Earth: The Pale Blue Dot

This is Carl Sagan reading from his book, “The Pale Blue Dot”. Director Michael Marantz shoots the timelapse for this piece, composes the music and edits.

hitrecordjoe:

originally released on hitRECord.org

PeteForester85 wrote and read not only an appeal for aid to Haiti, but an invitation to examine our freedom, our fragility and our light. RECord your rendition and contribute to the collaboration here. These words he wrote could sound great coming from a multitude…

TED Talk: “Build a tower, build a team” by Tom Wujec

And the fundamental lesson, I believe, is that design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand.And, sometimes, a little prototype of this experienceis all that it takes to turn us from an “uh-oh” moment to a “ta-da” moment. And that can make a big difference.

TEDTalk: “Our mistaken expectations” by Dan Gilbert

There are two kinds of errors people make when trying to decide what the right thing is to do, and those are errors in estimating the odds that they’re going to succeed, and errors in estimating the value of their own success.

We are the only species on this planet that has ever held its own fate in its hands. We have no significant predators, we’re the masters of our physical environment; the things that normally cause species to become extinct are no longer any threat to us. The only thing — the only thing — that can destroy us and doom us are our own decisions. If we’re not here in 10,000 years, it’s going to be because we could not take advantage of the gift given to us by a young Dutch fellow in 1738, because we underestimated the odds of our future pains and overestimated the value of our present pleasures.

TEDTalk: “Why are we happy?” by Dan Gilbert

Takeaways:

In fact, a recent study — this almost floors me — a recent study showing how major life traumas affect people suggests that if it happened over three months ago, with only a few exceptions, it has no impact whatsoever on your happiness.

Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted.

I want to suggest to you that synthetic happiness is every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.

What these people did when they synthesized happiness is they really, truly changed their affective, hedonic, aesthetic reactions to that poster. They’re not just saying it because they own it, because they don’t know they own it.

It turns out that freedom — the ability to make up your mind and change your mind — is the friend of natural happiness, because it allows you to choose among all those delicious futures and find the one you most enjoy. But freedom to choose — to change and make up your mind — is the enemy of synthetic happiness.

The lesson I want to leave you with from these data is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience.

TEDTalk: “Life lessons from an ad man” by Rory Sutherland

“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”
— G. K. Chesterton

"There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose."
G. E. Lessing
"What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. … What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who’s up and who’s down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes."
Dave Eggers

On people

I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals. As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups.

On design

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

  1. You must not dilly-dally, so that the Resistance doesn’t trick you.
  2. You must be your word, so that you trust yourself.
  3. You must have good intentions, so that you do not betray yourself.
  4. You must admit to being the maker of meaning, so that you know what you’re getting.
  5. You must not feel sorry for yourself, so that you do not become a martyr.
  6. You must have a vision that you are striving for, so that your work moves in a direction.
  7. You must tie creativity and experimentation with survival, so that you don’t take your work lightly.
  8. You must be the change you want to see, so that you don’t blame others.
  9. You must rally others with your vision, so that your vision gains momentum.
  10. You must stake your reputation on your better self, so that you become your better self.
  11. You must be comfortable with the consequences of being who you are, so that you grow in responsibility.
  12. You must share, so that your motivations remain clear.
  13. You must make your own advice and take it, so that you trust your own instincts.
  14. You must manage your stress, health, and clarity, so that your core stays in balance.
  15. You must study your mistakes, so that you don’t make incorrect generalizations.
  16. You must retry things you don’t like every once in a while, so that your tastes grow.
  17. You must make time to enjoy things, so that you have time to enjoy things.

     

    My notes:

    • Do not begin with a specific goal. Instead, begin with a set of means and allow goals to emerge over time.
    • Build on prior accomplishments and long term interests, so that early customers view the startup as a continuation of earlier efforts and focus.
    • Have a meaningful picture - a compelling story - that keeps the team together and brings in more stakeholders.
    • Do not expend energy trying to predict the future. Instead, understand and work with the people who are engaged in the decisions and actions that bring it into existence.
    • Fill your future with enduring human relationships that outlive failures and create success over time.
    "Coveting possessions is unhealthy. Here’s how I look at it: All of the computers on Ebay are mine. In fact, everything on Ebay is already mine. All of those things are just in long term storage that I pay nothing for. Storage is free. When I want to take something out of storage, I just pay the for the storage costs for that particular thing up to that point, plus a nominal shipping fee, and my things are delivered to me so I can use them. When I am done with them, I return them to storage via Craigslist or Ebay, and I am given a fee as compensation for freeing up the storage facilities’ resources. This is also the case with all of my stuff that Amazon and Walmart are holding for me. I have antiques, priceless art, cars, estates, and jewels beyond the dreams of avarice. The world is my museum, displaying my collections on loan. The James Savages of the world are merely curators."
    An insightful comment on Ask Metafilter

    “Tightrope” by Janelle Monáe feat. Big Boi
    I’ve known of this miss for a while but was never turned on to her music. This video does it for me. She     is cool. (For some reason, I can’t get over the fact that she was born the day before me.)

    "Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful."
    John Maeda, The Laws of Simplicity
    "When you’re younger, think less and do more; when you’re older, do less and think more."
    John Maeda (via Jonathan Harris)