#3,028: The Greatest Books of 2023

The ten books that I thought were the greatest of 2023. They weren’t necessarily released in 2023. Just ones that I read this past year. If you are interested in checking any of them out please purchase through my bookshop! https://bookshop.org/shop/greatestbooksever

The Body – A Guide For Occupants by Bill Bryson: Bryson was already responsible for launching my interest in non-fiction books with his A Short History of Nearly Everything and he delivers again with this book which takes a look, chapter by chapter, at how each part of our bodies functions and how we figured that out.

Extra Life: My favorite author Steven Johnson added to his collection with this book that tells the story of one of humanity’s greatest achievements: extending our life span.

The Future is Faster Than You Think: I’m a huge Peter Diamandis fan and especially of his series of books on exponential technology that he co-writes with acclaimed non-fiction writer Steven Kotler. This was the latest offering in the series.

The Art of Impossible: Speaking of Kotler he wrote this interesting book about peak performance, his primary area of expertise.

How To Invent Everything: I love books like this by Ryan North that teach you new things about how the entire world works. This time under the guise of being a guide that a time traveler took back with them to past to try and rebuild civilization.

How to Take Over the World: Quite possibly my new favorite book of all-time. I wanted to read something else by North after enjoying How to Invent Everything and now I want to read everything he ever writes. In this book he uses the premise of acting like a super villain to take over the world to talk about and explain various technologies that are emerging on the scene.

So You Created a Wormhole – Another humorous time travel guide that aims to be informative this book by Phil Hornshaw is at its best when its referencing science fiction movies but falls flat when trying to tell how you survive in various time periods.

Irrestible – Adam Alter wrote this equally hard to put down book about how technology is designed to be addictive. A topic that I always find myself interested in learning about as I live through it myself.

Scale – A dense book by Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute that looks at the surprising science of scale and how unknown universal laws are secretly powering the worlds of biology and physics and everything in between. The chapter about the Santa Fe Institute itself was my favorite.

Overcomplicated – This book by Samuel Arbesman looks at how complicated our technology is becoming. Hint: it’s getting very complicated. Getting us to the point where soon no one will know how it all works.

The greatest books of 2023.

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#2,800 – AI Month: Khanmigo

The fears early on were that AI and ChatGPT in particular were going to upend education with students handing in AI generated essays or getting AI to do their homework for them. But AI could also be good for education. As Khan Academy is about to prove with their AI tool Khanmigo that aims to serve as a tutor and teaching assistant all rolled into one.

Fast Company sums it up best:

“Many students are already using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools to assist with their homework—sometimes against their teachers’ wishes. Khan Academy’s approach stands out because it’s designed to answer students’ questions without giving away the answers, and to integrate with the organization’s existing videos and exercises.

In a demonstration for Fast Company, Khan showed how the chatbot, dubbed Khanmigo, can guide students through math problems, help debug code, serve as a debate partner, and even engage in conversation in the voices of literary characters like Hamlet and Jay Gatsby.

The project began last June, when Khan received an introductory email from Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s CEO and president, respectively. The two offered a private demo of the AI software, and Khan was impressed with the program’s ability to answer questions intelligently about various academic materials.

Khan soon found himself spending late nights experimenting with prompts to the software that would have it take an educational role. ‘I was pulling all-nighters, getting it to act like a tutor, getting it to take on different personas, getting it to develop lesson plans,’ he says.

Khan Academy, which began in 2008 as a series of engaging educational videos posted by Khan to YouTube, has made a name for itself with online instructional materials covering everything from math and coding to art history and English grammar, all available for free and supported by donations and grants. The organization has a team of more than 150—about half of whom, Khan says, are now working in some capacity with AI tech.

Rather than having students and teachers interact with general-purpose ChatGPT, Khan Academy gave the AI model additional training and crafted custom prompts for specific situations, so Khanmigo can appear alongside existing videos and assignments. For instance, when Khanmigo is deployed with a video, the AI system has access to the entire transcript of the video; math-related interactions are designed to include special prompts to ensure the AI carefully reasons through a problem before simply spitting out an answer to a student’s question.

