Techno-Visions: The Bell Lap
Despite being October, our Summer Book Club is still running. Travel to Colombia and Kenya over the past three weeks delayed the final lap of Techno-Visions. (The travel is part of our initiative to expand the routes of behavioral science knowledge around the world). I am writing with an update on what you can expect in the home stretch of the book club.
First, tomorrow: You can expect the recording of our conversation with economist Simon Johnson, the third conversation in our series which also included Barry Schwartz and Jane McGonigal. Get ready to cue up the conversation with Simon for your Friday commute or for listening this weekend.
On Sunday: Keep your eye out for a commencement speech Kurt Vonnegut delivered at the University of Chicago in 1994, in which he reflects on how studying anthropology there influenced his writing—including how he came to learn about the “Ghost Shirts.”
I pestered the publisher all summer for the rights to reprint the speech (a la Andy Dufresne with his letters asking for funding for the prison library in “Shawshank Redemption," my in-flight movie from Nairobi to Amsterdam). Like Andy’s efforts, my pestering worked. The publisher gave us permission to reprint Vonnegut’s speech exclusively for our book club members.
Finally, next week: I’ll share a set of my favorite additional resources—writing, videos, archives, etc.—related to Player Piano and the Techno-Visions theme that I’ve collected over the course of my research for the book club and which you might want to explore too.
One additional reflection: Throughout my travels, themes from our summer book club were never far away, despite the delay of the final lap. In fact, I framed the talk I delivered at the conference in Colombia around the idea of “know-how” vs. “know-what.” And then I adapted it for a written reflection I shared with the internal team at Busara, the partner organization I visited in Nairobi which focuses on bringing behavioral science into development.
I figured it would be fun to share that reflection with you too, as you saw the seeds of it first, in the form of the article published for book club, “The Difference Between ‘Know-How’ and ‘Know-What’.” Then, you helped develop my thinking on it through your comments and discussions at the live events. So here’s the google doc of the expanded essay.
If you have thoughts or comments, feel free to add them to doc. I would appreciate your ideas and feedback.
— Evan
