I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. It’s not an either/or—being “anti-technology” is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly “pro-technology”—but a question of balance that our lives hang upon.

In July 2019, ICMS hosted a workshop on Category Theory.  During the workshop, Eugenia Cheng (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) gave a public lecture entitled Inclusion-Exclusion in mathematics and beyond: who stays in, who falls out, why it happens and what we could do about it. This is a recording of that talkThis talk has captions.  To turn the captions off, press CC on the bottom toolbar.

likely in childhood, when life seemed to limit itself to the small world around us. that the contours of their experience were articulated It reminds me of the passage I quote in my original piece from social psychologist Devon Price: “If a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you,” Price writes, “it is because you are missing a part of their context. It’s that simple.” As I said last week, no one’s “bottom half of their to-do list” — the things they avoid and find themselves incapable of completing — are exactly the same, and the consequences of the inability to complete them are different. The question can’t just be how I can prevent my burnout; it has to be how I can prevent yours. The answer will entail not just creating better workplaces, but also becoming better people. How can you communicate to your kid — in a way that they will actually hear and trust and internalize — that you care about them learning, but that their ability to get into a “good” college is not tied to your love for them? How can you work to make the “mental load” in your household visible to your partner, and collaborate with them, in a way that’s not passive aggressive or creating even more load, to share it? How can you implement policies in your workplace that don’t incentivize demonstrations of “overwork”? (It’s not just saying that there’s no expectation to answer emails after 6 pm, for example, but that no emails should be sent). Or even just simply acknowledge that events that seem like fun work “escape” to some people on your team feel like much, much more labor to others?