I realized yesterday after I completed one of the more interesting “Daily Creates”  that I had also remixed one of James C. Scott’s mental models, legibility v illegibility.

Here is his original from his seminal book, Seeing Like a State.

 

 

Here are the two pictures I created that I am calling a remix. The one on the left is the illegible photo of my desk, unexplained gestalt, an ecosystem arising from my rules and habits and mindsets.  The one on the right is a labelled one. I used Prisma to filter it with a nice orange light and then I pointed and explained. I constrained the original image in order to make it more legible for my reader.  This is the classic rhetorical connection of purpose and audience. I want you to understand who I am through what I do and the artifacts around me.

 

Hard to see the original in the legible, isn’t it?  There are lots of important questions that this mental model raises especially when it confronts you unbidden in one’s everyday work. For me, the most resonant question is this:  what do we gain and what do we lose in the translation from illegible to legible? And as a follow up,  is this game worth the candle or is it just some serotonin switcheroo driven by our DNA?