Dear Ali,Ā
I miss you. I canāt believe your road trip begins in just a few days. Please drive the speed limit.
When you arrive in Silicon Valley, you will find that I have become very cool. I bought a bike, and also a helmet. The saleswoman made fun of me for requesting the color ābasic black.ā Last weekend, I went to a farmers market and drank some ānitro coffee.ā I am growing herbs in my backyard. I now wear large tortoiseshell glasses (this is because I have gone blind from reading, but please see it first and foremost as a fashion choice). I am seeking āventure capitalā to fund my promising sad-short-story-writing business.Ā
I also watched Steve Jobs. I thought the movie was kind of boring, but didnāt fall asleep on the couch, so...make of that what you will!
Steve Jobs is structured around some product launches, culminating in the release of the iMac. Thatās the computerāblue, transparent, bulbousāthat filled our elementary schools. We learned to type and āpaintā and search the Internet on iMacs. I take them for granted. I donāt think of that goofy-looking computer as part of the digital revolution, though it was.Ā
Maybe thatās because the allure of Apple and Jobs transcends any physical computer. It has to do with ābrandā and ācultureā and āaesthetic.ā It has to do with āidentityā and āappeal.ā It has to do with black turtlenecks and a creepy commercial: not the size of a hard drive or the...tightness of the code? (Letās go with tightness.)Ā
At one point in the film, Steve Wozniak (played by Seth Rogan), the engineer who built circuit boards with Jobs in a garage, gets angry. āYou canāt write code. Youāre not an engineer. Youāre not a designer,ā he insists. āSo how come ten times in a day, I read Steve Jobs is a genius? What do you do?āĀ
I share Steve Wozniakās frustration. Not with Steve Jobs, necessarily: he was obviously smart and inspired and industrious. I love my MacBook. But behind the slogans and dreams and promises of Silicon Valley, the question lingers: Who is doing the real work? False idols like Elizabeth Holmes and Adam Neumann reveal how much trust (and money) we invest in founders with charisma, rather than the engineer at her desk, or the factory worker assembling the device, or the janitor cleaning up spilled beer at WeWork.
Silicon Valley is all about thinking BIG. Imagine first! Do later. Or donāt do it at all.
So this week, in protest, I recommend Thinking Little.Ā
My book pick:
Thinking Little is a re-release (by the wonderful Berkeley press Counterpoint) of two essays by Wendell Berry. Berry, a Kentucky novelist and essayist and farmer, often writes about localism and the environment. Heās curmudgeonly and earnest. This palm-sized collection contains two essays. The longer one, āA Native Hill,ā tells the story of Berryās family land, and considers what it means to be bound to a place. Itās beautiful.
But the bookās namesake essay, āThink Little,ā is the one Iām especially recommending to you today. It was written in 1979, but feels very 2020. Berry blames corporations and government entities for āthinking bigā about racial injustice, war, and environmentalism: aka for being all talk and no action. He blames the average citizen for thinking racism is āthe fault of someone else.ā He blames people for joining āthe fads and fashions of protest,ā repeating slogans and shaming others rather than understanding issues. (Apparently, people were unhelpfully woke even in 1979.)Ā
He blames all of us for being too abstract, rather than paying attention to what we can do right now.
The discipline of thought is not generalization; it is detail, and it is personal behavior.
Want to help the environment? Instead of founding a carbon-capture start-up, Berry suggests planting a garden in your backyard. Instead of joining an organization or posting a slogan, he recommends picking up cans and bottles on the road. Instead of developing a brand persona around climate change activism, he proposes taking shorter showers. Or driving your car less. This is:Ā
a new kind of lifeāharder, more laborious, poorer in luxuries and gadgets, but also...richer in meaning and more abundant in real pleasure.
Berry isnāt about the future. Heās not about the corporation, political candidate, or visionary founder that can save us.Ā
Heās about the present. That means thereās no time to find angel investors or come up with a prototype or buy a black turtleneck. Right now, we need:Ā
ā¦better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities. We need persons and households that do not have to wait upon organizations, but can make necessary changes in themselves, on their own.
The book:Ā Think Little
My rating: š§āš¾š§āš¾š§āš¾š§āš¾š§āš¾Ā (five out of five)Ā
Read more: āThe Work of Local CultureāĀ
Love,Ā
Kate