The AI can also spot issues with students’ programming code likely faster than most human instructors would—something Khan says is potentially especially useful for students who have limited access to expert coding teachers—and it’s prompted to lead students in the right direction rather than simply providing an answer or telling them they’re right or wrong.”

Bill Gates is also bullish about the potential of AI in education suggesting that it will be teaching kids to read within 18 months and I’m tempted to agree. Like any new technology AI can be disruptive and used to cheat but it also can be transformative and used to make the world a better place. AI that helps students learn easily and helps teachers teach more effectively is certainly going to be a good thing.

Is Khanmigo the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#1,864 – TV School

Our parents used to tell us that watching too much television was bad for us. That it would rot our brains.  But now, as fate would have it, we may need to turn to our television sets to help our kids learn a thing or two.

Educating our children by watching TV all day may seem counter-intuitive but logistically it makes sense, seeing as how more people own televisions than computers and are more likely to have cable than high speed Wi-Fi.  Which is why some people have been calling for a nationwide network of regularly scheduled lessons delivered over our airwaves as a way to ensure the long-term success of virtual learning.

And sure enough this exact plan is actually happening.

According to Edweek:

“Amid the flurry of new technologies used by K-12 schools to fire up remote learning in recent weeks, a piece of seemingly antiquated technology is playing a key role: the television…

On Monday, public television stations in New Jersey and the Washington D.C., metro region started featuring the at-home learning program, which is now set to air in all 50 states. In other cases, school districts are producing new original educational programming on their own local cable stations.

The effort amounts to a low-cost alternative and readily accessible solution for districts that have been forced to develop and implement long-term online lesson plans on the spot, while facing a shortage of available devices and WiFi accessibility for many students.

In a world of high-tech gadgets, a seemingly never-ending array of apps and online curriculum tools developed by ed-tech vendors, television can fill a void created by the digital divide for families lacking access to more advanced solutions used for online learning.”

That’s all well and good but I want to make something abundantly clear. Under no circumstances should we be sending our children back to school right now. It is not safe to do so. We’ve already seen what happened to the school in Georgia that reopened with packed hallways – they had to shut down three days later.  How much more evidence do you need that schools should not be reopened?!

I get that kids need to be educated but at the same time I don’t understand the rush.  The pace at which we go out and the schedule that we’re on is arbitrary to begin with.  We shouldn’t even be following set schedules and standardized tests. We don’t work in factories anymore. We don’t need to create specialized workers. Google and the Internet already makes it easy to look up anything will ever need to know anyway so there’s no point of even memorizing anything.

The way we approach education in this country needs to be overhauled. Riddle me this Batman: why are we even rushing back towards a system that’s broken to begin with? Let’s just delay everything by a year. You’ll just be a year older at each step of the way.  Right?  Who cares if you’re not 18 when you’re graduate.  You’ll be 19 instead.  What’s the big deal?  Let’s just take a year off.  No one will fall behind if we’re all moving at the same pace. If nobody is doing anything, then we can all not do anything together.  No harm, no foul.

But we don’t do that.  We press on.  Admirable but foolish.  Which begs the question: why do we hate our children so much? Aren’t they supposed to be the future? Our pride and joy.  The ones that we sacrifice everything for.  And yet it seems as though we don’t care about them at all.  Not really.  How can we if we’re OK sending them to schools knowing that day in and day out there’s a high probability of a school shooting; if we’re okay with ruining the planet that they’re going to inherit, completely ignoring all the inherent dangers involved with Climate Change; if we’re OK with sending them back to school during a pandemic, for no real rhyme or reason. It doesn’t make any sense. Is working from home and home schooling at the same time really that difficult? Are children really that annoying that we just want them out of the house at all costs?!

We need to do better than this. Be better than this.  Need to remember that our kids really are our future. Understand that their safety has to come first.  At all costs.  Forget about the economy, forget about the logistics, forget about how difficult it is going to be.  Block it all out.  Focus on what really matters.

And above all else we need to find our resolve.  Take a long hard look at our education system and our values.  Decide what is and isn’t important to us.  Figured out how we can be better.  How we can turn the tide in our favor.  Because right now when it comes to how we’re handling this pandemic we’re all getting a failing grade.

Is broadcasting lessons the Greatest Idea Ever?

