The Frog King
A book project that addresses the limitations of our increasing tendency towards specialization in education. By isolating brilliant people in research communities, we create a situation in which a vast amount of human understanding becomes inaccessible to the lay population. While a degree of specialization is necessary for advanced research, we are not encouraging enough cross-disciplinary thinking in our education systems.
The ‘Frog King’ is book for adults, following a protagonist and frog as they introduce a series of archetypes representing the various poles of human concentration. Through a series of fractured and biased worldviews, the protagonist comes to see the world as a more dynamic system in which lateral thinking offers a more rich and varied experience than traditional professional and academic distinctions.
excerpt:
Next, they visited the Builder of Cities, who was manically erecting and tearing down structures in vague concentrations according to height and density.
‘Ah ha!’ he exclaimed as he slammed a large tower in the place of three smaller dwellings, crushing them to pieces and scattering plaster, roofing tiles, photographs, collectables, and splintered bits of wood.
Later, over a cup of extraordinarily well-prepared coffee, he excitedly produced a complex map that illustrated the collective history of the world’s cities as an infinitely growing series of overlays that showed global urban development from the dawn of human construction to the present hour. He wore an exquisite cut of simple clothing and discussed at great length the masterplan he was working towards, though Michael had a difficult time discerning any sort of plan in the chaos around him. While staggeringly beautiful, the world appeared as a schizophrenic array of unfulfilled ideals.
‘My dream,’ the Builder of Cities said in earnest, ‘Is to conceive a map that is fluid and dynamic, that is not constrained by the traditional barriers of paper dimensions.’
‘Oh,’ said Michael, ‘You mean something like Google maps?’
‘Um….’
