2020 was a year of many things. Healthcare politicization, data politicization, writers duped by fake news outlets, news outlets duped by fake writers, economic downs and ups, hacks, protests, an emerging disease people thought was just the flu, and much more.
People suffered from bad systems and had difficultly creating better ones. Often there was no thought to systems at all. But 2020 was representative of a normal year in a world more exposed to unintended consequences. Or you could say 2020 shifted the expectation of what normal could be.
Many recent actions will reach far into the future. I’ll explore some of them in coming articles, which will include more on COVID, the election, and social media censorship, as well as topics like self-driving cars, ecosystem interference, and education.
I take my readers as thoughtful, wanting deeper insights, and appreciating a different perspective than they see elsewhere.
That means that I try to leave readers more knowledgeable on important topics that should be more studied (but often aren’t).
That also means that I’m going beyond writing to do monthly online talks (next one January 13th).
But most of my unintended consequences work is through writing. My process falls into two styles:
- I choose a topic based on importance and interest and research it. Research might include reading academic studies, annual reports, mixed news sources, doing my own analysis, and rereading (or remembering) books that intersect with the topic. I sleep on it, add my own systems approach, and finally write it.
- I react to something in the news where I happen to have a store of past knowledge. Since I’m already coincidentally prepared those pieces can take less time to produce.
It’s original content. That’s why building this body of work is difficult. It’s also one of the reasons people love it.
I post weekly and take holidays off. I think my readers are OK with that pace (tell me if I’m wrong). And I need the breaks for reading, thinking, and my other work. But I want to increase my output on unintended consequences to the point that it can be my main focus (you can support that here).
Writing is a virtuous cycle. My earlier writing helps me with emerging topics. For example, before 2020 I wrote multiple times about diseases. So when the COVID story appeared it was natural for me to write about it early.
Going forward I will try to avoid political content, at least for a while. I found keeping up with politics to be exhausting. There are plenty of others commenting on politics. You’ll see me elsewhere, at least for now.
Look forward to learning more in 2021! Stay well.
Courage.