Matt Webb at Reboot - Macroscopes and 100 Hours

I always find Matt Webb's talks inspiring. Matt, as many of you will know, is one of the two eponymous founders of Schultz and Webb design studio, and he wrote Mind Hacks for O'Reilly along with Tom Stafford.

Matt recently spoke at Reboot in Denmark. Within his talk he discussed the notion of a macroscope:

I’d say this focusing is an important component of what, another designer, John Thackara calls a macroscope.

A macroscope? Thackara says,

“A macroscope is something that helps us see what the aggregation of many small actions looks like when added together.”

Scientists have microscopes. Astronomers and peeping toms have telescopes. Designers, in order to see the very big, in order to see culture, which is much bigger than any one of us personally, have macroscopes.

The way I think of a macroscope is as something that shows you where you are, and where you are within something much bigger—simultaneously, so you can comprehend something much vaster than you suddenly in a human way, at a human scale, in the heart.

That was the interesting bit. The inspiring bit came at the end:

So I say our decisions about culture at large, about the question of how to spend our 100 million hours, I say these are rooted in personal ability to wield the tools of production. And as we said, 100 hours practice would get you a really long way.

Here’s my challenge. Right now, put aside 100 hours over this summer. Do it right now, in your head. Put that time aside. 100 hours. 8 hours a week for the next 12 weeks. One hour a day, or one working day a week. It’s one summer out of your entire life, it’s nothing. Okay, you’ve got that 100 hours?

Now for the next two days, go to talks and start conversations with people you don’t know, and choose what to spend your 100 hours on.

I guarantee that everyone in this room can produce something or has some special skill, and maybe they’re not even aware of it.

Ask them what theirs is, find out, because you’ll get ideas about what to learn yourself, and decide what to spend your 100 hours on. Do that for me.

Because when you contribute, when you participate in culture, when you’re no longer solving problems, but inventing culture itself, that is when life starts getting interesting.

Via Russell Davies