 

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#1,766 – Week In Review

A quick look at everything that tickled my fancy this past week.

Let There Be Light:

Israeli researchers have discovered a new property of light: its ability to branch flow.

As the Times of Israel puts it:

“In an accidental breakthrough made while blowing kids’ soap bubbles, Israeli scientists have observed light behaving in a ‘beautiful’ manner never before seen by the human eye.

They captured the process on camera and wrote an academic paper declaring themselves the first people to see a physical phenomenon called ‘branched flow’ in action, which will be the cover story in Thursday’s edition of the renowned journal Nature.”

Interestingly, it could, “lead to a new area of physics…[where] the light from branched flow will be useful in medical diagnosis…[and] could bring about more pinpointed examination of blood vessels and veins, and could also be developed to ‘steer the flow of liquid’ inside the body to remedy some health issues.”

Better Queues: 

Netflix chills out, finally gives the people what they want: the ability to remove titles from their continue watching queue that they clearly have no interest in continuing to view due to the fact that they stopped viewing it in the first place!

As Deadline puts it:

“Netflix subscribers are celebrating the service’s latest innovation: the ‘Remove from row’ feature.

While it’s not exactly a game-changer, the feature is a fantastic way to remove annoying — or possibly embarrassing — content that keeps popping up in the ‘Continue Watching’ row.”

Higher Education:

COVID-19 may have forced everyone to turn to remote learning to finish their school years but one man in Japan took things to the extreme by going to a remote area of Japan to obtain the world’s first master’s degree in ninja studies!

CNN explains:

“A Japanese man has become the first person in the world to hold a master’s degree in ninja studies, after completing a graduate course that involved learning basic martial arts and how to stealthily climb mountains.

Genichi Mitsuhashi, 45, spent two years studying the history, traditions and fighting techniques of ninjas — the mysterious covert agents of feudal Japan — at the country’s Mie University.

Known for their secrecy and high levels of skill, ninjas were masters of espionage, sabotage, assassination and guerrilla warfare dating back to at least the 14th century. Yet Mitsuhashi said ninjas were also independent farmers, and he moved to the mountainous province of Iga, 220 miles from the Japanese capital Tokyo, to better understand how they lived.”

 

Amazing Hummingbirds:

The other day I almost got decapitated while reading outside, nearly the victim of an accidental Hummingbird flyby.  But that’s not why Hummingbirds are amazing.  They’re amazing because they can see colors that we can’t even fathom.

As Wired puts it:

“The tests showed that the birds could see every nonspectral color that the researchers threw at them. Color pairs that were closer together in hue resulted in more mistaken visits but still beat the 50/50 odds of the control experiments.

As an additional plausibility check, the researchers scanned databases of precisely measured colors that appear in plants and birds. These nonspectral colors are quite common in nature, accounting for 30 percent of bird plumage colors and 35 percent of plant colors in the databases. So it would certainly make sense that hummingbirds (and other birds) are able to see these colors in their environment.

And the researchers do think this study is generalizable beyond just the broad-tailed hummingbirds that volunteered for it. Many things are poorly understood about the physiology of eyesight across bird species, much less the neural processing of signals from those color cones in the eye, but what we do know suggests hummingbirds are probably representative. ‘Although these experiments were performed with hummingbirds,’ the team writes, ‘our findings are likely relevant to all diurnal, tetrachromatic birds and probably to many fish, reptiles, and invertebrates.'”

Are any of these the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#1,723 – Self-Care Video Games

The running narrative has always been that video games are bad for us.  That they are pointless time-sucks that rot our brain and glorify violence.  And while there may be some truth to that there’s more to the story as video games can also be educational – valuable puzzle solving endeavors that teach people perseverance and improve their hand/eye coordination along the way.  But soon video games will do even more than that. Instead of having us save damsels in distress they’ll save us.  From our mental health issues.

As Fast Company puts it:

“But what if there were something that could help snap you out of the rut, be it a temporary funk or actual, clinical depression? And what if this something were designed to make doing good things for yourself as addictive as a video game? That’s the premise of The Guardians: Unite the Realms, a new app developed by the Affective Computing group at MIT Media Lab.

