Conjuring Scenius — Packy McCormick

In 1997, historian David Banks argued in “The Problem of Excess Genius” that, “The most important question we can ask of historians is ‘Why are some periods and places so astonishingly more productive than the rest?’" 

Zooming out though, The Hype House is part of a millennia-old tradition of collaboration among those at the avant-garde of new forms of media, technology, and thought. Outsiders like me have always dismissed the novel as silly, faddish, or worse. When those inside the cutting-edge scenes band together to support, teach, and create with each other,

Patrons of The Eagle and Child wrote three of the five best-selling fantasy series ofall-timewithin an eighteen year period - The Lord of the Rings , The Hobbit , and The Chronicles of Narnia . It is here, on Tuesday mornings, that C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the other members ofThe Inklingsof Oxford met to read, discuss, and critique each other

Scenia can be large or small, span over centuries or last just a decade. The Inklings consisted of no more than fifteen people who met for a little under two decades, while Silicon Valley, fueled by the contributions of millions of people, has progressed uninterruptedly for nearly seventy years. No two scenia look the same; their similarity lies in

The purpose of the II community is the II community. It’s an infinite game. Your goal is that people want to keep wanting to play with you.... I think if you do good work, it’s natural that you will become influential. Like good work is really rare. We want to have a better public discourse and a higher level of intellectual engagement. But it’s n

Looking backwards, it’s striking how unevenly distributed progress has been in the past...the discoveries that came to elevate standards of living for everyone arose in comparatively tiny geographic pockets of innovative effort.

Starting in the mid-500s BC, history’s foundational scenius sprung to life in Greece and lasted over two centuries. The ancient Greeks created the modern philosophy we still turn to in search of answers to life’s biggest questions. In addition to foundational technologies and concepts like geometry (every high schooler learns the Pythagorean Theore

Even with a catastrophic catalyzing event, just the right amount of internal and external competition, and a place in which to collaborate, scenius will not take root without a diverse group of people who are willing to offer differing thoughts and experiences. It’s at their intersection that new ideas form. Scenius is a remix, a riff off of what h

Thirteen of history’s most productive and influential scenia and their contributions to humanity.