This is a speed design of a social image for my new page (Open Creative Toolkit) at http://bit.ly/2hphHd1 where I describe the software choices I make in my small design business.
open creative toolkit
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“Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (published in paperback as Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity) is a 2004 book by law professor Lawrence Lessig that was released on the Internet under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial license (by-nc 1.0) on March 25, 2004. This book documents how copyright power has expanded substantially since 1974 in five critical dimensions: duration (from 32 to 95 years), scope (from publishers to virtually everyone), reach (to every view on a computer), control (including “derivative works” defined so broadly that virtually any new content could be sued by some copyright holder as a “derivative work” of something), and concentration and integration of the media industry. It also documents how this industry has successfully used the legal system to limit competition to the major media corporations through legal action against: College students for close to $100 billion, because their improvements of search engines made it easier for people in a university intranet to find copyrighted music placed by others in their “public” folder. Lawyers who advised MP3.com that they had reasonable grounds to believe streaming an MP3 uploaded by a customer only to computers that the customer has logged-in on for the service is legal, and Venture Capitalists who funded Napster. The result is a legal and economic environment that stifles “the Progress of Science and useful Arts”, exactly the opposite of the purpose cited in the US Constitution. It may not be possible today to produce another Mickey Mouse, because many of its early cartoon themes might be considered “derivative works” of some existing copyrighted material (as indicated in the subtitle to the hardback edition and in numerous examples in this book).” curated by lemasney from Free Culture (book) – Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)
I wanted to illustrate what I thought the Google Home might be like in 10 years. I saw it as floating, hovering by way of low-energy drones. The device would be like an eye, always looking, listening, and recording. A disoriented human asks “Okay Google, what year is it?” in wonderment. This design is related to my concept for their future automated car.
open Inkscape, create a circle, duplicate it, add a linear pattern to the topmost dupe, convert to path, shape into a shadow, place over circle, done.
But when I started doing it, to test whether it was just that simple, I was surprised at how many steps were really involved. You have to find the right pattern, you have to try a few on, you have to realize that you can’t easily add color to your patterns. You get some neat benefits though — real, deep calls to pop-based modernism, paying ideological royalties to Warhol’s Brillo Boxen and Jasper Johns’ frisky template based stories. So I decided to take it somewhere. And this post is the result.
What am I doing here?
I wrote ‘To be honest,’ but I loathe when people say that. We may be honest always, but what a stark surprise that would be, and the resulting pain that would potentially be inflicted seems an easily avoidable horror. So here, I’ll offer some harmless honesty: I’m not sure what i am doing here. I want to be productive, create and publish things of value, but I think that the audience has to find the value in you doing what you love, if any value is to be found at all. This may the closest digital alternative we have to Busking, posting on tools like WordPress (or worse yet, Facebook). But today, as I write this, it feels right. This is what I feel I should be doing: Writing about, illustrating, and sharing my experiences and results and insights and outcomes in the hopes of feeding into the collective insight of humanity. I have no idea if anyone will care, or even respond. But maybe. Only by trying will we find out.
Okay Google, so, what year is it?
So I was working on the practice of creating cross hatching in Inkscape, finding the stark contrast of the linear elements a bright, sharp change in my style. I began to make the circle into a kind of orb. The cross hatching became a futuristic fin that both altered direction and provided thrust. Each overlapped circle added a new dimensional layer of electronics or protection, all perfectly interlocking and freely moving.
A pupil and iris emerged. A short story about the future that writes itself in one’s mind resulted. The title of that short story is “Okay Google, what year is it?”, and the orb you see is some nearby year’s equivalent to the amazing Amazon Echo, except it uses quiet drone and magnetic stops technologies to float about your house, answering any question, turning on and off million colored micro LEDs under your feet and overhead as you walk along the heavily corridored apartments of the future. All of our houses start as shipping containers in my version. The main character asks the title question and the orb responds “I don’t know how to answer that. “
At any rate, a fun trip in the mind and I hope you enjoyed it.
I teach college students, high-schoolers, grad students, seniors, and a diverse bunch of others. I love teaching because I often find myself in some of the most interesting discussions I’ve had in my life there in those quiet classrooms and community rooms.
