Intelleto

 3 things that are good

You just can’t go wrong if you have these.

On Friday in Signposts, my colleague Peter at Adaptive Path announced my new-but-mighty blog to the AP community. It was positioned as “the musings of a scarily synthetic thinker.” I’m either flattered or not. I choose to be flattered. Thanks, Peter!

Visit Peter at peterme.com.

[Note: earlier version of the post mentioned Dan, who has a nifty blog at odannyboy.com. But turns out Peter is the one to thank for outting my blog]

Hmmm. I’m in a quandary. I received a galley copy of The Cult of the Amateur from a friend who attended the TED conference, and my open mind is in question.

The book is a screed of Web 2.0 and the values it promotes (provokes?) including: participatory online culture, social networking, self-published contribution to bodies of knowledge, wiki-ism, and my two favorite ”ations”: democratization and amateurization.

I’m a firm believer that these social movements contribute to good. But author Andrew Keen’s philosophy is that these phenomenon are striking at the heart of our most valued cultural institutions — “robbing our artists, authors, journalists and musicians of their livelihood” and “turning truth into a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged and reinvented.”

So…to read or not to read?

I generally try to err on the side of reading a lot and being open to understanding the alternate point of view. When I did a deep dive into the web ring of pro-life web sites, I was both shocked and moved by the emotion and fervor of those who held beliefs so far from my own, and I did feel compassion and empathy for the stories I read. But rather than convince me, it strengthened my own resolve in my beliefs. I felt the rhetoric to be aggressive and fear-based, not open to personal choice and situational context.

Now I’m up against it again, and frankly, I wonder if I have the mental space to openly welcome the arguments against things I hold dear. And yet, if the unexamined life is not worth living, is the unquestioned philosophy not worth holding?

I don’t know. But, with a crowbar and a smile, I think I’ll dip into it a bit. Here’s my agreement:

1. I will read it and when I encounter concepts that are different from my own beliefs, I will examine why I disagree. What makes me think that my beliefs are better? What information supports this?
2. I will read it and if the arguments are sound and the research solid, I will be open to changing my mind about what I think and why. Are my arguments sound and my research solid? How do I substantiate them?
3. I will agree to disagree, and listen openly to the concepts and ideas presented. Does the author thoughtfully examine differing ideas and are these treated with respect or not?
4. I will read. But if I every feel that ideas are under attack without full examination, I will work to tease out the weapon: is it lack of respect? fundamental disagreement? disdain? contempt? How is this communicated? Do my communications ever bear these ills?

Hand me a crowbar and stay tuned. I’m jumping in.

And then my flickr uploader reloaded the page and when I went back…poof. It was gone.

Damn it.

 

Instructions

Originally uploaded by feralbeagle.

I’m always compelled to insert my head into the towel loop.

Sometimes I wonder how these things get through the many twisty paths of approval.

It’s amazing what a night of conversation, craft and wine will do for you:

• Give you rules of speed scrabble
• Help you figure out whether to rent or buy
• Get you great luggage tags
• Identify the best place to consistently order butter fish
• Provide a definition of strip charts
• Display beautiful cards
• Bust a gut with DEVIS wands
• Enjoy the principals of economics
• Love the techie-stick-figure-comix that encourages…
  1. Mispronouncing words
  2. Being a Turing Machine
  3. Dogging on the Interwebs

I simply, simply, love craft night.

Math is fun. Math mechanics are yukky. It’s the paradox of my brain that while the concepts and patterns of math rule much of my creative thinking, I seriously can’t add or multiply to save my life. Just never, never ask me to recite the multiplication tables for 6 or 8. It’s just not gonna happen.

 But patterns are fun, and they make math fun. A few years ago I worked on a very mathy project using phrases and javascript rollovers to create a set of combinatorial statements. It’s still fun to play with.

Check it out…

Sometimes (okay…more than sometimes) when all the plates are spinning and deadlines loom, I can get a bit…frazzled. This is not a good thing. The only good thing about it is when someone helps by reminding me of the positive, joyous parts of life and work. I’ve started collecting some simple reminders to focus on when things get kerfuffuley.

