THIS WEEK’S ISSUE:
This Week’s Theme
A brief introduction to the central idea explored in this issue.A Note on Sensemaking
Reflections on how we interpret and navigate complex information.Technocultural Currents
Insights into the intersection of technology and culture.The Sounds of Sensemaking
A curated selection of music to deepen your understanding.A Contemplative Exercise
A practical activity to help you reflect or engage with this week’s theme.Reading and Listening Highlights
Recommendations for articles, books, podcasts, or videos worth exploring.A Learning Program
A resource or framework to support your ongoing growth and learning.Questions Worth Pondering
Thought-provoking prompts to inspire deeper inquiry and discussion.Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life—its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness—conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic must be assessed. What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.
-Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation
Week 9: Sensemaking
In this age of relentless interpretation — where every experience demands a hot take and every artwork begs to be dissected into bite-sized meanings — we find ourselves at a curious crossroads in the human story. Building on last week’s grounding in bodily intuition, this Notes to the Future installment (Week 9 of our 52-week journey) invites you to trace the roots of perception itself, and discover why Susan Sontag’s 1964 manifesto Against Interpretation reads like an oracle for our algorithmic present.
A Note on Sensemaking
We live in an age where machines parse the world into datasets while our bodies thrum with ancestral rhythms—a dissonance that fractures modern sensemaking. Consider the paradox: an AI can map the synaptic firings of a brain listening to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, yet remains deaf to the silence between notes where meaning pools. This silence, as the musician intuits, is not absence but a substrate—a “closing of the eyes and mouth” that precedes cognition. Here, at the edge of the quantifiable, we confront sensemaking’s irreducible mystery: How do we reconcile the algorithm’s gaze with the gut’s tacit wisdom?
The industrial era’s ocularcentrism—its fetish for visual mastery—has metastasized in AI’s design. Neural networks, modeled on the brain’s wiring yet stripped of its embodied context, excel at detecting patterns in retinal scans or facial recognition grids. But what of the olfactory poetry of soil after rain, or the proprioceptive ache of a violinist’s fingerboard calluses? These sensations, dismissed as “noise” in machine learning datasets, encode truths that evade quantification. The modern crisis of meaning stems not from data scarcity but from sensory atrophy—a hierarchy that elevates the measurable over the felt.
Yet the body persists as a heretic. When a mother recognizes her child’s fever through touch before the thermometer confirms it, she enacts a sensemaking older than language. This tactile epistemology, what quantum theorists might call “complementarity,” resists binary logic. It thrives in the interstice between the seen and the sensed, much like the physicist who must accept light as both particle and wave. AI, for all its prowess, stumbles here. Its algorithms can predict disease outbreaks but cannot grasp the texture of suffering—the way a community’s grief alters the timbre of its songs, or how a forest’s mycorrhizal whispers collapse under chainsaws.
The mechanization of perception began long before silicon. Industrial agriculture’s pesticides, critiqued in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, were tools of sensory alienation—blunt instruments that severed the farmer’s dialogue with soil. Today’s AI risks repeating this rupture. Facial analysis tools that reduce empathy to microexpression metrics, or recommendation engines that flatten desire into clickstream patterns, enact a new kind of pesticide: sterilizing the fertile ambiguity of human intuition. Yet Carson’s insight holds: systems blind to ecological interdependencies sow their own demise. Similarly, AI architectures that ignore the body’s non-visual symphonies breed cognitive monocultures—fields of thought stripped of cross-pollination.
Revelation, in this context, becomes an act of re-membering. Just as the musician hears the silence shaping sound, we might train algorithms to honor the gaps—the unspoken, the unquantified. Early experiments hint at this: neural networks that incorporate haptic feedback to “feel” architectural stress points, or biomimetic sensors translating phytoplankton blooms into auditoryscapes. These are not mere tools but prosthetics of attention, expanding sensemaking into realms the unaided body cannot reach. Yet they demand a Carson-esque vigilance: technology must amplify, not amputate, our kinship with the thirty-two parts of flesh and soil.1
The quantum theorist’s dilemma—the impossibility of divorcing observer from observed—finds new urgency in AI ethics. When facial recognition systems misgender individuals or predictive policing algorithms codify cognitive bias, they reveal not algorithmic flaws but epistemic wounds: the way machines inherit our fractured sensemaking. To “close the eyes and mouth” here is not retreat but recalibration—a humility before the “mystery” of another’s lived experience. It demands training datasets steeped in plural narratives, loss functions weighted by the silenced, and interfaces that prioritize tactile engagement over screen-bound abstraction.
The path forward echoes ecological vision: sensemaking as a symbiosis of scale. Microscopic and cosmic, algorithmic and intuitive. Imagine AI as mycorrhizal network—a subterranean lattice connecting human and more-than-human intelligences. Farmers might query soil sensors not for pH levels alone, but for the story of the land: drought memories encoded in tree rings, the chatter of nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Urban planners could simulate cities not as efficiency grids but as sensory ecosystems, where traffic noise is balanced against the infrasound of migrating birds. This is not utopia but necessity: a recognition that living well requires machines that feel as deeply as they compute.
In the end, the body remains our compass. The scent of rain, the warmth of a hand, the dissonance of a half-remembered melody—these are the revelations no algorithm can parse. Yet in their shadow, we might design technologies that humble us to the mystery Tillich2 revered: not a problem to solve, but a presence to inhabit. For sensemaking, at its core, is the art of listening—to the world, to each other, to the silence where new harmonies await.
