Yeah, I wonder when the incentives align well for that. I've been casually interview people who work in public (mostly researchers and crafts makers, glass blowers etc). So for craft makers the incentives are clearly in favor of working in public: people pay more if they see the process. Maybe something similar is true of independet research, or maybe there its more that you want to root for the researcher and get a feel for them as a person. In many other situations, the competitive edge lies in some type of properiatery knowledge, and so working in public, at least totally in public, undercuts your business. And in other cases the marketing is a large part of the value, and if you get to see how it is done - its not all that impressive. And perhaps, as we're moving toward an increasingly knowledge intensive and marking orient world, working in public has largely disappeared. Just riffing.
I wonder, from your perspective, how much of the value of remnote is that you have secret sauce, that you want to hide, and how much is it that you have an awesome team, and the more people see your work the more they trust your product and your commitment to a good longterm vision? ie would working more in public hurt or help you?
The proprietariness of knowledge is a good point. But that's only one way how knowledge is used to create value. The 3-4 properties (Matt Ridley in his book on innovation quotes Paul Romer) are:
1. non-rival
- can be shared without using it up
2. partially excludable
- whoever gets hold of it first can exploit it
3. use to steal a march on rivals
- kept secret
- patented
- use tacit knowledge to copy
4. expensive to produce but can pay for itself
I think every work output has parts that are more excluded/held proprietary and parts that are shared with others for the benefit of all (?)
The desire to protect proprietary information is probably the largest source of pushback to these ideas. A solution could be to designate only certain areas of a firm/organization that students can engage.
Overall, I love the concept. I'm always shocked when the students in my high school will express a career trajectory they want to pursue and then on further discussion it's clear they have little idea of what the job actually entails. Maybe it's unique to the US but there's definitely a disconnect between education and job market.
The US seem to be exceptionally bad at this. From what I gather from friends, there is barely no interaction with work for school kids. I had at least done a few internships before fifteen - at the control room of a nuclear power plant, a print house, and a software consultancy, being the most formative. Spent about a week at each. Also apprenticed as a film projectionist - but sadly that profession died just around then.
With how easy it's getting to use AI for papers, homework and projects this style of learning is more important than ever. So many educators are sounding the alarm to ban AI tools when we should instead develop learning methods like the ones mentioned in this article that are more effective and can easily coexist with the evolving tools provided by AI.
This is an old post of yours, but I'm glad I found it. Just subscribed. I have been researching Christopher Alexander myself and rereading "A City Is Not a Tree."
We have homeschooled our children from the start (our oldest is now in her first year of university) and over the last decade have formed co-operatives and learning communities similar to the ones described. When organizing our homeschool co-op, I draw on the expertise of the parents which has given us a rich variety of classes and immersion experiences from learning about neuropsychological testing and Latin to processing a deer carcass and animal husbandry. This fall we are planning on offering classes in rhetoric and debate as well as traditional survival knowledge such as canning, woodworking, and orienteering. Many of the children live in the same neighbourhood and will roam the forest, fields, and each others refrigerators.
I started my first co-op when our oldest daughter was five:) Within the homeschooling community I often found it was helpful to create groups and have others join, especially if existing co-ops were very large or too far away. We started out with a forest walk group and during the winter moved on to stories, crafts (we even had a goldsmith mom in our group), and science experiments. Over the years I adapted the group to student's growing needs and interests. One of the important factors I realized was connecting with parents personally, and not making the program a 'drop-off'. This helped the parents to form community and connection as well. Importantly, I kept all the gatherings phone-free. No phones for parents or students for the duration of the program. This rule might seem outlandish now, but I believe it was essential in deepening our relationships and setting an attentional example for the students. See my post from yesterday for more on this:) https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/from-feeding-moloch-to-digital-minimalism
We have an abandoned school that families are free to use for activities. Once a week we do a big meetup there which is more public facing, and the rest of the time, families self-organize into whatever groups and activities they need. So we rent a swimming hall on Fridays, there are forest groups and playgroups, and courses, and visits to workplaces etc etc. We've also made it so that the homeschooling community counts sort of like a school so families can book all classrooms and resources that schools can book. We haven't had a problem with people looking at their phones: perhaps because none of the families are big on phones, anyway?
Also, the "special bike lanes suitable for children" etc. idea is very related to https://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/ and the claim that children are a group of society which is unfairly being disadvantaged and coerced.
As you can figure, I'm in that direction. Though I'm not as anti-coercion as Deutsch et al. This essay is largely me thinking through the possibilities and infrastructure we're building, or could possibly build, in my community.
The working in public is a great idea. I wonder if we lack the incentive structures to make it more common?
