Renaissance.Engineer

Curated lists

Tools, readings, blogs, and communities from people who build across boundaries

Blogs & sources Where to follow

The publications, blogs, and labs where directory members share their work. A curated set of feeds worth subscribing to.

Tools

Tools for thinking, building, and creating across disciplines.

FlowTools.directory A meta-list of tools for thought, knowledge management, and creative workflows. Maintained collaboratively. META-LIST
Dynamicland Bret Victor’s communal computing lab. Computation leaves screens and enters physical, shared space. COMPUTING
IdeaFlow Knowledge graph notebook that augments intelligence as you think. Notes that become thinking partners. KNOWLEDGE
Are.na Visual bookmarking and research tool for connecting ideas. The thinking person’s Pinterest. RESEARCH
Readings

Essays, books, and deep dives that shaped how we think about building across boundaries.

IdeaFlow Background Jacob Cole’s curated reading list on knowledge tools, augmenting intelligence, and the history of tools for thought. GUIDE
Inventing on Principle Bret Victor’s foundational talk. Creators need an immediate connection to what they create. TALK
Age of Entanglement Neri Oxman’s Krebs Cycle of Creativity — mapping the four domains (Science, Engineering, Design, Art) and the flows between them. ESSAY
Transformative Tools for Thought Andy Matuschak & Michael Nielsen on what it would take to build media as transformative as the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. ESSAY
Why Books Don’t Work Andy Matuschak on why transmissionist media fails and what might replace it. ESSAY
Home-Cooked Software Maggie Appleton on the coming golden age of personal software by non-professional engineers. ESSAY
Pace Layering Stewart Brand on how complex systems learn. Fashion moves fast, nature moves slow. One of the most cited frameworks in systems thinking. ESSAY
Childhoods of Exceptional People Henrik Karlsson on the environments that produced original thinkers. Tutored 1-on-1, surrounded by talented adults, enormous unstructured time. ESSAY
Adjacent communities

Other spaces where cross-disciplinary builders gather.

The SF Commons Patricia Mou’s “fourth place” in Hayes Valley, SF. A space for meaning-making, embodied pluralism, and non-dogmatic ritual. SPACE
Long Now Foundation Fostering long-term thinking. The 10,000-year clock, the Rosetta Project, and seminars about long-term responsibility. FOUNDATION
Interdependence A literary-hacker community reimagining digital futures through collective authorship. Co-signed by Daanish Shabbir and others. COLLECTIVE

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