I am often placed in the position of amateur philosopher because I get to ask people branding prompts, queries like “what kind of meal are you?” or “if you could change the world now, how would it be different?” and the answers I get are often less examined than, let’s say, their favorite football team. I love the thought that the next time they are asked the question, they may have had time to reflect on their original answer and develop their point of view.
Undergraduate students ask different kinds of questions in quiet after-class sidebars.
I most often answer questions about technology in my classes, but sometimes we veer off into more interesting and useful territories. In teaching undergrads recently, which I do not do as often as other groups, I’ve been asked about things like life-trajectory and intended outcomes. One student told me that he was not sure if it was an àpropos use of the term, but that he felt like he was having a ‘existential crisis’. I replied that it was certainly possible, even likely at this time in his life, and that he was in good company. I shared that it may be a sign that he was growing. His main question, and the question often asked when I have had these deeper philosophical conversations, is “What should I do with my life?” I like many of the answers I’ve collected in the discussions, and thought I might share them here.
10 recent answers to “What should I do with my life?”
These are 10 answers I gave recently, in no particular order of importance. Our mental and conscious state is the result of an amazingly complex number of holistic and systemic factors, including genetics, authoritative influence, culture, society, exposure to ideas, emotional and physical environment, diet, and body chemistry. To look at the effects of one while ignoring the effects of others is an easy route to false- or half-truths. I often assume that the conversant is already in-line with and subject to the standard barrage of media, educational, and political propaganda and ideologically coercive forces that our society imparts (our government loves and protects you, we don’t commit crimes world-wide, we are not slaves and slavery ended a long time ago, social media is not poisoning us, etc.), and so I try to sidestep major social, religious, political, or diversity oriented issues. Instead…
I try to remind them that we are all the same regardless of our sensed differences like age, gender, religion, or skin color: an ambulatory pile of chemically bonded universal elements with the miraculous evolutionary gift of self-awareness.
and then, I offer some of these ideas, useful for me personally, but hopefully adaptable to another’s philosophy as well.
Pursue what you love and have passion for. Set aside goals of money, fame, or recognition, which may or may not come while you enjoy your life.
Collect experiences, not stuff. Live small and save money. Live so small that money is unnecessary or less necessary.
Look to your ideological mentors, leaders, and heroes for answers. Consider their answers with a critical thought. Listen to your thought opponents for clues to a median truth.
Resist convenience and high technology where/when it removes your independence. In other words, financial credit is convenient, but it allows you to spend money you do not actually have, which replaces flexibility and independence with debt. A smartphone is convenient comparative to a land line, but given that your location, written & verbal communications, and other easily recorded sensor data becomes just as easily available to authorities, consider that the convenience costs you your privacy.
Learn to meditate and be mindful. Be open to different ideas. Question authority and assure its legitimacy for yourself. Avoid the constraints of silly rules or useless officials.
Imagine the public memory of your deceased self. Be missed. Have a legacy. Increase the number of people you have helped, forget how much you earned doing it.
Remove illusions and seek truths. Recognize, avoid, and ignore rat mazes and traps. Do this forever. Raise awareness of the losses or constrictions of rights. (Chomsky, et al.)
Recognize and beware addictions and vices. Ideas can be addictive and money is just an idea.
Realize the earth is only a sustainable resource if we slow down our consumption and plan sensible resource management. If we don’t, we will perish. Save room for nature.
Eat less; move more. Eat real food. Know what is in your food. (Pollan)
A supportive biblio/videography
What follows is an abridged bibliography and videography of influential thinkers and topics that is helping me to shape my ideas now, hopefully clearly related to my answers in the list above.
HighExistence: How to Escape the Rat Race and Live a Radically Free Life
I want to live simply (High Existence)
“Become very frugal and self-reliant and buy a cheap tiny home, cabin, boat, or van. Buy a modest patch of low-demand property somewhere for a good price, build a tiny home or some other low-cost, functional structure, and live very cheaply, perhaps growing some of your own food or doing other things to be as self-sufficient as possible.” excerpted from How to Escape the Rat Race and Live a Radically Free Life | High Existence at http://goo.gl/45p8jt
Michael Pollan: monocultures, food deserts, processed foods, and food politics.
Einstein: Relativity, absolutism, and nuclear energy.
