Dean's 🧠 Newsletter #2
All together it would be an AR Post-Apocalyptic British Gameshow Robot Religion
Smart Assistants and Spatial Computing
🛋 - The Echo Show 10 came out this week with a new feature to turn and face you in the room. Reminds me of my favorite proof of concept smart home interface from Jared Ficklin called Room E.
Jared’s company argodesign is a strategic design partner for Magic Leap, one of the companies working hard to nail spatial computing. His latest article describing the possibilities of spatial computing to improve productivity using “placefullness” is worth the quick read. His AR vision is closer to Her than Hyper-Reality.
Taskmaster
♟ - I’ve been obsessed with the British Comedy Game Show, Taskmaster, this year. It’s full of irreverent humor and out of the box creativity. Example tasks: Make the best nursery rhyme music video, get 3 exercise balls to the top of a windy hill, work out what happens when you flick this switch. They release new full episodes on youtube. The current season, Season 7, might be my favorite so far, perhaps because James Acaster is a favorite of mine.
The Knowledge
🔥 - My favorite parts of post-apocalyptic and survival movies are the solutions people engineer with the limited tools available. So when I found this book, The Knowledge, I knew I needed it. It’s a practical handbook for surviving and rebuilding after a cataclysm. It’s not for simply surviving in the wilderness. It takes into account the many resources that would be available if our current world were to somehow fall (more) apart. I read it years ago, but the pandemic has me thinking about it again. I decided to buy the physical version since only having my digital version didn’t really make sense.
Rough Science
⚗️ - In the same vein as The Knowledge is this show, Rough Science. Take a handful of scientists and put them out away from civilization somewhere and give them challenges where their only resources are what’s already around them, their scientific know-how, and a few helpful task-specific items. This show has convinced me that chemists are the closest thing we have to real-life wizards. The entire series is available for free on YouTube.
Readwise
📖 - The TED talk that has likely changed me the most is Alain de Botton’s talk on Atheism 2.0. He talks about unashamedly stealing concepts from religion. My Atheism 2.0 replacements for scripture are my Readwise emails. Every day I get a random sampling of 7 highlights (you can set how many you want) from things I’ve read online or on my Kindle. It reinforces the act of highlighting while I’m reading. I looked forward to seeing it in my email every day.
Thanks for reading. Got any great survival/science/engineering based stories or shows to share? Let me know!