“When you load the game, a big button glows and bounces in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, reading ‘new adventure available.’ This is essentially a good-for-you button, because each adventure is focused around the phenomenon of ‘behavioral activation.’ Behavioral activation is a proven therapy that can be used casually or clinically for depression. It gets people to partake in positive experiences rather than spending time doing the things that reinforce their own damaging behaviors. And there are dozens of options to choose from.

Some suggested adventures are practical, such as knocking things off your to-do list that might otherwise cause anxiety: Manage finances. Vacuum. Do Laundry. Others help you grow: Watch an online class. Write a poem. Read a classic. And others help you stay active: Spend time in nature. Learn a new dance. Or, my personal favorite, Jazzercise for 20 minutes.

You are also completely free to make up your own adventure, and repeat it whenever you’d like.”

At that point you’re off to the races completing adventures, unlocking new characters, collecting rewards, etc. just as you would be doing with any other addictive cell phone game.  Except this time you’re improving yourself along the way, fully engrossed in the narrative and positive feedback loop that you now find yourself in.

The Guardians: Unite the Realms isn’t the only new game addressing mental health issues.  Israel Smith, a sixth grader from Brookhaven Innovation Academy Charter School in Norcross, Georgia also created a new game for a school project, one specifically designed to help kids deal with the stress of social distancing, home-schooling, and being separated from friends.

According to Fast Company:

Smith redesigned the old-school cellphone game Space Impact for a new battle: fighting COVID-19. A player controls an avatar on the left of the screen, which shoots at cartoonish, buggy-looking viruses that move across the screen from the right. Users determine which ones are the coronavirus and shoot them with a laser to earn points.

It seems obvious, but as the CDC states, pandemics can be nerve-wracking. The agency lists children and teens as groups that may respond more strongly to the stress of a crisis, and offers a few ways to help them cope, including maintaining routines, limiting exposure to news coverage, and sharing COVID-19 facts in a way they can relate to—which is where Smith’s game comes in.”

Other games are coming in as well.  One called The New Normal Game is an interactive thought experiment of sorts that lets people imagine what a better post pandemic world might look like while activist artists or “artivists” bring their visions to life for others to vote on.

New Frame explains:

“Part activist intervention, part digital performance art, the game is an experiment in expanding the creative commons: a reference to the political ideal of collectively managing resources and a play on creative commons licencing that influences the sharing of online content. It is an attempt to imagine together, inspired by the “new normal” we have entered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The rules are simple. Every week, a scenario based loosely on current crises is put to the seven players, who each suggest a solution. The Game Masters translate their ideas, submitted by text and voice notes, into a visual art piece and present it to the public. Members of the game’s Facebook group make up the Council that decides what direction the future takes by voting for the preferred solution.”

All in all, it’s clear that video games aren’t all bad.  In fact, in times of crisis they can provide the escapism and motivation that we need to improve our mental health and overcome whatever issues we’re facing.  If these latest developments are any indication we need more video games going forward, not less.

Is using video games to improve mental health the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#1,525 – OverDrive

Algorithms already recommend shows for us to watch on Netflix, songs for us to listen to on Spotify, and products for us to buy on Amazon but when it comes to reading good old fashioned books we are often on our own.  Sure, Amazon does make recommendations but those are just surface level recommendations.  Customers who bought this book also bought this book.  Or here are some other books by this same author.

But what if there was a way to make recommendations based on more subtle clues?  Such as you have an affinity for books with an orange cover so here are some more books with orange covers. Or here are some other books with strong female protagonists.  Well, in the near future that level of recommendation may be possible.  But that’s not all.  We may also have books that are interactive, gamified, and filled with all sorts of technological tricks that increase reader engagement.  And we’ll have all those thanks to a company called OverDrive.

According to Futurism:

“[CEO Steve] Potash envisions a slew of ways to improve books with AI, like smart assistants that take on the persona of an author, AR content that drops readers inside the historical scene they’re reading about, or games built into books that help students learn new words and concepts.

In the meantime, OverDrive is trudging ahead with backend AI systems, that either help libraries buy books that are more likely to circulate or help teachers find books that actually teach the lessons that they want to work into their curricula.”

