When I was in college I worked a series of odd jobs as an actual worker, instead of a "knowledge" worker, and I spent a good deal of time being miserable at several of them thinking about Marx's alienation theory. I'm not sure how many other people in the dimly lit warehouse were contemplating the commoditization of their labor and how their humanity was being denied, but I did it almost every day. After a few months I envied so many of my co-workers who got stoned before/during work.
Thinking about architectural stuff and how it can influence behavior. Can you transport behavioral norms through architectural vocabularies? If people are quiet in church, can you make them more quiet in a talkative place by adding architectural references to church? What if court rooms or police stations looked like living rooms - with couches, recliners, coffee tables? Would people behave differently? Does it have to remind them of their living room or their parents living room? Or what about a living room that looks like an office - would that be horrible to be in? Do people who work in cube farms have different expectations about personal space than those who work in separate offices or people who work shoulder to shoulder? I once had a meeting in a conference room of a startup where the furniture was very obviously someone's dining room set - you sat much closer to other people than in a normal conference room and the closeness was jarring. The meeting we had felt a bit different from others. I don't know if I would describe it as more like Thanksgiving dinner or less like it, but it was different.
On NPR the other morning I heard a few seconds of Johnny Appleseed (post-Clash Joe Strummer) being used as an outro/button. The people who pick music to fill in gaps on NPR shows are better DJs than the DJs for actual music stations.
The woman who sits near me has caught a bad case of the thting where you fill every gap in speech with "ummmmm" from the guy who sits next to her. Philosopher soccer
