So What, Who Cares (vol 1, issue 1): Morlocks are morning people, for sure
Welcome to what historians will later call the "wildly experiential" stage for So What, Who Cares? We're kicking off this newsletter with a little backstory, then on to the So What, Who Cares? portion of events.
The Backstory
A former editor was ripping apart a story I had pitched with some vague hand-waving and he said to me, "Look, you're not going to write this story until you can tell me why it matters or who it matters to. You're responsible for providing the context here. Always write with these questions in mind: So what? Who cares?"
I love how context can be boiled down to those two questions. And while I also love both Facebook and Twitter for the ability to disseminate links, I dislike how that link-sharing is often devoid of any context. There's no way to place the item in a larger story. It's hard to answer "So what? Who cares?" in fewer than 140 characters or on a site where people are posting terrible glurge.
Hence this old-school round-up. Email is awesome for a lot of reasons and I can elaborate on them later, but this backstory is already longer than a flashback in Arrow and I'm not even throwing in the kind of gratuitous shirtlessness that Stephen Amell provides for you. So, on to ...
So What? Who Cares?
Two separate stories suggest that several people working in SF's tech industry should revisit H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and review the parts about the Eloi and the Morlocks. In one, data scientists call the people who do the attention-intensive yet tedious work of munging through raw information to "data janitors." In another, the actual janitors and other service workers who keep the techies comfortable on the job detail how all that crazy tech money is in no way trickling down to them.
So what? If tech pros are unwilling/unable to understand value in other types of labor, their ability to do meaningful OR lucrative work is limited. There is only a finite market for apps that encourage you to spend money on silly stuff. Keep an eye on tech markets aimed outside white-collar industries to see what's going on.
Who cares? Two distinct types of people: Those in the tech industry who would like to actually make money, and those in the growing class of people who feel as if this country is stratifying into a tiny elite and a large working class.
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Going Deep with David Rees is a crazy-fun show that takes seemingly simple topics (shoelaces! digging holes!) and explains why they work at all. Rees is never better than when he is coaxing some scientist who's devoted their life to double knots to explain the physics of taking the bunny ears and pushing one through the loop. It's streaming for free on Hulu right now. Get an idea of how into the shoe Rees was by reading his how-to on the making of the show.
So what? Taking a simple item and breaking down the complex historical and scientific web of facts that willed it into creation is a really cool thing to do and even cooler to watch.
Who cares? Anyone who would like to replenish the brain cells lost during binge-viewing Party Down South.
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New reams of research are beginning to suggest that hey, maybe sleeping more will make us all less tired and/or sociopathic in the long run. Australian researchers have discovered that new mothers are still "excessively sleep deprived" after four months. The study appears in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS One, presumably because the managing editor at the Journal of Duuuuh was asleep at her desk. Add to that a study noting that people tend to behave "less ethically" when they're tired and another claims that people's morality is tied to their circadian rhythms (so night owls are presumably more ethical at 2 a.m., even if there's nobody around).
So what? Sleep is the last great bastion of lifehacking. Prepare for an onslaught of articles on managing energy levels and mental discipline when you haven't had enough sleep and/or are operating outside your usual time zone.
Who cares? Anyone whose friends are already Fitbitting like whoa. 10,000 steps is so 2013. What's hot now is optimizing your sleep quality. Even hotter: Explaining that urgent need to sleep to a four-month-old baby.