DL 322

Vibe Shift Coming

Welcome back, all. Here is Digitally Literate, issue #322.

I posted the following this week:

Thank you to all those that sent in an email to say hey! You are all appreciated. :)

🔖 Key Takeaways

📚 This Week’s Highlights

In this TED Talk, Hrishikesh Hirway highlights the power of focused listening and the limits of multitasking.
Why this matters: Truly listening enhances empathy, connection, and understanding.

Allison P. Davis writes a response to a post titled “Vibe Shift,” on Sean Monahan's 8Ball newsletter.

Monahan co-founded K-Hole, the trend forecasting group best known for coining the term Normcore. Put simply, Monahan is someone who has made a career of translating cultural trends for a larger audience.

Monahan uses the term vibe shift to describe when things change in culture and once-dominant social wavelength starts to feel dated.

Davis expands on this by sharing how not everyone survives a vibe shift. As we begin to creep out from COVID-induced hibernation, we need to wonder if we'll emerge on the other side of this "as adults" who lost a few years of socially acceptable freedom? Or we will let ourselves get stuck?
Why this matters: Embracing change is essential for navigating cultural and social evolution.

Mark Mills suggests that we're in a phase of significant technological disruption across information, machines, and materials.

It has been said that history doesn’t repeat but rhymes. The rhyme, or pattern, that shaped the 20th century is again at play in the 21st. The evidence is visible in the same three spheres of technology — information, machines, materials — with, again, the same pattern of revolutionary technologies in each sphere contemporaneously reaching useful maturity.
Why this matters: Understanding these patterns can help us prepare for and embrace innovation.

4. Why you (probably) won’t finish reading this story

We live in the most distracted time in human history. Can we reclaim our attention spans?

Sean Illing with an interview of British journalist Johann Hari, and the new book Stolen Focus, Why You Can't Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again. Listen to the podcast of this interview here.

My book is about attention at two levels. One is individual attention. All those things I just said are true of individual attention. It’s also true of collective attention: A society that can’t pay attention to problems together, that consists of people who are interacting primarily through mechanisms that make them angry, is a society that can’t solve its crises.
Why this matters: Focus and deep thinking are critical in an increasingly distracted world.

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” —Dorothy Parker

Harold Jarche suggests that work skills over the past century have been focused on compliance, perseverance, diligence, and intelligence. The future workforce requires enabling a learner's mindset for life.

Why is this important? Machines are increasingly taking over our jobs. We need to understand that humans are better at creativity, imagination, empathy, and curiosity.
Why this matters: Curiosity drives innovation and lifelong learning.

Aaron Frank with an overview of what he sees in the hype around the metaverse.

Frank suggests that in 99.99% of cases, provided the term is used correctly, you could replace the word “metaverse” with “internet” and the sentence will mean the same thing. Analyst Doug Thompson suggests that the term "metaverse" might be a proxy for just suggesting that “everything is about to change.”

Frank's overview focuses on four parts:

  1. Spatial Computing (and the history of the interface)
  2. Game Engines (construction tools to build the metaverse)
  3. Virtual Environments (the “places” we’ll be logging into in tomorrow’s internet)
  4. Virtual Economies (what you'll value and share in these spaces)
    Why this matters: The metaverse represents a potential shift in how we interact online.

🛠️ DO: Want to Have Better Conversations?

Active listening is a skill that can be cultivated. Key strategies include:

  1. Remove distractions: Put away your phone.
  2. Reflect back: Summarize, ask questions, and listen without judgment.
  3. Nonverbal cues: Make eye contact, maintain an open posture, and mirror expressions.

Learn more here.

🌟 Closing Reflection

“To make a good decision, you actually need to think about it, the contours and the consequences.”
— Stacey Abrams

Reflect and Engage

Thank you for reading Digitally Literate. Stay tuned for more insights and discussions. Connect with me at hello@digitallyliterate.net or explore Newsletter Index for all past issues.