December 8 – 12 2020. Tamara (Carleton) and I were at the UNESCO Futures Literacy Summit [Link] representing our research group – Foresight at Stanford [Link]. We are standing for design foresight and what we are now calling creative pragmatics (in our forthcoming book – [Link]). Competencies, tools and techniques, mindsets not for predicting the…
Author: Michael Shanks
synchronicity – through a glass
Recent post about ATARAXIA – [Link] Return and revenance. My current exploration of synchronicity [Link] has taken me back. To a post in April 2015 [Link]. Instrumentalities. April 2006 Boonville California – Hasselblad 503CW camera (2000), Zeiss 120mm lens (2000), Hasselblad CFV digital back (2006) April 2015 Boonville California – Leica 90mm macro lens (2015)…
ataraxia 1
Ataraxia (Epicurus) – a state of being in balance and one with lifeworld, between what is conventionally distinguished as nature and culture. Ataraxia is fraught with the same tension that pervades the self-gathered serenity of gardens, namely the tension between order and entropy … … anxiety is not so much overcome as transfigured by the…
William Blake – post-classicist
Recently I have been posting thoughts about the current state of Classical Studies, asking: What might be done regarding the complicity of Classical Studies in ideological standpoints, including cultural chauvinism, nationalism, imperialism, colonialism? I am much taken with dramatic techniques involving focus on characters and personae, avatars and ghosts, figuration and voices: How might we…
synchronicity – chair with vines and fire
More experiments with hand-held double exposures Mountain View Road, Boonville, California Synchronicity – [Link]
imagining the future – SAP’s Ideathon 2020
Today I opened and SAP University Alliances Ideathon – 21 teams around the world spending a weekend addressing critical world challenges – [Link] For future world building, I made the case for using a toolkit that we are calling creative pragmatics, a kind of next-generation design thinking.