These ideas aren’t exactly new.  They’re just hard to pull off.  And I wonder if they are even necessary.  Our imaginations already transport us to the historical scenes that we’re reading about and audio books already let authors talk directly to their audience.  But at the same time anything that increases reader engagement and gets more kids excited about reading is probably a good thing.  If there are ways to gamify reading that can let books compete with video games than that could be a real game changer.  Literally.

Is OverDrive the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#1,507 – Continuing Education

I just finished reading one of the greatest books of all-time, The Half-Life of Facts, a fascinating look through the lens of mathematics at how knowledge constantly changes and what we can do to try and stay on top of those changes; something that is especially important in today’s day and age of fake news where staying informed in a politically charged climate isn’t a lifestyle choice, it’s a necessity.

Unfortunately, for most of us we tend to stop learning once we’re done receiving our primary education, either after finishing high school or after completing a Bachelors or Master’s degree.  Of course we still “learn” new things throughout life, either through osmosis, our social networks, shows and movies, the occasional book, or nowadays the ever popular podcast method.  But we’re not actively studying random facts outside of our chosen professions just for the hell of it like we did when we were in grade school.  If we do learn something new as adults it’s highly likely that what we’re learning is going to tie in with what we’re already interested in and conform with our already firmly established worldviews.  Taking the time to gather all the relevant facts, to learn both sides of an issue, to stay informed on every issue, just doesn’t happen all that often.

That’s why fake news spreads so easily.  Why there is so much political upheaval. Why there are so many Climate Change deniers.  Why there are Flat Earthers.  We have all become victims of our cognitive biases, refusing to change our worldviews even when presented with compelling new evidence, choosing to believe that which we grew up believing, that which adheres to how we already perceive the world.  Our only hope for a better future, a cleaner future, a future with less hate, is to become more open-minded, to become skilled in the art of learning new facts, to get to the point where it becomes second-nature to always learn new things and accept new facts, even paradigm shifting facts that change the way the world works.

In order for that to happen we need to change how we learn.  No longer can it be acceptable for people to shut down their minds and coast through life once they are done with their formal schooling.  No longer can it be acceptable for people to reside in online filter bubbles that reinforce their personal beliefs.  No longer can life-long learning be considered an optional pursuit, something left to academics, nerds, and bored retirees.  Instead we need to establish a culture based around continuing education.  Based around the constant pursuit of obtaining the latest knowledge, across all walks of life.

As someone who has needed to pass certain licensing exams for their job I’ll be the first to admit that this sounds horrible.  The idea of giving up one’s free time to continuously study for and take exams is not an appealing one.  But at the same time it may be a necessity of life in the 21^st century, a necessity of living in a time where facts are constantly changing at breakneck speeds.

And honestly, it may not be all that bad.  I’m not talking about serious, intensive exams on a weekly basis.  Perhaps just a few short online quizzes twice a year to make sure that people know what’s going on.  Something that can be passed in a manner of minutes after watching a brief online tutorial.  Something that would cover the latest Climate news, the latest scientific breakthroughs, a political story or two, the occasional fact changing (Pluto is no longer a planet, dinosaurs had feathers), etc.  Just a mix of information to make sure that people know what’s going on in the world, what’s really going on, not just what the latest memes are.  What’s the latest with Brexit?  What are the current carbon dioxide levels? Is red wine currently good for you or not?  What’s the latest crazy thing that Elon Musk said? What’s the latest diet craze all about?  In short, what do I realistically need to know to be an educated voter, a functioning member of society, or even just a good parent, spouse, friend, or neighbor.

Best of all such a continuous education program would create a never ending source of jobs – for the people creating the content, to those administering it, to those offering extra-help tutoring sessions, to those enforcing it.  In a future where autonomous robots take away all of jobs we’re going to need to think outside the box to create new jobs that only humans can do.  An entire cottage industry springing up around continuous education could be one possible solution.

Such a program could even tie into other aspects of society.  For instance, if China’s experimental social credit program takes off and people receive reputation scores that follow them then maybe the continuing education program could tie in with those scores.  If you have passed the latest tests you’ll have a higher reputation score than someone who hasn’t, indicating that you are more trustworthy since you are more informed.  Or perhaps the testing could be incentivized.  Those who take and pass the exams would receive better car insurance rates or better credit scores.  Or points that they can trade in for airline miles, Amazon.com gift cards, or discounts from their favorite retailers, etc. whatever the case may be.

