Just a note to anyone who happens upon this page: I am currently blogging at Urban Plan SI, a site focusing on urban, transportation and environmental planning in my hometown of Staten Island, New York.
I hope to start up again at this space once I get things running smoothly over there.
Thanks!
My parents have a dog, a wheaten terrier. His name is Teddy. Say hi to Teddy.
Teddy is pretty great. He’s not the smartest dog in the world, but he’s fairly laid back, maybe a little skittish sometimes. He’s a good dog (yes he is, isn’t he such a good dog?).
Teddy doesn’t have much of an attention span though. Throw a frisbee and Teddy will grab it and bring it back. Take out a tennis ball and Teddy will drop the frisbee and grab the ball. Throw the frisbee again and Teddy will drop the ball and chase down the frisbee. Is that bacon? OH MY GOD SOMEONE JUST RATTLED A POT. Teddy is now hiding behind the chair. Teddy is asleep. Teddy likes to sleep.
Teddy and I are a lot alike. We both enjoy bacon and occasionally sleeping behind chairs. We also have issues with our attention spans. But my frisbee is Netflix and my ball is the internet. It’s not that I don’t have more meaningful pursuits. It’s just that scrolling through Netflix is easy, writing a blog post about how you and your dog are alike is hard (comparatively, of course). Catching up on BoingBoing is easy, going out for a three mile run is hard. How do we go about finding the time to enjoy our more difficult, less passive pursuits?
For me, it all boils down to confidence. I enjoy reading about technological innovation, the Maker movement, urban planning, and science fiction. Yet I have this terrible habit of thinking myself unworthy of the content creators. The writers and builders are professionals. They’re smarter than me. I’m just a civilian, now take my money. It’s a perverse way of thinking, especially for a person taking their first steps into the creative arts. But it’s probably true for many others as well. It’s just safer to read about things than to make anything of your own. It’s why I procrastinate, and it’s the reason I’m writing this post. Put simply, creating stuff is scary.
I’m finally realizing that finding time and feeling inferior are truly pointless exercises. You control your schedule, you can make the time. You have a computer, you can be a writer. So write, or draw, or do whatever it is you enjoy doing but conveniently don’t have any time for.
Ultimately, it’s not about abandoning the things that make us happy. I’m not about to swear off the internet and cancel my Netflix subscription. There are many more Patton Oswalt specials in my future, much to my fiancée’s disappointment. I do plan on giving these passive bits of enjoyment a bit less priority in my life. I intend to look at creation itself in a new light. Not as the work of experts and professionals but as the work of real people, just like me.
Now if you don’t mind, I’ll be eating bacon behind the living room chair. Some things are just more important than writing. If you don’t believe me, ask Teddy.
A few weeks ago, my coworkers and I cleaned our office. Purging the workspace is a bi-annual tradition for government workers everywhere and we were glad to take part in such a noble exercise. We organized, vacuumed, wiped, and dusted every surface in sight. The old files were boxed, and the very old files were shredded. Within a few short hours the office was a blank slate. A place where we could work and live (for 8-10 hours a day) in clutterless, geometric bliss.
Within a few days the piles returned and we are now back to where we started.
Why do I relate this story? Because I think it’s a great metaphor for how we live our lives. As the months and years pass, we have a habit for accumulating stuff. This stuff weighs us down, preventing action and inhibiting change. Until at last we reach a breaking point. We sell our stuff and hop a plane to Thailand. Or we quit our jobs and start writing in the corner cafe. Or we buy a new Macbook and resolve to get that startup off the ground.
