Commonplace: An Audio Journal for Inquisitive Minds

Camden runs through many of the books he's read in the last few months.

Aaron tells about his Italian adventures.

Camden speaks with his friends Aaron and Katy about his hangups with certain numbers. This leads us into a discussion of psychological phenomena.

Camden, Kelly, and Kipton discuss budgeting, home improvement projects, and Kipton's relationship with 220v.

The three Bucey brothers, Camden, Kelly, and Kipton, test out a new podcasting service while discussing kombucha, beer, and the absurdity of Pennsylvania drinking laws.

Camden and Erica discuss reading with purpose and the relative merits of reading non-fiction and fiction.

This is Commonplace, an audio journal for inquisitive minds. Taking after the historical practice of keeping a "commonplace book," I am seeking to promote the flow of important ideas and lessons that I gather in my personal studies and conversations. Pentland, Social PhysicsCreativity is a romantic notion. Many people think of it as an elusive inspiration. Writers wait for the moment when a muse might speak to them, sending a new idea out of the ether. I believe we can de-mystify creativity; it is much more mundane than that. Sandy Pentland shares an oft-referenced quotation from Steve Jobs: // Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty, because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. (George Beahm, ed. I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words, 2011; quoted in Alex Pentland, Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread—The Lessons from a New Science, 26) // Humans don't create ex nihilo. Everyone must work with building materials. We gather them through personal experience, reading, and listening to others. From that milieu our subconscious begins to work. I lack hard scientific evidence for this, but I believe our brains are "connection machines." They naturally search for patterns and order in the raw data they receive. We don't need to follow Kant to recognize there's something to this. If that's true, then we can jumpstart creativity through exploration. Study different fields. Study different thinkers and traditions. Compare and contrast. Look for connections. Interact with many other creative people. Start your own salon or informal symposium, especially with those espousing diverse views. Gather together to hash out ideas. The more exposure you have to different ideas and so-called problems, the more grist you provide for your creativity mill.

This is Commonplace, an audio journal for inquisitive minds. Taking after the historical practice of keeping a "commonplace book," I am seeking to promote the flow of important ideas and lessons that I gather in my personal studies and conversations. Several years ago, Steven Berlin Johnson gave an address titled, "The Glass Box and the Commonplace Book" in which he discussed two different paths for the future of text. One was the glass box, the concept that a text is something of a museum piece. It's meant to be looked at, but not touched or manipulated. The other path was the commonplace book: // Scholars, amateur scientists, aspiring men of letters—just about anyone with intellectual ambition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was likely to keep a commonplace book. In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations. It was a kind of solitary version of the original web logs: an archive of interesting tidbits that one encountered during one’s textual browsing. The great minds of the period—Milton, Bacon, Locke—were zealous believers in the memory-enhancing powers of the commonplace book. There is a distinct self-help quality to the early descriptions of commonplacing’s virtues: in the words of one advocate, maintaining the books enabled one to “lay up a fund of knowledge, from which we may at all times select what is useful in the several pursuits of life.” // I love the idea of a commonplace book as a tool for idea formation. I've hacked together a similar system myself using physical notebooks and Evernote. Creativity occurs by collecting seemingly disparate material and searching for connection. Keeping a commonplace book is a time-tested method for organizing thoughts and stimulating ideas.