Tradition was the first school. People learned to do things, more and more complex things, and they used the tools they had at their disposal to remember and share that growing knowledge. They embodied their knowledge. They talked about it. Maybe they drew a picture. When written language became a thing, they wrote it down. As time went on, our methods of documenting and notating our knowledge also became more and more complex. Today, having complex ideas is one thing, but having ideas about how to represent, capture, and share complex ideas (think Gantt charts, iPhones, 3D models, business plans, etc.) is another, even more valuable thing, culturally and economically speaking.

This shift to appreciating documentation and notation is also a shift to standardization. When you write something down, you lose the interaction or relationship which might have tailored the knowledge to your particular context. A farmer no longer finds out about the strange wind patterns on your land because of the way the hills are a half mile to the west. A clarinet technique book doesn’t know you like the aggressive, bending sound of Klezmer clarinet. The instructor in your Intro to Neuroscience course doesn’t know you’re there because you want to understand your mom while the person beside you is there because it’s a required course for all premeds while the person beside them believes in eugenics and is pursuing a passion project.

Today, living traditions are the “folk” schools that have persisted in the face of capitalism and institutionalization. Once you call it “school” or “training,” it’s proceduralized. Living traditions, instead, can take many forms. When something lives as a tradition in this way

  1. It is actively connected to its past

  2. It is present to the current moment

Program of study velocity

  • Noise and the Novice site?

  • Mindmap of exciting peripheral topics/details?

  • Code snippets — Click on the left to request information “by hand.”

  • Concept album posting

  • Song arrangements posted

  • Inspiring and related work