Then come the hiccups. You get sick in Thailand, the cafe doesn’t have wifi (also, your writing isn’t very good), and you spilled coffee on your brand new Macbook. Your joyous blank slate is starting to fill up with stuff again. Medical bills. Self doubt. Empty bank accounts. And then you start failing. You hop a plane back home and can’t find a job. The cafe closed down (it’s the only space where, you know, you can, like…think) and you realize that your great idea for a startup either sucks or already exists. Slowly you start falling back into old patterns. Now you’re back home, not writing, surfing Reddit on your Macbook. You’ve got 438 new items (214 about productivity) sitting in your Google Reader feed. So you take some time to scan through them, hoping to glean some useful information that will get you off your ass. Then you get tired, so you take a nap.
Congratulations, you’ve not only gotten nowhere, but now you have less money and you threw away your Xbox because it was totally cluttering up your apartment. So much for that blank slate.
There is no such thing as a blank slate. Just like we purged the hell out of our office and got precisely nowhere, selling your stuff, organizing your home, quitting your job, or making any sort of radical change alone accomplishes precisely nothing. We live with the past on a daily, hourly, secondly basis. There is no easy cure for self doubt. All the decluttering in the world will do nothing for chronic guilt.
If you haven’t yet guessed it, I’m writing this mostly for myself. The magic, I’m realizing, is in letting go of the magic. Buying a new Thinkpad will not make me a programmer. Long hours of basic coding might. Creativity blogs will not make me a writer. Writing might. Reading about social issues will not make me an activist. Protesting and letter writing might.
Progress is not about blank slates, but systematic grinding. It’s about daily maintenance. It’s about struggle and confusion. I’ve been told this, I’ve read this, but until I realized it for myself, it was worthless information.
For me, starting anew was a whole new way of procrastinating. Clearing out the surface detritus of the old life was a way of prolonging the real work that needed to be done in creating a new life. It all comes back to that work in the office a few weeks ago. All that time spent reorganizing was time wasted. If instead we took some concrete steps to maintain that high level of organization, we might not be faced with having to do it all over again in a few more weeks. So it goes with life.
It’s been three weeks since I posted anything here. Most of what I’ve written here so far has been knocking around my head for much longer than that. But it was always easier to leave them up there in my head, where they weren’t so permanent. Where I could be oddly content in unfinished goals and unfulfilled potential. Now that it’s here, it seems almost trivial to have worried about it for so long. Boiled down to the basics, the best approach is the simplest. Find free time. Use it to accomplish the things you want to accomplish.
What I’m trying to say is this: don’t spend hours looking for the best text editors for writing. Don’t make grand plans for wiping the slate clean. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you have magically become a person that you are not. Just start writing.
Netflix is the holy grail of video on demand, and at long last, it’s coming to Linux.
Netflix traditionally runs via Microsoft’s proprietary Silverlight framework which is not supported on Linux systems. The good people at Netflix however, have been working on an HTML5-based plugin for some time. HTML-5 doesn’t require any proprietary applications or downloads, opening up Netflix to all users, regardless of operating system. For the time being, the Netflix HTML-5 plug-in will be available in Chrome, but I’m sure it will spread to other browsers relatively quickly.
Being a Ubuntu user, this is some wonderful news. Considering Netflix is looking to expand outside of the United States, this could be great news for prospective global users.
Sources after the leap: The Chrome Source via OMGUbuntu.
UPDATE: False. It looks like we were duped. Netflix plans on only using HTML5 for browsing and controls, not video itself. The correct DRM controls, according to Netflix, are not yet in place. Well, this sucks. Time to go back to any of the other 4-5,000 Netflix capable devices. Sigh.
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/netflix-html5/ (the bottom of the article has the updated portion)
I ran across The Tinkerer’s Handbook a few days ago via BoingBoing. It was a chortle-worthy sendup, a Make Magazine for the early 20th century.
But the short series ended with a powerful statement about why some people take such joy in taking things apart. Check out the entire series in the link above.
Well at least according to this awesome promo image it will. NASA’s been doing this sort of thing for a while. It’s whimsical and ironically badass, but also actually badass in that these guys are going to space on a rocket. That will never not be cool.
