fig 00—THE AUTHOR, SOMEWHERE WITH CHECKERED FLOORSA Portrait ofLorenzo Scardicchio
Lorenzo Scardicchio is a philosopher and the founder of Journey Nudge, where he builds holistic technology that nudges people toward who they want to be. He paints, designs, and writes, and he is suspicious of any machine that wants his attention.
The essays collected here first appeared in his Substack newsletter. They circle a single question from many directions: in an economy engineered to harvest human attention, what does it take to keep hold of your own mind, and to point it at a life worth wanting?
I grew up in the back of a coffee shop. My family ran it, and most of what I know about paying attention I learned there, from the old-timers at the card table, who could read a whole hand in the way a man set down his cup. The shuffle of the deck, the clink of the cups, the long afternoon light on a checkered floor. I have been trying to get that feeling into things ever since.
The paintings come from the same place. I paint quick and thick, and I like a colour next to the one it isn’t supposed to sit beside. A window with a light left on. A rose on black. A chessboard coming apart. I am not trying to make something pretty; I am trying to make something that holds still long enough to be looked at twice.
The essays are the other half of the same argument. I build technology for a living, and I have spent years uncomfortably close to the machines that farm human attention. So I write about what they take, and about the slower things that give it back: a phone face down on the table, a long walk, a partner who reminds you that the body is the primary source and the ring is only the interpreter. Charlie Munger taught me to look for the incentive. The card players taught me to look for the tell. This whole site is me trying to do both at once.