Alan Kay suggested that progress in education should be measured in “Sistine Chapel ceilings per lifetime.” Ultimately my goal is something similar, but maybe substitute “Nobel-worthy scientific discoveries”, “Watt-level inventions” or “trillion-dollar businesses” for the artistic goal. I’ll know if I’m successful if in twenty years, or fifty, people who did those things are telling me they were given inspiration and courage from my work.
The problem with Sistine Chapel ceilings is that it’s a lagging metric. We all need leading metrics to steer ourselves by. So on a much shorter timescale, I look at my audience size—over 12k on Twitter now and ~2,700 on my email list. I also look at the quality of the audience and the feedback I’m getting. With Progress Studies for Young Scholars, we gave the students an end-of-program feedback survey (two-thirds rated it 9 or 10 out of 10). When I write a book, of course, I’ll look at how well it sells. Etc.
Re actions I want people to take: right now I’m just happy if they listen and learn and find what I have to say interesting. And, especially for young people, I hope they will consider devoting their careers to ambitious goals that drive forward human progress.
Alan Kay suggested that progress in education should be measured in “Sistine Chapel ceilings per lifetime.” Ultimately my goal is something similar, but maybe substitute “Nobel-worthy scientific discoveries”, “Watt-level inventions” or “trillion-dollar businesses” for the artistic goal. I’ll know if I’m successful if in twenty years, or fifty, people who did those things are telling me they were given inspiration and courage from my work.
The problem with Sistine Chapel ceilings is that it’s a lagging metric. We all need leading metrics to steer ourselves by. So on a much shorter timescale, I look at my audience size—over 12k on Twitter now and ~2,700 on my email list. I also look at the quality of the audience and the feedback I’m getting. With Progress Studies for Young Scholars, we gave the students an end-of-program feedback survey (two-thirds rated it 9 or 10 out of 10). When I write a book, of course, I’ll look at how well it sells. Etc.
Re actions I want people to take: right now I’m just happy if they listen and learn and find what I have to say interesting. And, especially for young people, I hope they will consider devoting their careers to ambitious goals that drive forward human progress.