“Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense—the creative act.” - Kenneth Rexroth
In Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson’s author character Gil Pender has a classic ‘grass is always greener’ affliction, albeit with a temporal twist. His romanticised views of Jazz Age Paris and its leading figures, from Hemingway to Fitzgerald to Stein, have him questioning the absence of beauty and romance of his present-day environment. While on the surface he is a hapless dreamer who would rather inhabit a world of make-believe than confront his present reality, there is something so utterly relatable in Pender’s character flaw.
A fun icebreaker question I was once asked was, ‘which team or group throughout history would you have liked to be a part of?’ While no band or sport group came to mind with absolute conviction, I was instantly enamoured by the idea of being transported back to the very same era that is the scene of Midnight in Paris’s nostalgic timewarps. To sit with the philosophers, poets and creatives of the time around a table at Café de Flore, both dissecting and defying the societal and cultural norms of the time. The Lost Generation, as this collective came to be known, informed so much of the culture and collective memory of this era through their folkloric relationships and the artefacts they produced with each other’s support.
Throughout history, similar groups have converged and birthed some of the most pivotal cultural turning points, scientific or technological discoveries and socioeconomic shifts. From Plato and Aristotle’s Ancient Greek Agora, to Florence in the Renaissance, to the Bloomsbury Group of English writers and intellectuals in the early 20th century, the Lost and then the Beat Generations, 1960s counterculture figures like Joan Didion… they all played dual role in actively influencing and evolving, as well as simply observing and documenting their times. And of course, this pattern that repeats generation after generation, era after era, is no accident.
“They were convinced they were the products of a generational breach, and they wanted to capture the experience of newness in the world around them. As such, they tended to write about alienation, unstable mores like drinking, divorce, sex, and different varieties of unconventional self-identities like gender-bending.” - Kirk Curnutt, The Hemingway Project
It turns out smarter minds than mine (Brian Eno’s and Kevin Kelly’s to be exact) have mulled on a similar thing, using the framing of ‘scenius’* to connote “the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.” Through supporting factors like rapid exchange of ideas, mutual appreciation, local tolerance for novelty and the network effects of success, “the history of art and science is crammed with scenius,” Kelly writes. Author Austin Kleon extrapolated on these ideas further in his book to talk about the '“artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers” that inform the “ecology of talent” that supports the birth of innovation, new ideas and ultimately the progress of culture.
Through this lens, it’s clear we’ve been in the midst of a prolonged period of scenius for almost two decades amidst the boom-bust-boom cycles of the internet age and the exponential rates of technological progress we are living through. But unlike previous instances of scenius through history, the presence of intellectuals, philosophers, artists and writers seems to have been substituted for the Musks, Bezos’s and Zuckerbergs, and the product managers, designers and marketers of the apps and interfaces that run our lives. Instead of being central to the discussion and development of scenius, the liberal arts in their purest form have become collateral damage as funding, attention and talent is funnelled elsewhere. It makes me wonder, what responsibility does the tech community have to ensuring these influences are still part of the narrative?
Kidrock at a tech launch party. Not what I mean.
In my first year of university, as a student in the newly established Creative Industries faculty, Richard Florida’s book ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ was released. It was a rally against suburbia, and a call to arms for urban revitalisation in cities all around the world - in other words a prescription for the conditions of scenius that had perhaps been absent through the culturally void and greed-laden 80’s and 90’s. Florida’s Creativity Index had four pillars: the Creative Class share of the workforce, presence of the high tech industry, innovation (measured by patents per capita) and diversity of population as a way to measure openness toward different ideas and beliefs. In hindsight, the Creative Class epitomised the rise of hipster culture and gentrification, which created entirely new problems that were the subject of Florida’s most recent book, The New Urban Crisis.
This crisis is one where two of Florida’s four pillars, the high-tech and innovation indices, have become much more dominant than the other two. In many ways, the Creative Class share of the workforce has been subsumed into the high tech industry, meaning most creative output is a means to an end, instead of the means itself. And while in Florida’s original definition, the diversity index was solely focused on sexual orientation, we are all aware at this point of the broader ongoing challenges of diversity within the technology sector, and the relative homogeneity of decision-makers across the industry.
So how do we recalibrate this imbalance? What are the new indices we should be tracking to bring a social, cultural and moral richness back to our more geographically dispersed networks of scenius, as well as our physical cities? For starters, it’s about restoring value in and value creation opportunities for artists, creators and thinkers outside the boundaries of our current commercial incentive structures. Output that is not at the mercy of clickbait headlines, influencer strategy and follower count as a measure of its importance. It’s why platforms like Otis, Patreon, Quillette, Kickstarter and even Substack are so vital in creating new avenues to fund creativity for its’ own sake.
Anyone who has watched Netflix’s The Social Dilemma will be acutely aware of the harmful power of the apps and devices we use everyday. We experience our Facebook and Instagram feeds as if they are a more true reality than the one we are living in the offline world. They have all but replaced art and culture’s role as a lens through which to see the world — as an imitation of it, as the saying goes. But as Oscar Wilde said, ‘Life imitates Art more than Art imitates Life. The self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and Art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realise that energy.’ Perhaps if we are able to refocus Life (of all things, not just humans) in the centre of our global social narrative, a broader ecology of talent could be cultivated and the full potential of scenius could be realised once more.
*Thanks @BatkoOS for the reference to scenius
It’s been a while between essays, and I’m posting this in the spirit of ‘done is better than perfect’. Since I last published here, I’ve finished my mat leave and taken on a new role as Principal at Startmate, and have been in the throes of some of the most rewarding professional experiences of my life so far. Just last week, we held our second virtual Demo Day to celebrate our latest cohort (check out a replay here), and ended with an ‘after-party’ on a platform called Gather.town. Aimed at recreating the serendipity you might experience in real-world networking environments, in Gather.town you can roam around a virtual 2D space and when you are in close proximity with someone else, video chat pops up to enable to you chat in real time. It was so much fun and we almost forgot we’ve been largely separated from each other all year.
We are currently accepting applications for our upcoming Office Hours program - you can apply here - and before too long will be selecting the Summer21 cohort. Here’s hoping I can pick back up on my posting schedule amidst all this :)
TECH
Much tea was spilled on Twitter about some of the content in this post by Ryan Caldbeck as he stepped down from his role as CEO of CircleUp. Controversy aside, it’s a good reminder that we need humanity in tech now more than ever.
As far back as May, we were already experiencing Zoom fatigue. Gather.town and a number of other social technologies have emerged to try and fill in some of the missing pieces for human connection online.
ECONOMY
With the US election looming on the horizon, if feels like a good time to re-read this.
HUMAN CONDITION
“New stories will help us understand the importance of seizing the means of computation and using it to build movements that break up monopolies, fight oligarchy, and demand pluralistic, shared power for a pluralistic, shared world.” Cory Doctorow on how he’s changing his approach to fiction to help the real world.