Yeah, I wonder when the incentives align well for that. I've been casually interview people who work in public (mostly researchers and crafts makers, glass blowers etc). So for craft makers the incentives are clearly in favor of working in public: people pay more if they see the process. Maybe something similar is true of independet research, or maybe there its more that you want to root for the researcher and get a feel for them as a person. In many other situations, the competitive edge lies in some type of properiatery knowledge, and so working in public, at least totally in public, undercuts your business. And in other cases the marketing is a large part of the value, and if you get to see how it is done - its not all that impressive. And perhaps, as we're moving toward an increasingly knowledge intensive and marking orient world, working in public has largely disappeared. Just riffing.
I wonder, from your perspective, how much of the value of remnote is that you have secret sauce, that you want to hide, and how much is it that you have an awesome team, and the more people see your work the more they trust your product and your commitment to a good longterm vision? ie would working more in public hurt or help you?
The proprietariness of knowledge is a good point. But that's only one way how knowledge is used to create value. The 3-4 properties (Matt Ridley in his book on innovation quotes Paul Romer) are:
1. non-rival
- can be shared without using it up
2. partially excludable
- whoever gets hold of it first can exploit it
3. use to steal a march on rivals
- kept secret
- patented
- use tacit knowledge to copy
4. expensive to produce but can pay for itself
I think every work output has parts that are more excluded/held proprietary and parts that are shared with others for the benefit of all (?)
The desire to protect proprietary information is probably the largest source of pushback to these ideas. A solution could be to designate only certain areas of a firm/organization that students can engage.
Overall, I love the concept. I'm always shocked when the students in my high school will express a career trajectory they want to pursue and then on further discussion it's clear they have little idea of what the job actually entails. Maybe it's unique to the US but there's definitely a disconnect between education and job market.
The US seem to be exceptionally bad at this. From what I gather from friends, there is barely no interaction with work for school kids. I had at least done a few internships before fifteen - at the control room of a nuclear power plant, a print house, and a software consultancy, being the most formative. Spent about a week at each. Also apprenticed as a film projectionist - but sadly that profession died just around then.
With how easy it's getting to use AI for papers, homework and projects this style of learning is more important than ever. So many educators are sounding the alarm to ban AI tools when we should instead develop learning methods like the ones mentioned in this article that are more effective and can easily coexist with the evolving tools provided by AI.
This is an old post of yours, but I'm glad I found it. Just subscribed. I have been researching Christopher Alexander myself and rereading "A City Is Not a Tree."
I recently wrote my own interpretation of his classic essay and related it to online life: https://novum.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-like-a-city
Loved your post! I'm currently reading on the nature of order so Alexander is on my mind, and especially question around what creates a sense of life.
Fascinating essay! I will be curious to delve further into Alexander's work. I had recently published a post on John Taylor Gatto's work https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/how-to-train-sheeple, which reflects many of the themes you address.
We have homeschooled our children from the start (our oldest is now in her first year of university) and over the last decade have formed co-operatives and learning communities similar to the ones described. When organizing our homeschool co-op, I draw on the expertise of the parents which has given us a rich variety of classes and immersion experiences from learning about neuropsychological testing and Latin to processing a deer carcass and animal husbandry. This fall we are planning on offering classes in rhetoric and debate as well as traditional survival knowledge such as canning, woodworking, and orienteering. Many of the children live in the same neighbourhood and will roam the forest, fields, and each others refrigerators.
Thanks again for the added inspiration!
That sounds wonderful! We do something similar, though our oldest is 5 so we're very much in the beginning of the journey :)
I started my first co-op when our oldest daughter was five:) Within the homeschooling community I often found it was helpful to create groups and have others join, especially if existing co-ops were very large or too far away. We started out with a forest walk group and during the winter moved on to stories, crafts (we even had a goldsmith mom in our group), and science experiments. Over the years I adapted the group to student's growing needs and interests. One of the important factors I realized was connecting with parents personally, and not making the program a 'drop-off'. This helped the parents to form community and connection as well. Importantly, I kept all the gatherings phone-free. No phones for parents or students for the duration of the program. This rule might seem outlandish now, but I believe it was essential in deepening our relationships and setting an attentional example for the students. See my post from yesterday for more on this:) https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/from-feeding-moloch-to-digital-minimalism
We have an abandoned school that families are free to use for activities. Once a week we do a big meetup there which is more public facing, and the rest of the time, families self-organize into whatever groups and activities they need. So we rent a swimming hall on Fridays, there are forest groups and playgroups, and courses, and visits to workplaces etc etc. We've also made it so that the homeschooling community counts sort of like a school so families can book all classrooms and resources that schools can book. We haven't had a problem with people looking at their phones: perhaps because none of the families are big on phones, anyway?
Sounds marvelous:)
Also, the "special bike lanes suitable for children" etc. idea is very related to https://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/ and the claim that children are a group of society which is unfairly being disadvantaged and coerced.
As you can figure, I'm in that direction. Though I'm not as anti-coercion as Deutsch et al. This essay is largely me thinking through the possibilities and infrastructure we're building, or could possibly build, in my community.