I’m sure that some people will be opposed to this idea but there is already precedent for it.  Financial Advisors and medical professionals are already required to undergo continuing education training.  Anyone who works in an office and takes annual cybersecurity or ethics training does the same.  When it comes to being a subject matter expert in your chosen profession it’s obviously important to stay on top of the latest news in your field.  People’s lives and their livelihoods literally depend on it.  Shouldn’t that same logic apply when it’s your life and your livelihood that’s on the line?

All in all, it’s become increasingly clear that we need to think long and hard about thinking long and hard.  That we need to be cognizant of the fact that our facts are constantly changing.  If we don’t then our society may very well be on the verge of making the plot of Idiocracy come to fruition.  A horrible fate that would doom us all.  So if we don’t want that to happen we will have to take drastic, society-wide action to ensure that we raise the education level of all citizens, at all times.  A continuing education program, that would be a necessary evil in the war against ignorance, may very well be the way to do just that.

Is lifelong learning the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#1,379 – Sans Forgetica

The way something looks and feels matters.  And not just to designers and architects.  But to everyone.  It’s why wedding invitations are written in calligraphy and it’s why Apple obsesses over their packaging.  But at the same time I’m not usually one to pay that much attention to granular details like what font someone is using.

Granted, I do like some more than others.  I’m particularly partial to Calibri.  But I’m not going to stop reading someone’s blog if they are using Times New Roman instead.  A font is a font is a font.  You may have your preferences.  And some may fit certain situations better than others.  But at the end of the day it’s just semantics.  Just a simple matter of taste.

Or is it?  What if a font could be more than just a font?  What if it could change the world?  Well, soon there may be a font capable of doing just that, thanks to the aptly named Sans Forgetica, capable of upending our preconceived notions about what a font is or should be.  That’s because Sans Forgetica is more than just a simple typeface.  It’s a whole new way of learning.

As CNET puts it, “Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Australia have developed an entirely new font designed ‘using the principles of cognitive psychology’ to help you better remember your study notes. The font is a sans serif style typeface, with two unusual features: It slants slightly left, which is a rarely used design principle in typography, and it’s full of holes.

Those holes have a purpose though. They make Sans Forgetica harder to read, tricking your brain into using ‘deeper cognitive processing’ and promoting better memory retention. The psychological learning principle is known as ‘desirable difficulty’ and that obstruction — the holes — mean you dwell on each word just a little bit longer.”

The importance of Sans Forgetica in today’s day and age of speed reading, headline glancing, and information overload cannot be overstated.  Since we can’t force people to be more mindful, to live in the moment more, to take their time when reading, then we might as well do the next big thing.  Design an elegant solution to help people retain more information and build that solution right into the very words themselves.  An absolutely genius approach to education.  Even though I didn’t write this post using Sans Forgetica hopefully we won’t forget about it.  For implementing it across society could have profound effects.

Is Sans Forgetica the Greatest Idea Ever?  Do you remember anything I just said?

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#930 – The Museum of Tomorrow

Zac Efron is hanging out with Simone Biles while police search for Ryan Lochte.  Couches are attacking kayakers while the U.S. Men’s Basketball team is getting criticized left and right by people sitting on their couches.   Algae is infecting pools while controversial dives across finish lines take place outside of pools.  There sure is a lot going on in Rio right now.  And yet the story that I’m drawn to has nothing to do with the Olympic games at all.  Rather, I’d like to focus on the unheralded Museum of Tomorrow which opened late last year.

As Wired UK explains:

“The project brought together architects, researchers and government to create a space where climate change and the Earth’s future are its core focus. ‘We thought, why not make the social and political discussion of sustainability the main approach of a museum?’ says Hugo Barreto, secretary general at the Roberto Marinho Foundation, which oversaw the building’s development and partly funded its construction.  The two-story building, which opened in December 2015, explores five themes: the Cosmos, the Earth, the Anthropocene, Tomorrow and Us. Inside, a 140-metre-long pearlescent gallery is flanked by parallel spaces where visitors are guided through several future-gazing displays: one is
an egg-shaped auditorium showing a 360° film about the Universe. In another, six ten-meter pillars display images and data that demonstrate humans’ impact on the planet.”