STS-134 is the final flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavor, and the shuttle program’s penultimate flight. Endeavor will be commanded by Mark Kelly, husband of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords and identical twin brother of International Space Station Commander Scott Kelly. Together they form the second greatest triumvirate in America history behind John, Abigail and John Quincy Adams.
In honor of the waning days of the shuttle program, I’ve included a few of my favorite promo images below. Check them all out for yourself here.
STS 125
The last Hubble mission, STS 125
Expedition 23
Expedition 23 to the International Space Station
Team 28
Expedition 28 to the ISS, planned for May 2011 launch.
STS 131
STS 131 Shuttle flight to the International Space Station
Many thanks to BoingBoing for their initial post. Source: http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/05/free-downloadable-na.html
Blogger and Creative Director at Make Magazine, Phillip Torrone thinks more companies should open source their dead products. After reading his great post at Makezine’s blog, I agree.
Typically, discontinued hardware just fades away. It’s ubiquitous, then outclassed and before long it’s packing landfills for the next three to four million years. Think Video iPod or the recently retired Flip Cam. But much of this technology still has potential. It may be for new products in the hands of other interested companies, seat of your pants reproductions whipped up in hackerspaces, or cannibalized homebrews built in sheds and garages. Wouldn’t it be great if we were able to see these products live on as Open Source Hardware?
Cisco's Flip Cam, new technology in 2009, was recently discontinued.
But what would compel major tech firms like Cisco, IBM, or Nintendo to suddenly unlock the vaults? To put it simply, what’s in it for them? Below are a few of my initial thoughts.
1) Simple altruism. It’s naive, but worth the discussion. Some companies are more concerned with their social impact than others. Opening up dead, locked down products for public perusal may be an appealing strategy for a select few companies. Other dead hardware remains the domain of their inventors or holding companies. If retaining the rights holds no future benefit for them, they may be interested in exploring the open source option.
2) PR. The strategic open sourcing of dead hardware would be a great opportunity for positive press, especially when coupled with the enthusiastic tech blogosphere. Having a rough week? Labor dispute holding up production? Announce plans to open source the original Gameboy and watch the fanboys swoon.
3) Talent. Opening up old technology for the prying eyes of tinkerers worldwide could inject some much needed new life into faltering organizations. Companies are actively looking into the potential of sponsored hackerspaces. Makers working with slightly outdated but open source hardware could be just the ticket to low cost/high return research and development. Hell, just a basic sponsorship could be enough. Just some funds to keep the lights on and a steady stream of barely dead hardware will do the job.
Naturally there are more than a few barriers, but cost and time seem to be the most prohibitive. Most hardware and software in the hands of large organizations makes use of third party technology. Therefore, it is not only their own hardware they need to worry about. Corporations would need to devise agreements for fair use of this third party technology. They would also need to be wary of liability issues. If Joe McHacker burns his hand trying to build one of your microcontrollers, you (and your shareholders) want to make sure that you’re free of blame. Avoiding these sorts of issues would probably require lawyers to draft agreements, programmers to go through bits of code, engineers to break down hardware, etc, etc. These things cost money. Without any sort of return on the investment, it’s doubtful the mission itself has any legs.
The recently selected open hardware logo.
Since cost, manpower, and corporate apathy are the major roadblocks, what are some solutions? Well the open source movement itself is a labor of love. Why not capitalize on this? Companies could put the word out for volunteers to run through code, handle third party negotiations, break things apart, and write manuals. Heck, have them sign non-disclosure agreements while they do the work. For some of the cult hardware out there, I’m sure companies would find willing volunteers. Judging from the hundreds of comments in the post at Makezine, the interest is there and the conversation is lively. If the financial advantages aren’t there, might as well risk no money at all and let people do the work for free.
