Hi Friends,
Greetings from Brooklyn!
The Practical Polymath is turning six months old today. Back in February, I spammed nine friends asking if they’d be interested in following my musings. Today, 200 of you are opening this newsletter every Sunday. Some of you are new friends I’ve made along this writing journey. Some of you are old friends I’ve reconnected with through writing. All of you are curious minds that I’m so honored to share a piece of thinking with. So thank you, it means the world to me.
Starting next week, I’m going to experiment publishing on Fridays instead of Sundays. I’ve learned that writing and fatherhood are a tough balancing act to sustain during the weekends.
Until next week,
Florian
In Praise of Rabbitholing
I’m reading a piece about the history of gardens.
A quote catches my eye.
I look up the author.
Wikipedia fun fact: he invented the word “robot”.
Ok, now I want to read this man’s work.
Two hours later, I’m done wolfing down a hell of a science-fiction novel.
How did I go from gardens to 1920s czech Sci-Fi? Looks like I’ve just experienced a textbook case of “falling down a rabbit hole”.
I find myself in the rabbit hole space quite often these days so I couldn’t help ruminating about the metaphor. We owe it to Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Intrigued by a pink-eyed rabbit dressed in a waistcoat, Alice decides to follow him.
Lewis Caroll would have loved the Internet. It wouldn’t take him long to see why we’ve borrowed Alice’s pursuit of a weirdo rabbit as a metaphor for our online behavior. Alice had it easy though. What we’re dealing with is a fluffle of wild rabbits calling us in chorus to join them in an infinite network of rabbit holes. It’s not surprising that we’ve come to associate the metaphor with distraction and loss of control.
But there’s something we’re missing in the story. In the opening chapter, Alice feels uninspired by what her sister is reading. “What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations”, she asks. Perhaps Lewis Caroll was telling us that curiosity wants to free itself from the shackles of traditional education. Perhaps Alice’s journey is a metaphor for how we need to chart our own learning path off the beaten tracks.
So what if we treated rabbit holes as the way rather than the accident?
Here’s an experiment you can do.
Pick your rabbit: Choose something to read that sounds appealing. Need some inspiration? Patrick Collison’s book recommendations or David Perell’s favorite links are great starting points. Don’t overthink it. Anything you pick will have rabbit hole potential and might lead you to discover something you wouldn’t have otherwise found.
Follow your curiosity: As soon as an idea catches your attention, go and investigate it. Don’t put it out because you feel compelled to finish what you started. We’re rabbitholing here, remember? Hopping is the way. You’ll come back to whatever you started later. Or maybe you won’t. And that’s ok.
Switch formats: As you’re hopping around, don’t stay confined to the written word. Sometimes I read about an idea I find interesting and decide to watch an interview of the author instead of reading her work. I’m like Alice, I like to add in a little visual experience.
I want to hear from you! How did the experiment go? Did you land in a place you would have never visited otherwise? What did you learn?
Weekly Wisdom
🤖 Book of the Week: Did you ever wonder where the word “robot” came from? It was introduced by Czech author Karel Capek in his 1920 play “RUR” (Rossum’s Universal Robots). It comes from “robota”, “drudgery” or “hard work” in Czech. The book is a page-turner and a humorous reflection on what makes us human and the paradoxes in our desire to rid ourselves of labor.
🧿 Liminal Aesthetics: My recent exploration of our discomfort with transitional spaces led me to discover this visually addictive collection of pictures. Each one of these spaces seems to be suspended in time. They all look strangely familiar and yet induce a feeling of eeriness.
New York’s Subway in the 80s: This series of photographs of the New York subway in the 1980s is a wild ride of humanity.
Lateral Thought
“With the years we seem to enter into a prison of conventions and opinions, concealments and unquestioned acceptance, and there we lose the candour of childhood.”
Karl Jaspers