I’m listening to the below podcast right now with Sonal Chokshi, Chris Dixon, and Steven Johnson. Steven recently published a new book called, Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter Most. If you can’t see the embedded podcast below, click here.
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It is about the big and meaningful decisions that we make as individuals – such as where to live or who to marry – as well as the big and meaningful decisions that we make as a collective – such as how to plan a city or fight climate change. But most importantly, it is about how we can get better at them.
Supposedly, part of the science (and art) behind deliberative decision making is using tricks to get our minds to see problems and their complexities differently. That could involve scenario planning and even considering the weirdest possible outcomes. In fact, Steven finds a lot of value in fictional storytelling.
There could also be implications for city building. Tech is allowing us to collect a lot more data about the ways in which our cities operate today. But as we get better at running complex simulations, we should also get a lot better at understanding the long-term implications of our decisions.
I may just have to get Steven’s new book.
Last night I checked out the Unzipped Toronto exhibition, which is the relocated Serpentine Pavilion (pictured above) that was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group in 2016.
It was initially housed in Hyde Park London, but it’s now on King Street West Toronto. Westbank purchased the “unzipped wall” after it was installed in London and supposedly it will eventually find a permanent home in Vancouver.
The official opening of Unzipped Toronto is September 15th, 2018. It will be free and open to the public. If you’d like to get a complimentary ticket, you can do that here.