“In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. It introduced a new framework for all of physics and proposed new concepts of space and time.” excerpted from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity: A Simplified Explanation at http://goo.gl/71qW0P
The grand circle theory, Shelter publications, Buckminster Fuller.
“Secondly, here are some personal aesthetic discoveries I’ve made in spending a few years around various plastic materials (I’d lived previously with more conventional materials such as wood, concrete, glass, brick, etc.) I’ve found that the less molecular rearranging a material has undergone, the better it feels to be around. Wood, rock, adobe as compared with polyurethane foam and polycarbonate resin windows.” excerpted from Domes — Shelter Publications at http://goo.gl/SMHETE
David Henry Thoreau: On the duty of Civil Disobedience
David Byrne with St. Vincent – I should watch TV
The Georgia Guidestones.
These are the kinds of things that are giving me insight into what I should be doing with my life, and I believe you can ask that question everyday in the hopes of a newly evolved answer.
Hi, all. I’m refocusing from design, technology and teaching to universal human kindness. Some of this is going to sound kind of new age-y, but I’m not interested in any of that.
It’s March of 2016. Things are changing quickly. I’m writing to capture my feelings that have come over the last month. February was eye-opening. I’m strictly limiting participation in most social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and the rest. I left traditional media, like TV, a long while back. it’s pure, continuous, streaming propaganda interspersed with ads now. I don’t listen to radio though I sometimes miss NPR’s ‘driveway moments’™. I can choose when to listen or watch via streaming services. But otherwise, I’m cutting it all out. I feel that I need to. Many of my friends are surprised, some say they are worried. They are asking “Will you freeze?” and “Are u going to live in a hut?”, mostly by text. They remind me I have lots of gadgets, gizmos, computers, and even phone-controlled 24-million color lights that I can set with a voice command. Yet, I’m ready to go off grid.
Why would a connected, progressive, change-oriented, academic technologist walk away from that which he loved? It’s simple: I now feel like it’s all going quickly in the wrong direction.
There’s a cold civil war in America.
For many it is already warm civil war, but I think many of us have been shielded from it due to the Huxley-an Soma of highly filtered media, like Fox or NBC or Food Network, where we look at rich chefs prepare all the food we never eat, but firmly believe that we have had the experience after watching it. It’s different from other civil wars in that it’s actually pretty civil. Mostly talk and monetary support, unless you are not adult, male or white, in which case it’s less civil towards you. The combatants have many lines drawn, but mostly around money, resources, agency, charisma, faith, and power. I’m trying to drop my sides and allegiances, but we are usually snow-blind to our biases until they are revealed to us.
I’m no longer a democrat or a republican, I’m not the 99% nor the 1%, I’m not Kanye or Anonymous. I’m not Muslim or Christian. I’m not poor or rich. Even John feels false now. I just am. Those designations (labels) are all potential factions though.
The labeled differences exist because at each line, there is money to be made, power to be gained, shirts and commemorative tchotchkes to be sold, flags to be waved, crosses to be burned in five collectible colors.
In this civil war, no one will actually get hurt in the debates between groups, (unless guns are involved, and sadly, they often are and likely will be). The conversations between warring groups help the rich get richer, and help the poor to stay in debt in crowded cities. We work ourselves to death, slaves to a system we do not enjoy, we worry about our health, and predict 1.3 heart attacks per person because our land-of-plenty produces mostly high fructose corn syrup and fatty meats on five dollar foot long rolls, with veggies deep-fried. We all tend to overeat without manufactured tools, like diets and pedometers, to save us. That is a key point:
The diseases we suffer from are contrived and put in place: We sell you the diseases in the form of food and other pollution, so that you can talk with your doctor, who allows you to see a specialist, so that you can get hooked on the cure, until the cure wears off because you kept eating pollution, because nothing was actually addressed in your thought processes or decision-making, so we tighten a ring around your stomach, so that you can live with monitors and buzzers, and then eventually be put in an expensive wooden box, surrounded by Alma-mater-team-colors-coordinated-24-hour-turnaround flowers.
Money (and most other things we long for) is a socially agreed-upon idea. Money does not actually exist. We handle representations of it. We allow it with our recognizance. It is only in the absence of money, the influence of money, the handcuffs of money, and the propagandist messages of money that these things can occur. As a result, I am opting out.
