During World War II, Henry Miller wrote an interesting essay called “Art and the Future”. [This article on it](http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/07/henry-miller-of-art-and-the-future/) piqued my curiosity enough to track down a print copy–my first physical book purchase in a while–and jot down a few quotes.
On the purpose of art:
> To put it quite simply, art is only a stepping stone to reality; it is the vestibule in which we undergo the rites of initiation. Man’s task is to make of himself a work of art. The creations which man makes manifest have no validity in themselves; they serve to awaken, that is all. And that, of course, is a great deal. But it is not the all. Once awakened, everything will reveal itself to man as creation. Once the blinders have been removed and the fetters unshackled, man will have no need to recreate through the elect cult of genius. Genius will be the norm…
What is the end game of communication technologies?
> What we have overlooked, in our frenzy to invent more dazzling ways and means of communication, is to communicate. The artist lumbers along with crude implements. He is only a notch above his predecessor, the cave man. Even the film art, requiring the services of veritable armies of technicians, is only giving us shadow plays, old almost as man himself…
> It may be that the revolution ensuing will envelop us in even greater darkness. But even in the blackest night it will be a joy and a boon to know that we are touching hands around the world. That has never happened before. We can touch and speak and pray in utter darkness. And we can wait for the dawn–no matter how long–provided we all wait together.
[Mark Parker’s sketchbook](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019090/innovation-by-design/nikes-5-lessons-on-innovation-by-design) is pretty cool…one page for each side of the brain.
> This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It’s not just ‘What if’ – it’s ‘My God; what if’ – in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming.
– [Philip K. Dick](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/136554-i-want-to-write-about-people-i-love-and-put)
I love [the ColaLife AidPod](http://www.colalife.org/about/aidpod/):
* Designed to fit in the empty space in Coca-Cola shipping crates, piggybacking on the most successful distribution network in the world
* Provides diarrhea medicine (the Kit Yamoyo) along with literacy-not-required instructions
* The sustainable business model provides value at every step of the supply chain
That’s great design. You can [help fund the AidPod project at Global Giving](http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/colalife-aidpods-for-african-children/).
Update Interesting follow-up: the founder says that actually [fitting into Coca-Cola crates wasn’t important after all](http://www.colalife.org/2013/05/30/the-colalife-innovation-map-take-2/)… but it drove them to simplify the product in ways that made it successful.
> What is now proved was once only imagined. – [William Blake](http://www.blakesociety.org/about-blake/gilchrists-life-of-blake/chapter-x/)
[A few interesting quotes](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/07/should-we-fear-the-end-of-work.html) from [Cornell’s recent Employment and Technology roundtable](http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/ICS/InsightsAndConvenings/EmploymentSustainabilityInitiative/). As a new father this is even more interesting to me than it used to be…
The likely false hope of everyone moving to “creative” jobs in the future:
> If you’re talking 100 years, there’s no doubt in my mind that all jobs will be gone, including creative ones. And 100 years is not far in the future — some of our children will be alive in 100 years. – [Hod Lipson](http://lipson.mae.cornell.edu/)
And the thought of what careers would even support 8 billion people all working:
> I have a question for those of you here that are more optimistic about the future. What specifically do you think might be the future economic domains in which there might be large-scale employment? I’m not interested in the cases where there’s a cool new job that really, really smart people who read Wired magazine can do. What I am interested in are new occupations that hundreds of thousands of people could do, in game-changing ways like when the automobile industry once opened up. – [Gary Marcus](http://garymarcus.com/bio/bio.html)
I’m with the skeptics–it’s hard to imagine a world where technology continues to advance and people still have jobs. The question is whether we can steer society more toward [The Culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture) and away from [Player Piano](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)).
> Creativity always comes as a surprise to us; therefore we can never count on it and we dare not believe in it until it has happened. In other words, we would not consciously engage upon tasks whose success clearly requires that creativity be forthcoming. Hence, the only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be. -[Albert Hirschman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Otto_Hirschman), via [Malcolm Gladwell](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/06/24/130624crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all)
Yep, I’ve been there…
Might treating something as an art project sidestep political and personal issues?
> In my experience, the main obstacle to problem solving is an entrenched ideology. The great thing about making a movie or a piece of art is that that never comes into play. All the ideas are on the table. All the ideas and everything is open for discussion, and it turns out everybody succeeds by submitting to what the thing needs to be. Art, in my view, is a very elegant problem-solving model. – [Steven Soderbergh](http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/steven-soderbergh-state-of-cinema-address/)
I find it fascinating that there are thousands of articles and books written on how to succeed and win, and so few on how to be a good person–even though [the two](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5105) are [so intertwined](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=2276).
[This is a nice one](http://www.esquire.com/features/how-to-be-gracious-0513):
> So listen. Be attentive to what people say. Respond, without interruption. You always have time. You own the time in which you live. You grant it to others without obligation. That is the gift of being gracious. – [Tom Chiarella](http://www.esquire.com/features/how-to-be-gracious-0513)
> You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.
> And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it.
– Steve Jobs