Here are the nine principles:
1. Disobedience over compliance
2. Pull over push
3. Compasses over maps
4. Emergence over authority
5. Learning over education
6. Resilience over strength
7. Risk over safety
8. Practice over theory
9. Systems over Objects
Howe and Ito draw on material that you’ve probably read if you follow my reviews: think Dan Ariely’s behavior economics books, Kevin Kelly’s ideas about the adjacent possible, Steven Johnson’s ideas about “emergence” — not to mention the work of the people in our shared orbit, like Sean Bonner and his open source hardware radiation sensors; and Bunnie Huang’s prolific, thoughtful, virtuoso hardware hacking.
But even if the material is familiar, the book will spark your imagination and inspire, because the organization of historical context, business and research anaecdotes and philosophical thought under these eight banners makes the subject spring to life.
We live in precarious, fraught and pregnant times. The future is impossible to guess at, our soundest institutions are proving to be brittle, our disorganized rabble are turning out to be powerful political forces. Ito has shown himself to be beautifully suited to the current times, able to leap from alligator to alligator all the way across the raging river, to reach distant banks that are seemingly impossible to attain.
Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future [Joi Ito and Jeff Howe/Grand Central]