Three Articles I Read Yesterday and How They are Connected

As often happens, I went down a rabbit hole the past day. Bari Weiss is a journalist who writes online and edits Common Sense which is part of Substack. She gave a speech at the new University of Austin which she then published. While it’s a plug for this new, non-conformist university, she writes about cancel culture and gives examples. She resigned from The NY Times a year ago or so for getting crosswise with younger colleagues and is a poster child for being cancelled not for being mean or lying or a crime but for disagreeing intellectually. The New Founders America Needs   What I get out of this is the extent of cancel culture present in elite academia and those who are products of the environment. Since I am not part of academia nor a product of an Ivy League school, I found it instructional. One thing I will say is that maybe the reason much of America rejects the Progressive and Democratic agenda is because of the assumptions that group makes that can result in cancel culture. A reasoning/values/tone that just don’t sit well with middle America. In fact, resulting in them saying, “What are they thinking?” and then ignoring their gobbledygook. 

Now onto the next thing. I follow Ms. Weiss on Twitter and she retweeted the announcement of an upcoming book release by William Deresiewicz, Googling him, I find he’s a former English teacher at Yale who became disenchanted with the way education is offered at that type of university. He left academia in 2008 to write full time. In 2014 he wrote a book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. So, now I understood why Bari Weiss follows him.  Oh, by the way, he lives in Portland, Oregon now. I read the following article from The Atlantic The Death of the Artist and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur  It is not a radical idea that he is proposing at all but is more a survey of the artist and how the role has changed in history.  It helped me make some sense of this profession in the 21st century. 

The last thing I read yesterday was the news that Apple and its long-time head of design, Jony Ive, were parting ways for good.  He and his team basically did all the design work at Apple since Steve Jobs came back to lead the company to dominance including the iMac, Power Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook and the Apple watch.  He left in 2019 to form his own design firm with Marc Newson but they kept doing work for Apple.  I didn’t know anything about Marc Newson but I learned that he’s a really big deal, too, and has designed all sorts of thins from chairs to airline cabins to bikes to appliances.  I found this online Interview with Jony Ive and Marc Newson where the two of them are talking about Newson’s workshop and their mutual love of tools and their concern that a lot of these skills will not be passed on to future generations.  This brought me back to the essay above which has the theme that artists are makers.  Obviously, Jony Ive and Marc Newson are makers and artists, as well.  And, pretty good ones at that.