Substrate

Substrate

A living collection of notes, ideas, and reflections from Doug Belshaw.

reflections updated

Actually, I think it's a great time to be alive

Sometimes, it's easy to forget that despite the world's problems, the chances are we would all much rather be alive now than in times past.

Why? Here's 5 reasons:

  1. Global life expectancy is approximately 73.66 years, compared to medieval England (c.30–35 years), or even the year 1900 (c.31 years globally). Even since the year 2000 there have been huge gains, with maternal deaths dropping over 40% between 2000 and 2023, and child deaths under the age of 5 more than halving. And that's despite COVID-19 and cuts to aid budgets. So a child born today has much better odds of reaching adulthood than at any prior point in history. We forget this in WEIRD societies sometimes.
    2. …
reflections updated

Forty-five

It's a bit of a coincidence that the main protagonist in both the last book I read and the current book I'm reading are both the same age as me. Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene was absolutely fantastic, and I'm enjoying the modern James Bond novel Solo by William Boyd so far.

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reflections updated

I don't work at the 'intersection' of anything thank you very much

One of the advantages and drawbacks of having studied Philosophy, History, Education, and Systems Thinking while having a background in technology is that you realise that everything... is just made up. Not just in a Steve Jobs "everything around you around was made by someone no smarter than you" kind of way, but in a William James "blooming, buzzing confusion" kind of way.

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reflections updated

I've been feeling a bit like this recently

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

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reflections updated

Already thinking of my next zine

I woke up early this morning and an idea for a second zine just popped fully-formed into my head. It's weird how the subconscious works.

After a little bit of back-and-forth with my Little Robot Friend, I'm thinking of framing it as a "field guide for designing around the mind we actually have". That's in contrast to the ultra-rational one that we'll never achieve, nor would we actually want anyway.

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