These are all admirable goals, but without the will to act a great project like this will remain a pipe dream. One commenter on the Makezine post mentioned starting an advocacy movement for companies to open source old drivers so they can be updated for new OSes. Another commenter recommends open sourcing old Nintendo Gameboys with old games preloaded for distribution in the developing world. What about calculators? One calculator per child, as a commenter said, is a whole lot simpler to swing than one laptop per child. Open source hardware can make this happen.
This action would require a few concrete steps, trivial as they might seem. A wiki wishlist of dead or dying hardware. A team of contributors. A Kickstarter project to get a not-for-profit off the ground. All of these steps will be necessary. The magical corporate hand is not going to magically appear and gift us all with open source iPods. Real work will need to be done. Fortunately, real work isn’t a foreign concept for the Makers out there.
If you haven’t read the post at Makezine, I highly suggest you give it a shot. It’s a call to arms against intellectual waste and for large scale collaboration. Give the comments a read through as well. They’re the source for a lot of the potential issues I highlighted here.
The web is a strange place. I’ll click on a link that looks mildly appealing, and within five or six minutes I’ll find myself tumbling down a rabbit hole of previously undiscovered links, concepts, articles, blog posts and Flickr streams. A few brief minutes more and I’ve forgotten how I got there in the first place. Within an hour or two I’ll have read as much as I can about my new discovery, added a healthy bunch of blogs to my RSS feed and followed half a dozen new people on Twitter. By the end of this marathon click trance, the day is over and my mind is bursting with ideas. It’s classic information overload, but I don’t care. I like my information best in torrential floods. I like having instantaneous access to the greatest library of human knowledge in the history of the world.
Without it, I would never have discovered the Maker movement.
Arduino is an open source microcontroller
A few months back I read a book called Shopclass as Soulcraft. Author Matthew Crawford argues that the creative and mechanical impulses of the population are rapidly eroding in the face of an information economy. Our machines, Crawford says, are becoming increasingly locked down. Manuals are no longer written by human beings. Your new car no longer comes with a dipstick. People buy things, use them, then throw them away. Makers largely agree. But hell if they aren’t fighting back.
From what I can gather, the Maker movement is about using technology to indulge our most creative impulses. Want a robot? Build one. Want to retrofit your bicycle with a small gasoline engine? Do it. Want to render a mechanical Twitter feed on your bedroom wall with a series of pulleys and gears? Go for it. Advanced technology is cheap now. Don’t wait for someone else to sell these things to you. Make them yourself. Build them with your friends. Makers love found objects. They love old computers. They love open source. They love microcontrollers. They love getting together with a bunch of other makers, renting out a space, and building stuff.
A View Inside NYC Resistor, A Hackerspace in Brooklyn
But are DIYers really just a response to a disconnected consumer culture? Or are they a logical extension of the technological revolution? I’d probably say it’s a little of both. There is a very real, very admirable undercurrent of rebellion in the Maker movement. They’re a crucial part of the technological counterculture without indulging in ludditism. Naturally, this leads to the Maker movement as an extension of the technological revolution. The sheer availability of cheap technology means that more advanced tech is in the hands of more individuals than any other time in human history. This has led to an explosion of interest in individual creation. As much as Makers and DIYers are a response to consumer culture, they are also a product of the cheap technology made possible by rapid and abundant innovation.
So why does Maker culture appeal to me? Because it’s accessible. Because it’s welcoming. Because it’s open. The cornerstone of the Maker movement is the unrestricted availability of open technology. If there is closed down technology (think iPhone or Xbox) they will open it. They will void the warranty. They will make something awesome out of it. The closed nature of the system does not encourage them to consume and dispose as concluded by Matthew Crawford, but to crack and fix and open.
