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  1. Sep 2022
    1. you can think about the invention of powerful representations and the invention of powerful media to host powerful 00:11:27 representations as being one of the big drivers of last 2,000 years of the intellectual progress of humanity because each representation allows us to think thoughts that we couldn't think before we kind of 00:11:39 continuously expand our think about territory so you can think of this as tied to you know the grand meta-narrative of the scent of humanity moving away from myth and superstition 00:11:51 and ignorance and towards a deeper understanding of ourselves in the world around us I bring this up explicitly because I think it's good for people to acknowledge the motivation for their 00:12:02 work and this is this story of the intellectual progress of humanity is something that I find very motivating inspiring and is something that I feel like I want to contribute to but I think 00:12:16 that if this if you take this as your motivation you kind of have to be honest with yourself that that there definitely has been ascent we have improved in many 00:12:27 ways but there are also other ways in which our history has not been ascent so we invent technology we media technology 00:12:39 to kind of help us make this this climb but every technology is a double-edged sword every technology enables us has a potential de navels in certain ways while debilitating us in other ways and 00:12:51 that's especially true for representations because the way the reputations work is they draw on certain capabilities that we have so if we go all in in a particular medium like we 00:13:03 did with print so the capabilities that are not well supported in that medium they get neglected in they atrophy and we atrophy I wish I knew who drew the picture 00:13:20 because it's it's a wonderful depiction of what I'm trying to express here and even a little misleading because the person the last stage they're kind of hunched over is tiny rectangle we reach 00:13:31 that stage accomplish that stage with the printing press and cheap paper book based knowledge the invention of paper-based bureaucracy paper-based 00:13:44 working we invented this lifestyle this way of working where to do knowledge work meant to sit at a desk and stare at your little tiny rectangle make a little motions of your hand you know started 00:13:56 out as sitting at a desk staring at papers or books and making little motions with a pen and now it's sitting at a desk staring at a computer screen making a little motions with your on a keyboard but it's basically the same 00:14:08 thing we've this is what it means to do knowledge work nowadays this is what it means to be a thinker it means to be sitting and working with symbols on a little tiny rectangle to the extent that 00:14:20 again it almost seems inseparable you can't separate the representation for what it actually is and and this is basically just an accident of history this is just the way that our media 00:14:32 technology happen to evolve and then we kind of designed a way of knowledge work for that media that we happen to have and I think so I'm going to make the claim that this style of knowledge work 00:14:47 this lifestyle is inhumane

      !- for : symbolic representation - language - the representation is closely tied to the media - a knowledge worker sits at a desk and plays with symbols in a small area all day! - This is actually inhumane when you think about it