What does opting out mean?
Living simply, linked from http://highexistence.com
I understand that not everyone will recognize anything but money for goods and services and taxes, etc., but I am going to reduce and remove its influence wherever possible. I’m not going to try to pay my taxes with woven baskets. I’m just going to try to pay less taxes.
I am planning, designing, forming, and practicing an escape.
I am going to practice and try to understand universal human kindness.
This is key for me: I want to find universal truths, and not fractional truths. Those exist most clearly out of earshot of advertisements, arguments, and pitches. I plan to find them in the woods and other quiet places. I want to cement my understanding that I am just the elements of the universe looking at itself, and the universe is me looking back. We are one, and we are the rhythms, echoes, and other frequencies between. I want to focus on humans, rather than labels or groups, or types of humans. I want to be a practicing anthropologist that filters out the manufactured influences of false media. I want to focus on our kindness, meaning our kinship, what we all have in common. I do not mean to use kindness in terms of niceness or courtesy, but rather very deeply on what we all have in common — the bits we share, all of us. That means removing false groupings, labels or differences that are purely superficial or socially determined. I may even include gender in those, after having some insightful conversations with people who do not recognize, associate or promote differences in humans via the concept of gender.
Part of that has been the giving away of my superfluous belongings. Another is finding the right property. It looks like an acre or two of land in VA with a small fully owned dwelling on it. Rent is, by far, my largest cost in life. I am ending that. I have credit card debt that I am about to pay off and I will forbid debt from returning. The debt has hung over me for years, threatening me. I’m taking away its power. I have learned and practiced in recent years how to live without addictions, threats to my health, and sources of depression. We get to choose our life path, and this path is becoming clearer each day.
Humans do not need McDonald’s. They need to eat. Humans do not need casinos. They need to exchange acts of value with others and the world. Humans do not need mansions. They need shelter. I want to explore these ideas.
In general, my new personal branding keywords are universal, human, and kindness.
I will likely write about my new path once a week or once a month. I’ll share photos when appropriate, I think my work will change, but I still love to help people and teach. When people heard about my new adventure, they told me to capture and journal the adventure. This writing is for them as well as for me. Thanks to all of my friends for understanding and trusting that I have not lost my mind, I just let go of my stuff.
Geodesic model for organic home framing cc-by lemasney
https://www.offgridworld.com/tag/cob-house/
I’m ready. I’m changing the way that i choose to live. A few things have happened recently, and I feel as if I have been struck. The weekly video series is no longer being developed, but that is only one small change. Here’s why:
I have given up several addictions, and this is a form of that.
On 2/20/2015, one year and one day ago, I was struck over the head at some point during the night. I was in LA, I was drinking, and I do not know what happened to me. I found myself restrained by police, in a hospital. They told me they found me in the street. I walked back to my hotel, several miles away, and have not drunk since. If I was drinking, none of what follows would be possible.
About a month ago, I gave up e cigarettes. I had smoked cigarettes and cigars in the past, and took up ecigs to escape a daily cigar habit. Several thousand dollars later, I am finally off a 24% nicotine habit.
I have researched and practiced many other forms of balance against addictions, including food and porn, and have learned a lot. As a result, I feel like I am ready to live more simply, in an unconnected way.
I’ve lost faith in media and tech. I want it to change.
I’m a technologist, but I am quickly losing faith in technology. I have seen it create factions (Windows vs. Linux), addictions (porn, gambling, gaming), new false economies (bitcoin). I understand the hypocrisy of using a technology like WordPress, but I don’t feel that technology is inherently bad, but that most people end up using it in bad ways, or more correctly, false ways.
I recently read Ernest Cline’s Novel ‘Ready Player One’. It upset me so – the idea that people would live in a diseased, dismal world, but would spend most of their time inside of virtual reality (VR). VR is making its rounds again as the next big thing. The novel is incredibly possible, and scary to consider as a likely outcome of our trajectory. Huxley’s Brave New World talks about dissolving society and humanity via technology and soma. Orwell has been proved right again and again and again in both Animal Farm and 1984. Their predictions and warnings have been mostly unheeded.
I’ve lost faith in ‘society’. I still love people.
I keep looking at the way that people are asked to live today:
working all the time in jobs that they don’t remotely enjoy.