Calm and Simple: Keep it calm and simple. Right before things collapse into a flow, they seem chaotic and wild…but that’s part of the process. Keeping mindful of the calm and simple, the elegance and the flow can get me through to the other side.

 Keep the Big Wheel Turning: Whatever task is at hand, it should always be in service to a greater goal: rethinking the way a company serves it’s customers; providing a benefit to society; working towards a company vision; helping people feel oriented, smart and successful…these are all part of the big wheels. Thoughtfully linking the work to the big wheel helps provide perspective and enables prioritization. Focus on the big wheel, keep it turning and then it’s worth it to keep on burning for a bit.

Look up: Tej told me this gem: “the difference between optimists and pessimists is that optimists look up; pessimists look down.” So when walking off the burn, when thinking it’s all going to hell, look up. See the sky, the tops of trees, the birds sailing above. Look up, to the higher goals, the open space of possibility.

Take the Sunny Path: This one’s from Rachel. When in the midst of complexity, don’t go down the path of worry and stress. Visualize the fork in the road, and take the path that’s light and dappled with sunshine. Don’t muck about in the weeds. The positive, easy way is the one that gets the best ideas to move forward.

It all started with an innocent request from Amanda:

“What are the top 10 books, papers, websites, or objects had the most influence on your work, inspired you, or made you a better person?”

Hell, why stop at 10? Here’s the list of lists…no real order, but all very, very influential.

10 books that influenced greatly (+1 for luck)

1. Metapatterns by Tyler Volk
2. Thinking with a Pencil by Henning Nelms
3. Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte
4. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems by Fritjof Capra
5. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
6. Theory of Semiotics by Umberto Eco
7. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough
8. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
9. The Diamond Age by Neil Stevenson (bonus fiction pick!)
10. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson
11. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger

People

Ray & Charles Eames : For their creative partnership, the many ways they communicated ideas and philosophies (media, making things, talking, writing) and their random, belligerent and spry genius.

Bill Strickland : His work in urban communities is transformative. He cajoles, engages, inspires and evokes. And then he builds stuff.

Hildegard von Bingham : What’s not to love about a mystic medieval abbess? Her paintings of divine visions are surreal and swimmy with symbolism. She thought, painted, wrote, kept the power-hungry dukes at bay and composed music.

Douglas Hofstadter : Best known for the classic Godel, Escher, Bach. But before I found that, I read his book of essays (Metamagical Themas - Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern). His mind is supple, his curiosity insatiable. And he’s funny, in a way that in Boston would be called wicket smaahht. Anyone debating the gender-neutrality of “he” will squirm reading his not-very-funny satire essay.

Places & Communities

The Exploratorium : The inner workings of the world flayed open and on display. They host inventive researchers and by making the outputs of research displays and experiences, the magic of science becomes a full day of fun.

The Crucible : There is no other place to really get down and dirty and make stuff. Using fire, metal and muscle, the Crucible is more than a nonprofit arts facility…it’s a community of thinkers, creators, makers in a sandbox of big, powerful and flaming tools. The ethos that emerges? Collaboration, co-creation and shared safety. Powerful stuff.

Cacophony Society : In the beginning there was cacophony. And then there was Burning Man. But the cacophonists blazed the trail. At my first event (meeting?) I remember thinking “this is what being an adult is all about.” It was the accessible version of Survival Research Labs.

20 things : Judith gets a gold star. This was my first experience in at-a-distance art swaps. Oh, sure, in college we traded stuff and did collaborative projects, but to have this opportunity (to know these people!) out of college is a real gift. And look now at the creative communities that are hooking into this ethic: flickr, instructables, readymade, Makers…it’s all part of the same mighty river.

Brands

The American Girl brand (specifically the historical characters) : This one comes with a caveat. The whole purpose is for marketing, but the first exposure I had to the American Girl doll phenomenon blew me away. Those people hook into so many values (history, diversity, education, activities, dress-my-doll-like-me, playing) it’s nuts. A comprehensive vision. A goldmine.

