"Los Angeles has been compared to a laboratory — an urban ground for experiments both prescribed and accidental. Laboratory is a perfect word. Enveloping, chaotic and mutable, LA is a nocturnal workshop where the constant experiments leave no time to tidy up and reset the data in order to start fresh in the morning. In LA, you are both the experiment and the scientist. One is forced to be the object of fascination and fray, while simultaneously judging and monitoring the urban experiment…<br />
<br />
what is the new identity for a city whose entire life has been marked by its ability and desire to endlessly expand? Perhaps the lack of perceptible hierarchies — or, likely, the reality that traditional thresholds and boundaries in this city are hidden and constantly transgressed — makes LA a difficult case study in the urban milieu…<br />
<br />
As an evolving being, its dynamics make description difficult. Perhaps it is not a city — perhaps it can only be described as Los Angeles."

"This obsession w/ The Future is, by definition, irresponsible. To be responsible is “to be able to respond” to someone or something. Since the future has yet to happen, one cannot possibly respond to it…consequences of the obsession, both for individuals & for communities, are almost entirely negative.<br />
…our future-obsessed educators misunderstand true purpose of education. Education is process by which people become responsibly mature members of their communities. If young people develop character, become familiar with their cultural inheritance and the wisdom of the past, and acquire the habits of mind that will help them think critically, they will find their way to productive adulthood. <br />
<br />
By placing the use of the energy & talents of our youth in abeyance, by separating children from their parents & thereby undermining communities, & by irresponsibly presuming to know the future, educators participate in folly, the proportions of which resemble a modern form of idolatry…"

"What Porter sees as most important is to teach teenagers and model for them are the seven grown-up skills:<br />
1. self-awareness,<br />
2. self-control/self-mastery,<br />
3. good judgment,<br />
4. ability to deal with conflict,<br />
5. self-transcendence (“ability to get over yourself”),<br />
6. ability to maintain boundaries, and<br />
7. capacity for life-long learning.<br />
<br />
Porter also offers five things teenagers need from adults:<br />
1. articulating to them the difference between wants vs. needs,<br />
2. responding to them vs. reacting with emotion,<br />
3. relating to them vs. indentifying with them,<br />
4. being friendly to them vs. being friends with them, and<br />
5. focusing on their needs vs. focusing on one’s own needs.<br />
<br />
The Do's and Don’ts section at the end of the book is worth the purchase price alone."

"KENISTON CALLED IT youth, Arnett calls it emerging adulthood; whatever it’s called, the delayed transition has been observed for years. …“It’s somewhat terrifying,” writes a 25-year-old…“to think about all the things I’m supposed to be doing in order to ‘get somewhere’ successful: ‘Follow your passions, live your dreams, take risks, network w/ the right people, find mentors, be financially responsible, volunteer, work, think about or go to grad school, fall in love & maintain personal well-being, mental health & nutrition.’ When is there time to just be & enjoy?” Adds a 24-year-old: “…It’s almost as if having a range of limited options would be easier.”

While the complaints of these young people are heartfelt, they are also the complaints of the privileged.

The fact that emerging adulthood is not universal is one of the strongest arguments against Arnett’s claim that it is a new developmental stage. If emerging adulthood is so important, why is it even possible to skip it?"

"For the longest time I pretended the pleasure of everything wasn't in its anticipation. Enjoying things became passé, remembering the past fondly was easier on the heart. ... There should be a term - there probably is a term - for nostalgia for something that hasn't happened yet. ... In the 00s I tried to like people I wouldn't normally have liked. More and more, people were vastly different from their appearance, a development I attributed to adults rather than children being my peers. When I met someone I cared about, I usually informed them of this directly. In a similar case I took up an indirect approach that met with better results. Then I switched back again. After a fashion, I surmised that it was the world that was changing, not me. ... Meeting people unhappier than you are is Darwin's mood corrective. There is always someone who has it worse and is still paying for it." [via: http://tumble77.com/post/543062841/i-know-what-you-mean]

"Today, the first generation to grow up w/ video games in their home is coming into its own. They are becoming responsible, even influential, adults. Not only do they have a great deal of capital to expend on the leisure of their youth, they also have a great desire to see it legitimized, to see it become as respectable as playing golf or going to the theater. ... 1. Game schools mean more qualified developers are being produced...[who are also] encouraged to innovate. 2. Lower cost platforms makes experimentation economically viable. 3. Improved tools lower production costs while allowing for a greater degree of amateur & "off the grid" development. 4. Widening demographics demand yet undiscovered game types. 5. The first generation to grow up with home consoles is now in a position to fiscally incentivize the creation of new game types. They are also motivated to help games be viewed as a legitimate medium. 6. Graphical fidelity is no longer the main driver for development budget."

"What I do wonder about, however, is how will personal transformations be achieved in this era of persistent and vivid reference points from the past? I see these transformations as an integral and necessary part of going through life, a part of creating new selves as one matures, learns, and acquires new life experiences. What tools and practices will we develop to shed the old reference points as a part of such transformations? In other words, what is the new equivalent of the old shoebox or cobwebbed attic in the Internet era?"

"That's absolutely my concern for the teenagers posting photos and stories about themselves and each other. I want for them the possibility of their becoming different people, to have the chance to let experience grow into memory and to be allowed to let