Technocultural Currents
The integration of AI and sensor technologies has become a focal point for thinkers like Amy Webb, CEO of the Future Today Institute, who envisions a convergence of AI, advanced sensors, and biotechnology as the foundation for "living intelligence"—systems that "sense, learn, adapt, and evolve". This aligns with Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and AI Lab, who argues for "physical intelligence," merging AI’s digital prowess with robotics’ mechanical acuity to navigate dynamic environments. Their work underscores the shift from static data collection to adaptive, context-aware systems—a theme echoed by David Sanders at the University of Portsmouth, whose research integrates neural networks and case-based reasoning to optimize sensor arrays for industrial tele-operation and predictive maintenance.
In environmental monitoring, firms like TE Connectivity exemplify Webb’s vision, deploying AI-driven pressure and temperature sensors to predict pipeline integrity failures and optimize solar tracker efficiency. Similarly, BrainBox AI (acquired by Trane in 2025) uses sensor data to reduce HVAC energy consumption by 25%, showcasing how AI transforms raw inputs into actionable sustainability strategies. These applications resonate with Winsen Sensor’s work in healthcare, where AI-enhanced pressure sensors detect blood pressure irregularities in real-time, blending empirical precision with adaptive diagnostics.
Critics like Max Planck, whose reflections on the "metaphysically real world" challenged reductionist paradigms, find modern counterparts in scholars interrogating AI’s epistemological limits. The University of Portsmouth’s hybrid expert systems, which fuse rule-based logic with neural networks to detect anomalies in industrial sensor data, embody Planck’s insistence that scientific models remain provisional—stepping stones toward a receding horizon of understanding.
As JLL and Halliburton deploy AI to optimize waste collection and oilfield safety via sensor networks, the ethical implications grow urgent. Lynn White Jr.’s critique of anthropocentric hubris finds new relevance, demanding that AI systems encode not just efficiency but kinship with ecological systems. The challenge, as Evelta Electronics notes, lies in sensor fusion: harmonizing data from disparate sources (temperature, humidity, particulates) into symphonic insights without reducing complexity to binaries.
In this landscape, GIHub’s trials of AI-enabled construction safety cameras and Pillar Technologies’ predictive air quality monitors exemplify the dual promise and peril of sensor-driven AI: tools for preservation that risk entrenching surveillance. The path forward, as Thunder Said Energy suggests, hinges on hybrid frameworks—neural networks tempered by fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms paired with ambient intelligence—that honor both Planck’s "metaphysical reality" and the body’s tacit wisdom.
The Sounds of Senses
This week, we’re diving into the serene world of zen lo-fi ambient sounds—a genre that’s as much about feeling as it is about listening. Think of it as more than just music; it’s a tool for introspection, a sonic mirror reflecting your inner state. These carefully curated tracks are designed to guide you into a tranquil landscape, where each note and texture invites your nervous system to exhale and your mind to settle.
Zen lo-fi ambient is where the meditative vastness of ambient music meets the cozy imperfections of lo-fi. It’s the sound of vinyl crackles blending with gentle guitar loops, soft beats, and field recordings—leaves rustling, rain falling, twigs snapping underfoot. It’s music that feels alive, organic, and deeply grounding.
One standout artist in this playlist is Mondo Loops, a master of crafting soundscapes that feel like stepping into a forest at dawn. His guitar-driven melodies and natural textures create an atmosphere that’s both calming and evocative—a perfect example of how this genre invites us to pause and reconnect with ourselves.
So, whether you’re journaling, meditating, or simply unwinding after a long day, let this playlist be your companion. Hit play and let these sounds guide you inward. Who knows? You might just find a little more clarity waiting for you there.
This Week’s Contemplative Exercise
When consuming any media this week:
Pause for 90 seconds after initial exposure — let the work imprint sensorily before intellectualizing
Scan for physical tension (jaw? shoulders?) as interpretation impulses arise
Ask: “What muscle memory would this create if experienced daily for a year?”
Next week’s exploration of innovation as embodied conversation with possibility will build directly on these sensory foundations. Until then: May your days hold moments of pure, unannotated encounter — the raw material from which all lasting creation springs.
Reading + Listening Highlights
Criticizes the view that science and common sense are incompatible, which became prevalent after Einstein's theories, especially in quantum mechanics and relativity, which challenge common-sense notions.
Does Technology Make Us Blind?→
Ways of Hearing is a six-part podcast exploring the nature of listening in our digital world, produced for Radiotopia Showcase in 2017. Written and hosted by Damon Krukowski. Sound design by Ian Coss. Executive producer Julie Shapiro. The complete transcript was published as an illustrated book by MIT Press in 2019 but is currently out of print.
An AI expert explains why it’s hard to give computers something you take for granted: Common sense→
Explores how touch transcends physical action, representing a deep, meaningful connection between individuals.
Keep Learning
Check out our evolving learning program for bridging Eastern and Western learning traditions to make sense of sensemaking here.
Questions Worth Contemplating
Can common sense reconcile scientific advancements with everyday human experience? How do we resolve tensions between scientific claims (e.g., quantum mechanics) and intuitive understandings of reality (e.g., cause-effect relationships)? What role should common sense play in evaluating scientific theories?
This is Week 09 of “Notes to the Future” — a year-long experiment in rewiring how we think about thinking itself.
"Thirty-two parts" originates from the traditional Buddhist meditation practice (Patikulamanasikara) that contemplates the 32 components of the human body (head hair, skin, bones, organs, etc.) to cultivate insight into impermanence and non-attachment. This practice, detailed in texts like the Satipatthana Sutta, aims to dismantle the illusion of the body as a singular, enduring self by dissecting it into its transient, often repulsive constituents.