IKEA : Distinctive design, inventive products, brilliant packaging and very low prices. And it’s hackable.

Skills

Manipulating Fabrics (the scary book) : The woman who created this book is crazy. Brilliant crazy. Scary crazy. The material is all white cotton. She illustrates, demonstrates and documents every fabric technique I have ever done, seen, heard of or just heard rumors about. This is an incredible example of “take it as far as you can, as long as you can…and you will create magic and inspire the world.” If you have ever held a needle, sewn a button or hemmed a shirt, you will never be the same after seeing this book.

Cardweaving : I’m in my current line of work because of cardweaving. It’s an ancient technique that uses cards as the loom. The cards are punched. How you string the warp threads and how you turn the cards to raise the threads in sequence creates the patterns. Cardweaving was the conceptual basis for the jacquard tapestry machine (1801) which used punched cards to create patterns. And punched cards as information chips lasted a long, long time. Making a cardwoven item feels like very, very slow programming.

Mindmapping : Visual problem-solving, organizing, sorting, extending and documenting. Radiant thinking just got a whole lot easier. After 11 years (the Mind Map book came out in 1996) I still do this at least once a week.

Tools

Hypercard : The first application that I learned after WordPerfect (yes, on those big disks.) Working with hypercard on my little Mac SE30 changed the way I thought about information, data, knowledge. Suddenly, the personal computer was much more than a more efficient typewriter.

Leatherman : I used to carry one everywhere, until they started getting taken by airport security. Better than a Swiss Army Knife, and they fold. Great design, great weight, great use.

Sharpies : ’nuff said. Once a few years ago (for about 6 months) a heavy black sharpie was the only pen I used in my sketchbook. And they smell good. They smell like ideas.

Concepts

Slime Mold : Not an animal, not a plant. When there is food all around, it/they spores out to separate organisms. When food is scarce, they/it glob back together into one organism (not a colony…one single thing) and crawl to better pickin’s. They self-organize, collect to survive and disperse when they can. The perfect cycle of life, and the best example (and metaphor) for creative emergence I’ve ever found.

Prime Numbers : well, duh. Prime numbers are just incredibly beautiful. And sly.

Art

Richard Diebenkorn : In college I worked at an art museum and fell in love with a Diebenkorn painting (Berkeley series, yum! yum!). The more and closer I looked, the more it revealed…his abstract work deepens and blossoms the longer you look. And it’s all just made from paint.

Joseph Cornell : The great collector. He assembled information, memory and history. It’s a code, a riddle, a puzzle. Always intriguing and often twisted with irony.
 

For the last 6 months, I’ve had a very rich and full inner blog. Seriously, I’d be walking along and think of something and press “publish” in my head. But not on my domain. My website was still just the sameoldsameold I’ve had for years, and to be honest, I kinda liked it that way. But then the mental blogging got frustrating, and I wanted more.

So now it’s time. Ye olde hand-coded-html just wasn’t cutting it, and I’ve moved into full blogdom. We’ll see how it goes.

 There are a few reasons for the new committment:

1. I am eager to blog more about what I do, and I realized that not having a personal blog meant that I wasn’t in practice with quickly getting thoughts out there. I’d kinda freeze up before hitting “publish” and that’s not a good thing.
2. My old site content is ancient. Beloved, but ancient. (Did I mention that it was ancient?) And it’s time to freshen up the digital lifecycle.
3. I’m involved with some very, very neat stuff in the Emeryville community, and I have strong opinions about things. I want a place where I can spout off…some way to clear the air when I’m chomping at the bit about some issue.
4. Ahhh yes. Then there is the round robin. Which is a family letter that goes around from my parents to my sisters’ families and then to me. This is a printed letter, not email. I have an alarming tendency to hold onto it until edging the line of being excommunicated from the family. I figure that if I don’t get a letter written, I could at least print out a coupla blog posts and call it good. Otherwise my name is mudd.

So, here I stand on the beginning path of blogging. Wish me luck.