I’ve taken a few tentative steps toward participating in greater Maker culture. Just yesterday I plopped down $10 for a digital subscription to Make Magazine. I started learning Python, an easy to learn but powerful programming language. I broke out an old marble notebook and started relearning algebra (via Khan Academy). I’m seriously thinking about picking up an Arduino kit and a MintyBoost. But I’m also learning that being a Maker isn’t about buying a whole bunch of stuff and calling yourself a card carrying member of the counterculture. It’s about using what you have and what you find to improve your life, feed your imagination, and hopefully make a small corner of the world a better place. Being a Maker is about collaboration, sharing, openness, and social responsibility. It’s a recognition that we are enormously privileged to be living in this time and place, and that we are meant for so much more than consumption and disposal. We are morally obligated to create and to give back.
So where do you start? For me it all started at BoingBoing. Below is a short list of all the web resources I’ve used to immerse myself in Maker culture.
Boing Boing
Adafruit Industries
Makerbot
Make Magazine
Hackerspaces
Thingiverse
NYC Resistor
If you’re interested in some great DIY inspired fiction, read Makers by Cory Doctorow. I swear the man has a direct line to some future version of himself.
Use the web resources as a start but be sure not to neglect real life meatspace interaction. Find your local hackerspace, learn from the members and consider a membership for yourself. Participate. Build. Make something cool.
Open source isn’t just about software. Open source hardware, in the hands of Makers and DIYers, is literally changing the world. But what if you put the microcontroller aside and tossed the homebrew Kinect hacks into the shed? What if you set your sights on something bigger? What if modular open source hardware could build an entire civilization?
This is a question best answered by the genius innovators at Open Source Ecology. Their goal is simple. Prototype, build, and release 50 of the most essential industrial tools for modern civilization in under two years for about $2 million. Also, make the plans, schematics, 3d models, video tutorials, budgets and manuals freely and publicly available. Nothing like setting your sights high, huh? Their short video illustrates their mission better and more succinctly than I ever could.
So what does an ambitious project like this mean for us today? Well for starters, it illustrates that we are in a golden age of innovation and creativity. People everywhere, from the wonderful builders and makers at Open Source Ecology to urban organizations like 3rd Ward are actively strengthening their communities in unconventional ways. It means that while traditional institutions decay, low cost/high return organizations are stepping in to fill the void. It means that the future, in my opinion, will be about building the strength and resilience of individuals and local communities.
The more I talk to people, the more I realize that there is a very real sense of frustration and hopelessness shrouding our daily interactions. I feel it myself. The ground is moving beneath our feet, and we’re stumbling for some stability. We feel as if the world is too big for us. Corporations and governments exist on another plane, too far removed from the daily lives and struggles of the typical man or woman.
That is why projects like Open Source Ecology are so essential to the citizen experience. They help us to rebuild the connections to our families, our land and our tools. Best of all, they satisfy our inner desire to actively participate in our own lives and communities.
Plus, they’ll be building an open source wind turbine. How cool is that?
I’ve written only sparingly on this site about my life in Staten Island. All too often, it’s easy to get so caught up in the big picture that you miss the major transitions in your own community. Here, in the place that I grew up, the change is transparent, grinding, and often frustrating.
The Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI), one of Staten Island’s leading arts advocacy organizations, recently held a talk on fostering a cultural community in the North Shore community of St. George. What followed was a frank and honest discussion on the challenges facing the growth of attractive, affordable, and livable communities. The conversation flowed freely, touching on topics such as the difficulties of finding and curating gallery space, the risks of gentrification, the dual apathy of residents and government, and the surprising cluelessness of local developers. The talk was a wonderful primer on the issues facing changing communities today, especially those communities that have been neglected for the past five decades in favor of increased residential development. Yet Staten Island is in a unique position. To understand the compromised position of Staten Island’s town centers, it’s necessary for a bit of a lesson on the borough’s 20th century history.
Of all the boroughs of New York City, Staten Island is easily the most difficult to classify. First a rural outpost, and later a jumble of town centers and distinct communities, Staten Island was transformed in the mid-20th century by the works of master builder Robert Moses. The newly constructed expanses of highways and bridges, especially the imposing Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, led to massive residential development. The flight of newly mobile Brooklynites followed, most settling in the empty and rural South Shore. The story from then on more or less follows the patterns of post-war suburban development elsewhere in the country. The big box stores came in waves (Pergament begat Home Depot, K-Mart begat Target), traffic jams dominated transportation planning, and the town centers faded with the advent of the Mall.
