The Archive of Free Thinking

think – act – grow

recent posts

  • 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 and hope. It also argues that on their own, these forces are insufficient because the energy required to create change is often dissipated over time or lost through factional disagreements. As a result, there is a need for organising frameworks which maximise energy to ensure a functional democracy. They need to encourage collective action, reward involvement, drive focused effort and ensure continuous action. The analysis also reminds us that preserving democracy is an ongoing and demanding process, as Dwight Eisenhower stated, “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.” 

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  • 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 research laboratories.”

    David Ogilvy (1983)

    In this quotation, marketing icon David Ogilvy highlights the need for a deep and direct understanding of a problem in order to develop an effective solution. He emphasises the importance of immersion, attention to detail and engaged passion. This edition examines why his approach to problem-solving was so successful, and why it has been in decline over the last twenty years. It highlights how the search for ‘real world’ understanding has been replaced by ‘artificial’ and ‘constructed’ views of the world, simulacra. It identifies that the problem of artificiality is becoming more acute with the growth of AI, with its introspective forms of learning. Finally, it explores the adverse consequences of this change on how we view the world and shares some ideas to reverse the trend. 

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  • 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 this process of adaptation as ideas move from one medium to another, how a play can become a film and then a stage musical (as with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story). Many factors drive the adaptation of ideas into different mediums: a writer or director’s interest in a new interpretation, new technologies and materials, as well as commercial opportunities. This edition of the archive examines why some adaptations can be straightforward, while others are more difficult. It highlights that adaptation is often a source of inspiration in the emergence of new art forms and representations. It also explores how certain forms of representation become established across mediums. Over time, multiple acts of adaptation force both the artist and the viewer to reexamine the work and how it relates to the moment of its creation, reemphasising the importance of understanding the specific meaning of ideas and the qualities of mediums when moving an idea from medium to medium. 

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  • 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, requiring minimal construction, environmental and economic costs. By looking at sound as a design tool, we can ‘amplify’ the emotional capacity of spaces, to profound effect.

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  • 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 is particularly clear in textiles because the marks of labour are so physically apparent. These characteristics make ‘sewing’, and other (handmade) textile art forms especially valuable as mnemonic objects that carry ideas, identities, and histories.

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  • 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 skills, values, and ideas to create environments where they can coexist and thrive. Central in this process is the ability to debate, to share thoughts, to challenge and to create agreement. This edition explores debate, both its ineffective and effective forms. In particular, the importance of ‘closeness’: direct contact, empathy and immersion, in creating constructive dialogues.

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  • Is greed good? Balancing rhetoric and informed debate

    I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”

    Gordon Gekko in ‘Wall Street’ (1987)

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  • “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the significant potential of community economics

    “People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well in my book, my father died a much richer man than you’ll ever be!”

    George Bailey

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  • A Question of Form: system alignment in problem-solving

    “The first requisite for a body of practical and progressing thought: recognition of the kind of problem at issue. Lacking this, it has found the shortest distance to a dead end.”

    Jane Jacobs

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  • Fireside chatting: fire, community and the human mind

    “The most enduring tool that fire ever made might just be the human mind.”

    Thomas Wynn

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