DL 282
Life Must Be Lived Forwards
Published: March 13, 2021 • 📧 Newsletter
Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue 282. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.
🔖 Key Takeaways
- Covid Is Manageable: Harari argues 2020 showed humanity isn't helpless—science turned epidemics into a manageable challenge
- QAnon Divides Families: Mass delusion leaves families caught between two realities with no overlapping facts
- Diversity Strategies: Nine ways to get it right, from expanding your circle to validating code switching
- Deep Adaptation 4Rs: Resilience, Relinquishment, Restoration, and Reconciliation as framework for uncertain futures
- Cassette Tape Inventor Dies: Lou Ottens wanted music to be portable and accessible—he democratized listening
Welcome back friends! This was a busy week.
This week I also posted the following:
- Where I'm Going - Learning Event #7 - Life must be lived forwards. We have the opportunity to survive, succeed, and achieve.
- Guides In The Monster Factory - A post about learning, seeking awareness, and having the right guides in the process.
- Are You Guilty of 'Orbiting'? - Orbiting describes someone who leaves your life but continues to be involved in your social media—a strategic way to prevent the door from shutting completely.
- When Planning Becomes Procrastinating - Following through is the only thing that separates dreamers from people that accomplish great things.
📺 Watch
I Am Awesome - Sekou Andrews
A hilarious, inspirational spoken word video by Sekou Andrews, the world's leading Poetic Voice. It features "awesomnacious" people—from celebrities and scientists to social activists and 7-year-olds—hitting the awesome pose to declare their place in the GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF AWESOMENESS.
Please share this with someone who needs to hear and believe: "I Am Awesome!"
📚 Read
Lessons from a Year of Covid
Anything that Yuval Noah Harari writes...we need to read.
How can we summarize the Covid year from a broad historical perspective? Many people believe the terrible toll coronavirus has taken demonstrates humanity's helplessness in the face of nature's might. In fact, 2020 has shown that humanity is far from helpless. Epidemics are no longer uncontrollable forces of nature. Science has turned them into a manageable challenge.
The vaccines developed in record time weren't miracles—they were the predictable result of sustained investment in scientific infrastructure. What we do with that knowledge determines what happens next.
How Right-Wing Disinformation Tore One Family Apart
QAnon is the mass delusion that a Satan-worshipping cabal of child sex traffickers controlled the world and only Trump could stop them. Although an American invention, variants have spread globally.
The media increasingly shares stories of families torn apart—relatives living in fantasy worlds, caught between two realities.
When information ecosystems diverge completely, persuasion becomes nearly impossible.
Are Your Diversity Strategies Missing the Mark? Nine Ways to Get It Right
A great post by Hedreich Nichols on Cult of Pedagogy. Nichols writes from the perspective of the OBF (one black friend) about small, intentional changes you can make:
- Read, read, read
- Be open to feedback
- Expand your circle
- Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
- Don't forget gender
- Beware "imperceptible" distance
- Validate code switching
- Embrace the elephant in the room
- Identify and fight bias
Everyone Has an Eschatology
A great post by Doug Belshaw about eschatology—the branch of theology concerned with the end of the world or humankind.
I've been reading about risk and climate change. Belshaw is on this journey too, and our paths led us to the Deep Adaptation paper by Dr. Jem Bendell.
Doug challenges us to realign work around the 4Rs:
- Resilience: "How do we keep what we really want to keep?"
- Relinquishment: "What do we need to let go of to not make matters worse?"
- Restoration: "What can we bring back to help with coming difficulties?"
- Reconciliation: "With what and whom can we make peace as we face our mutual mortality?"
Lou Ottens, Inventor of the Cassette Tape, Has Died
Lou Ottens, who put music lovers on a path toward playlists and mixtapes by leading the invention of the first cassette tape, has died at age 94. At Philips, he also helped develop consumer compact discs.
"Lou wanted music to be portable and accessible," says documentary filmmaker Zack Taylor, who spent days with Ottens for his film Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape.
Born in 1926, Ottens went from building a radio for his family during World War II—reportedly with a directional antenna to focus on radio signals despite Nazi jamming attempts—to developing technology that would democratize music.
🔨 Do
Seven Reasons to Show Your Work
John Spencer with seven reasons to show your work:
- Showing your work encourages metacognition
- Innovation skyrockets when people show their work
- They become mentors
- It can lead to collaborative partnerships
- You can change the narrative
- Sharing your journey can help build courage
- Students embrace the revision process
Making thinking visible benefits everyone—the sharer learns through articulation, and others learn through access.
🤔 Consider
You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.
Pema Chödrön
Chödrön's wisdom about permanence and impermanence connects to this issue's threads—the Deep Adaptation framework asking what we keep and release, families divided by divergent realities, and Lou Ottens's technology that changed how we carry music. Life must be lived forwards, but we get to choose what we carry.
Bonus: Nature may be getting quieter, but people are getting louder. How is our noise affecting wildlife?
🔗 Navigation
Previous: DL 281 • Next: DL 283 • Archive: 📧 Newsletter
🌱 Connected Concepts:
- Media Literacy — QAnon delusion, divergent realities, information ecosystems
- Pedagogy — Diversity strategies, showing work, code switching
- Digital Wellbeing — Deep adaptation, resilience framework, eschatology
- Civic Engagement — Harari on science and society, democratizing music
- Philosophy — Chödrön on impermanence, living forwards