Today, Staten Island is a borough with an identity crisis. As the national scales tilt in favor of a more urban life, some Staten Islanders are attempting to revive these dormant, decaying, but still attractive communities. Several organizations, many of them arts focused, have leapt into the fray. The recent discussion hosted by COAHSI helped to highlight the many pitfalls and challenges in reviving community life on Staten Island.
Staten Islands North Shore housing stock is generally older, and of classic 19th century vintage (image via Forgotten Borough)
A Question of Developers
One of the primary concerns of several participating artists was the general cluelessness of local developers. There has been progress. Efforts by The Staten Island Creative Community (SICC) has been a resounding success. By reaching agreements with local developers, the SICC appropriates unleased storefronts, and turns them into active galleries and exhibition spaces. The developers get to exhibit their available space, and the artists get to exhibit their works. But the relationship is often rocky. Developers grow frustrated with their continued inability to rent unused space. The artists point to extortionate rents driving potential tenants away. Staten Island’s town centers are littered with empty and available storefronts. Are these spaces really more valuable to developers as empty, blighted, and overpriced retail space? Isn’t it in the interest of landlords, developers and interested tenants for available space to be occupied, even at discounted rates?
The Risks of Gentrification
The pattern is well known. Depressed communities advertise themselves to cultural and arts organizations. The artists come, attracted by low rents and available space. The sudden explosion of art and culture attracts new residents. New residents fill the communities, opening attractive new storefronts. Developers and landlords renovate buildings, attracting further migration. Rents rise, long time residents are driven away, artists are forced out, buildings are knocked down and condos are built up. It’s classic gentrification, and it was a major point of discussion. What is the end goal of art and cultural organizations? How can the worst affects of gentrification be avoided while also improving community life for new artists, longtime residents, and interested outsiders?
image taken in St. George via Gothamist
Issues of Apathy
Toward the end of the discussion, conversation turned toward local and governmental apathy. How can any progress be made if St. George and similar communities continue to be neglected by government? Why are the streets filthy? Why are empty lots in St. George a dumping ground, while public spaces in Todt Hill well manicured? Where are the curb cuts and bike lanes and crosswalks and garbage cans? These are the major issues facing community development in Staten Island. Political power is concentrated on the South Shore, which is generally more affluent, less diverse, and far more politically conservative. Developers are disturbingly close to local politicians. Plans are made and studies are commissioned yet storefronts remain empty and unused. St. George, Stapleton, Tompkinsville, and surrounding communities have been primed for a renaissance for decades. Progress is visible in the spate of well regarded restaurants that have recently opened in the area, the rise of cultural organizations, and the increasing participation of both local residents and out-of-towners. But pride is fleeting and the challenges of governmental inaction and outright sabotage prevent the area from reaching its genuine and obvious potential.
I’ve spent 22 of my 24 years on Staten Island. For much of that time I lived on the South Shore, oblivious to the struggles and successes of the borough’s denser communities. Since moving to the North Shore in August, I’ve been making an effort to expose myself to the greater cultural opportunities on the local scene. COAHSI’s recent panel discussion helped to highlight the extraordinary work being done by artists and residents in reviving these communities. At times, it seems as if the setbacks outnumber the successes. But this is true of any progressive movement. Living on Staten Island is, at times, a frustrating and demoralizing experience. The young people move away, stifled. The older retire for New Jersey or Florida. The suburban anger lingers just under the surface. Yet in this increasingly urban and interconnected age, the potential for innovation is greatest in Staten Island’s oldest communities. These are the places where progress has come full circle. These communities, along with their artists, innovators, cultural organizations, and residents, are Staten Island’s best chance for the 21st century.
