The Archive of Free Thinking

think – act – grow

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  • The value of stories

    “Literature and fiction are two entirely different things. Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.” G.K. Chesterton Chesterton’s quote can be interpreted in four distinct ways. It is a criticism of intellectual elitism, a clarification of the distinctions between fiction and literature: between entertainment and insight, and between freedom of imagination and the prescribing…

  • The importance of understanding video games

    “They assimilate games into some other, more respectable category of human practice.”  C. Thi Nguyen Nguyen argues that comparing games to other art forms, rather than establishing and examining games within their own category, leads to an underestimation of their distinctiveness and importance. An importance which lies in a game’s unique quality as a medium;…

  • The secret to better parks – a visual essay

    “Parks are not automatically anything” Jane Jacobs

  • Are we drowning in data?

    “Data is like garbage. You’d better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.” Mark Twain The conventional view on data and garbage is “garbage in, garbage out.” But Mark Twain raises a more fundamental point, that data is only as useful as its potential applications, and these must be…

  • How to ‘energise’ politics

    “Agitation and mutability are inherent in the nature of democratic republics, just as stagnation and sleepiness are the law of absolute monarchies.” Alexis de Tocqueville Tocqueville observed that ‘agitation and mutability’ are features of societies responsive to the political needs of their people. This essay examines the fundamental forces that drive this change: injustice, knowledge…

  • Artificial Intelligence; artificial results

    “Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person… on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and…

  • How to pick the right medium

    “If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.” Stanley Kubrick While Stanley Kubrick’s words could be an observation on the intrinsic flexibility of film (or a somewhat arrogant assessment of his own skill as a director), it is more fundamentally a comment on the flow of ideas across mediums. This edition explores…

  • You should be listening to buildings

    “Interiors (of buildings) are like large instruments, collecting sound, amplifying it, transmitting it elsewhere.” Peter Zumthor Sound, like colour, offers architects a material with a wide spectrum of potential applications.  Sound in buildings can create atmosphere, rekindle memories and generate emotions. It can repurpose and refine private and public space, and it can be efficient,…

  • Don’t forget about textile art

    “The act of sewing is a process of emotional repair.” Louise Bourgeois Sewing, in all its forms: weaving, knitting, crochet and embroidery, has a unique quality and meaning derived from the range of materials used in the structured process of creation. The medium informs the works created, but so does the process of creation. This…

  • How to change minds

    “A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.” Nelson Mandela The development and maintenance of societies depends on bringing together individuals with differing…