For the last almost 20 years we have been in a period of inter-regnum between the old world and the new world to come.
This period has seen numerous on-going crises that have revealed to us the fragility of existing human structures in addressing the world to come.
All the best,
David
Food for Thought
- NYT – What We Miss Without the Masters The collective gathering to view the tournament’s poignant trademark finale is as much of an event as the golf itself.
- New Yorker – The Quest for a Pandemic Pill Can we prepare antivirals to combat the next global crisis?
- GQ – Cal Newport on Surviving Screens and Social Media in Isolation A computer scientist on why the quality of your quarantine may come down to how you use your technology.
- R – Knowledge Debt – Credit Farnam Street You should do stuff way before you can figure out how it works. For a while, you should intentionally be ignorant about distracting details.
Business
- FastCo – Footprint is proving that sustainability can scale How two former Intel engineers built the most innovative company fighting America’s 150-million-ton, single-use plastic addiction.
- ZH – Wimbledon Just Got Paid $141 Million On “Pandemic Insurance” They’ve Been Paying For The Last 17 Years – Kudos to this Board!
- RescueTime – Work from home productivity data: Why you (and your manager) shouldn’t be afraid of remote work
- JPM – Jamie Dimon’s Letter to Shareholders Always a great read
Culture/Tech/Science:
- WashPo – The secret, ‘Rocky IV’-inspired recovery of Tua Tagovailoa, the NFL draft’s most important prospect
- Vox – How “quarantine concerts” are keeping live music alive as venues remain closed Live music is now more intimate than ever, thanks to social media.
- BI – Bill Gates is helping fund new factories for 7 potential coronavirus vaccines, even though it will waste billions of dollars
- WashPo – Think you’re out of baker’s yeast? Think again.
- TheFace – OxVent – Could This Ventilator Save Thousands of Lives? In just one week, a team at Oxford University and King’s College London have built a simple ventilator that could potentially save thousands of lives as part of the UK and the world’s fight against coronavirus.