A unique hypertextual map

Welcome to the November rundown of the randomness that has been occupying space inside of my brain. There’s a bit of something for everyone in here - digital minimalism, coffee, tabletop games. And to start us out…

I was on a podcast?

If you’ve been hanging around here long enough, you know that the main body of work for the Routine Chaos design studio is related to innovation in learning & education. So I was on the Ways We Learn podcast, and the hosts had seen my (very old) article about What If The Pokemon Company Took Over Traditional Education, so they asked me if I wanted to talk about gamification and after I finished gagging I told them maybe we could talk about gamification that doesn’t suck. So we did.

Here’s a little teaser. The full episode is linked below.

Full episode here.

Technological Hair of the Dog

I first heard about the Boox Palma from Craig Mod, and it caught my attention as a longtime Kindle user (all the way back to the first generation). I made a mental note of the fact that it was worth exploring and that I didn’t actually need a new device in my life at the time.

A few months later, it was MKBHD singing its praises. And it just so happened that eldest child Thomas had recently misplaced their Kindle while out of town and was thus borrowing mine with great frequency and is not among the members of my family who has a sterling reputation for returning things to their proper place. So, actually, a new reading device seemed like kind of a necessity.

“Is this thing just a phone-sized Kindle?” You may very well be asking. And the short answer is, “Yes, but it’s just barely more…and that just barely more actually makes it substantially better.”

The just barely more is this: on my device, I added 4 apps. The first one was (obviously) the Kindle app. The second was Readwise Reader for articles & newsletters. The third was PocketCasts for podcast listening. The fourth was Apple Music, which was really weird to put an Apple app on an Android based device, but whatever. There are no push notifications turned on. This is a device that gets no ability to distract me. It also fits in my pocket, so if I’m running an errand where there might be some waiting involved it’s incredibly convenient - much more than the paperback shaped Kindle.

For some reason, that last piece was kind of revelatory in a way that I didn’t expect: it somehow connected a few neurons in my brain that made me think, “Hey…I just default to putting my phone in my pocket when I walk out of the house even if I’m going to do something for which I have no intention of using my phone. What if…I just didn’t bring my phone?” The first few times I did this, I did it with the Palma there instead. In theory, this is why I added the podcast and music apps: if I’m going grocery shopping and want to listen to something, I can do it without my phone. In practice, I don’t ever listen to anything while I’m grocery shopping. Pretty soon, I was running errands, walking the dog, meeting my wife for lunch without pocketing any device before I headed out the door.

The biggest potential drawback is that it means I’m unreachable…but aside from emergencies, that doesn’t really bother me (my policy in life is that all of the people who I want to be able to reach me know how to, so for people who don’t know how to reach me…that’s kind of a them problem). There aren’t that many emergencies in my life that can’t wait 15 minutes for me to be back from running an errand or in a place where there’s Wifi so that a message will get delivered to my watch.

This is simultaneously quite nice and kind of absurd. In order to reclaim my attention and focus from the thousand dollar pocket distraction machine, I also needed 2 more devices each of which cost several hundred dollars. And it doesn’t even mean that I’m not still deeply engaged with a device, just that when I am it’s more likely that I’m focused on something more long form and less driven by an attention-seeking algorithm.

And I have read SO.MANY.BOOKS since the Palma came into my life, and I really like reading books…so it was worth it for me.

• Counterpoint: Matt Klein goes pretty in depth on how the binary of unplugging is a marker of privilege given how enmeshed in so much of our basic day to day activity our devices have become. His argument about how we need to figure out how exercise agency in the way we integrate technology in our lives feels fundamentally sound to me, though I don’t feel like he’s as clear-eyed about how much is aligned to actively oppose this exercise of agency.

On a lighter note, a coffee related thing

Bobby Solomon of The Fox Is Black has been daydreaming about opening a cafe one day, more from an aesthetic perspective and less from a culinary one. But he went and took a coffee class at Nomad in Barcelona, bringing his daydream one step closer to becoming a reality. Some day.

And, yes, of course, I also have a cafe daydream. Mine would look very different from Bobby’s - even though I would love to find my way to Bobby’s daydream cafe too, because I love his sensibility. The experience that I want to create is different though, more rooted in my own ethos of play & participation.

Maybe I’ll write about it at some point, but for now I’ll give you this little tidbit: if I ever did it, instead of a big commercial espresso machine, I’m very interested in keeping a big supply of the Uniterra Nomads and having customers DIY their own espresso & filter coffee.

One more link, just because…

I am intrigued by this idea of using Dungeons & Dragons as a therapeutic tool. I can see a skill overlap between the best Dungeon Masters and the best therapists that I know, but it also seems like it would be verrrrrry complicated.

Coming Soon

• The Gdańsk, Poland Regional Championship is in the rearview. My writeup of the event, including reflections on why we play when we're not having fun, should come your way in the next week or two.