As a futurist I absolutely love this idea.  If it was up to me every major city would have a Museum of the Future sitting adjacent to their Science Center and Museum of Natural History.  Or in the case of San Diego’s Balboa Park next to their 17 museums.  This way there would exist a place where people can go and dream about the future, about creating a better life for themselves.  The kind of place that Disney’s Tomorrowland once exemplified.  The kind of place that the World’s Fair once embodied.  The kind of place that, outside of Rio, just doesn’t exist anymore.

Most museums pay homage to the past, giving citizens a chance to view famous works of art, learn about historical time periods or gaze upon the creatures that once roamed the Earth.  That’s great and all, don’t get me wrong, but perhaps our educational approach has been misguided.  Perhaps a better approach to educating our citizens would be to frame current world problems in a futuristic context the way the Museum of Tomorrow is tackling sustainability.  After all, you can learn a lot about the climate by looking at how the Earth used to look and seeing how much has changed over the years.  But you might not be motivated to care about what it’ll look like going forward until you actually see exactly what it’ll look like going forward.

Now more than ever we need a place like this.  A place where we can emphasis the importance of counteracting climate change.  A place where we can use cold, hard, scary scientific facts to scare ourselves straight.  A place where we can openly debate the awe-inspiring yet fear-inducing promise of Artificial Intelligence and CRISPR based DNA editing.  In short, a place built on hopes and dreams where we can learn to embrace innovation, not fear it.

The stakes have never been higher.  We’ve reached a critical junction in our evolution.  A point in time where we can either plateau, soar to new heights, or digress.  The only way we’ll be able to get over that hurdle, to rise above the challenges facing us, is to tackle our problems head on.  And the other way to do that is to look straight out past the horizon towards the future.  A Museum of Tomorrow in every major city, taking its rightful place at the forefront of our collective consciousness, would do just that.  If only we had the foresight to let it.

Is the Museum of Tomorrow the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#919 – MasterClass

Forget about the Etsy killer Society6 for a second.  I may have found something even better: a website known as MasterClass that offers exclusive video tutorials with famous subject matter experts.  Think of it like Khan Academy for the Real World.  And it’s kind of a big deal.

Want to learn how to write a screenplay?  Academy Award winner Aaron Sorkin will show you how.  A book?  There’s James Patterson for that.  Want to get into show business on the other side of things?  Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman will teach you to act, Usher will teach you how to perform, and Christina Aguilera will teach you how to sing.  You basically just got the same education that a finalist on the Voice receives and you didn’t even have to clear your throat.

Unprecedented access to thought leaders on this scale is something that would have been unheard of just a few years ago.  Now it’s a business model.  Take Sorkin for example.  I actually used to work with one of his relatives and tried to pitch a script idea to him.  I never heard back.  Now all I have to do is take his class and I’ll probably wind up getting more useful information than I would have if he had ever written back to me.  You can’t really put a price on that.

Of course, seeing as how this is a business, MasterClass does in fact put prices on their course offerings.  But here’s the thing.  The prices are relatively cheap.  The Sorkin series contains 35 videos, totaling over 7 hours of content, and costs just $90.  For the price of admission you also get a 38 page workbook and have the ability to upload videos to interact with the rest of the class and with Sorkin.  There’s even a chance that he’ll critique your work.

The appeal of these courses isn’t limited to the students though.  As the New York Times writes, “Other instructors said the appeal was more visceral. Mr. Hoffman recalled an evening at his home in the late 1970s when the English actor Sir Laurence Olivier regaled him with tales of his youth on the London stage. ‘Those stories are lost forever,’ Mr. Hoffman said. He saw in MasterClass a chance to create a permanent record of what he has learned.”

It’s with that in mind that I encourage everyone to check out this site and see if there are any classes that may be worth taking.  As for me?  I’ll be busy absorbing every word that Annie Leibovitz has to say about photography.

Is MasterClass the Greatest Idea Ever?

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