Finding and emphasizing differences and not celebrating individuality.
Comparisons, ratings, likes, and follows are the only end goal.
Suffering physically, mentally, and ideologically in the effort of having the biggest, best, fastest, newest.
Struggling through stressors to make their means meet their ends.
Giving away money to keep a status quo which often never gets any better.
Striving for convenience over respect for ideas, processes, or outcomes.
The effort towards status, fame, and attention and not anything like universal human kindness or understanding.
Life is hard enough. We have to survive: make and prepare food, be temperate, find joy. I want to do those, and what I’ve concluded is that I need little more than a few acres of land, time, effort, and knowledge and experience.
Recently, in talking with my closest friends, especially those concerned with my announcement, I find myself saying repeatedly: We excreted before there were toilets, we were comfortable before we had central air, we had food before Walmarts, and we had houses before we had lumber mills.
I want to prove it.
I am escaping the traditional dream for a different one.
I’m excited to be learning a lot about a lot of topics to support my plan: Permaculture, technology anthropology, gardening, green housing, cob building, fire making, and so on. It will be difficult, interesting, and experimental. I’m happy that I am fit, sound, and prepared to learn what I need to.
Geodesic model for organic home framing cc-by lemasney
I’m leaving, to the degree that I can. I plan to move to a 3-5 acre plot, set up a tiny homestead with a wood burning stove, a clivus multrum, and a bed, and relearn what it is like to be human on this planet.
I want to remove myself of falsehood and manufactured debt, slavery, and despair. Above is a model of what you can do with well-connected 4 foot sticks and vine in just about every forest I’ve ever stepped foot in. Thatching and mudding are the next step.
I want to live in a little hut in the woods, and occasionally come out for coffee or other things not on my land. On the land, I’ll make art, read, cook, garden, and live. I will possibly use solar power to support some electricity, but that is optional. I may have cellular service to offer some connectivity for emergencies, but that is optional. I will not have plumbing, wiring, electric lights, or other typical amenities.I desperately do not want to drive. I will trade goods for services and services for goods. I will work at farmers markets and schools. I will help people in real, true, obvious ways. I think we all can.
I am scared, for us.
I am thoroughly progressive, politically. I think that the idea that Trump can be elected into an office where he can use nuclear weapons is the scariest idea that has ever been. I thought it was a joke when he first announced he was running, and I think it is a bad joke now. I am retreating from a society that supports anyone like Trump. I am leaving. Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged was something I struggled to get through as a twenty something, and I had no idea that it was so conservative at the time because I was not nearly so aware of the imaginary lines we place on things yet. Her ideas there of creators and makers and thinkers simply walking away is a valid solution for me, and I am doing that.
I am actively filtering out that which does not make me better, or worse yet, what burdens me. I love all of you, and I’m not disappearing, though you will likely see a lot less of me after May, 2016. We will see.
What I love about Google Calendar thumbnail and title
What I love about Google Calendar cc-by lemasney
The Playlist for my weekly video series “What I love about…” is growing! This week is what I love about Google Calendar — the answer is productivity.
Number two of fifty-two is on one of my essential tools for productivity, time management, customer relationship management, task and to-do, and scheduling, Google Calendar! This was prompted by a conversation I was having with Peter Bromberg and friends on Facebook about what I use for productivity and time management, and I said Google Calendar. When I got some feedback that their experience was less than stellar, I decided to share a screenshot of my GCal:
Google Calendar Week of Dec 6 2015
When they saw it, they asked if I would share my experience to demonstrate Google Calendar, and this week’s video is my answer.
I would love the opportunity to help you, wherever you are, when you are ready. I always enjoy talking with groups and people on topics like technology, training, open source, and design. If there is some way that I can help you with these and related topics, please contact lemasney at lemasney@gmail.com, 609 553 9498 or Let’s do something great together! This content is released under a creative commons attribution license, some rights reserved. cc-by lemasney
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What I Love About… cc-by lemasney
What I love about… cc-by lemasney
is a weekly video series in 2016. I’m using it in the same way I used 365 Sketches: to learn, to share, to master something I should be better at.The playlist is growing! Stay tuned throughout 2016, thumbs up and subscribe please, and thanks as always for your support!
