Category: RareRead
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RareRead #006: The Invention of Buses
We tend to think of invention as the creation of something new. A machine, a device, a technology that did not exist before. But some inventions are less about making new things than discovering new…
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RareRead #005: How Intuitions Work
We tend to think of reason as something we do deliberately. We weigh evidence, follow arguments and arrive at conclusions. Intuition, by contrast, is often dismissed as a gut feeling, something we should be suspicious…
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RareRead #004: The Modernity Machine
We tend to locate the birth of the modern world in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or the Scientific Revolution. Venkatesh Rao asks us to rewind the clock to the 13th century and reconsider what actually…
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RareRead #003: The Use of Knowledge in Society
We tend to think of economic planning as a problem of collecting enough information and using it to make better decisions. If only we had all the relevant data, we could calculate the best way…
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RareRead #002: Who Will Taste the Cherries?
A particular kind of technological optimism assumes that anything worth knowing can eventually be measured, modelled, and optimised. Liam Spradlin calls it computism and begins his argument in a Silicon Valley test kitchen where engineers…
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RareRead #001: Lost in the Good
More writing is being published than anyone can read, and the problem is getting worse as the cost of producing and publishing it keeps falling. Somewhere in that growing stream are essays and articles that…