Brain Pickings is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large, who has also written for Wired UK, The New York Times, Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, and The Atlantic, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.
Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why, bringing you things you didn’t know you were interested in — until you are. Founded in 2006 as a humble email digest and eventually brought online, the site was included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive in 2012. Here’s a little bit about the 7 most important learnings from the journey so far.
The core ethos behind Brain Pickings is that creativity is a combinatorial force: It’s our ability to tap into the mental pool of resources — ideas, insights, knowledge, inspiration — that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world, and to combine them in extraordinary new ways. In order for us to truly create and contribute to culture, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these ideas and build new ideas — like LEGOs. The more of these building blocks we have, and the more diverse their shapes and colors, the more interesting our creations will be.
Brain Pickings — which remains ad-free and supported by readers — is a cross-disciplinary LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces spanning art, design, science, technology, philosophy, history, politics, psychology, sociology, ecology, anthropology, and more; pieces that enrich your mental pool of resources and empower combinatorial ideas that are stronger, smarter, richer, deeper and more impactful. Please enjoy.
Brain Pickings web site here:
Roger, you are a treasure trove of interesting thoughts. I visited the website and signed up for their weekly email. If it works out well, and I'm sure it will, I will donate to their cause. Like wikipedia, I appreciate the no advertising format and will support it.
ReplyDeleteMy kids have stopped wanting to play Trivial Pursuits with me because they say my brain package of trivia is just too big. I love it and, for years, looked forward to my daily dose of Jeopardy. I don't watch TV now so I haven't had a dose in a while.
I guess I still need to decide what I want to be when I grow up.
You can play Jeopardy online at www.jeopardy.com
DeleteI've been known to win a few games of Trivial Pursuit. I just finished "The Sins of the Father" and before I could start the next in the series I started "Heir Apparent: the Story of Edward VII, The Playboy Prince." I've always been a big fan of the history of the Royals. If you hadn't taken up the medical field, you probably would have become a college professor.
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