Join 📚 Josh Beckman's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Josh's read, .
The cotton gin, a canonical example of automation, perversely *increased the demand for slave labor* because it [made cotton growing so much more profitable](https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent#:~:text=While%20it%20was%20true%20that,both%20land%20and%20enslaved%20labor).
A Year of New Avenues
Robin Sloan
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. (Alfred North Whitehead, 1911.)
The Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman
But the [hyperobject](https://substack.com/redirect/5f4bf7ff-06aa-4a51-b200-4e45aa670727?j=eyJ1IjoiMXlmdTFqIn0.qYv5NVQwodvs9yAW1b9IqXxz-UTiPAUp4JXaRMXUArU) that is climate change requires the very kind of deliberative and slow thinking that my (perceptive, nearly-graduated) engineering students require and deserve. The kind of thinking-in-writing they don’t seem to know is out there—a fact that is equally alarming—but that they really are hungry for.
Resources for Climate Nihilism
Sara Hendren from undefended / undefeated
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise