John Maeda is a professor at MIT Media Laboratory. He is a thought-provoking person who doesnt suffer the pride of academia..but shares his zeal for ideas, the world, his students, and the future. Simplicity is just one of his blogs. His September 6th entry resonates particularly:
Younger Older
For my talk at the recent Ars Electronica symposium I tried to simplify my philosophy towards life as:
When you're younger: Do More. Think Less.
When you're older: Do Less. Think More.
Some younger students, I find, tend to think too much and it sort of paralyzes them. Thus my usual advice to them is to think less. For older students, sometimes they get too caught up in the act of making, and fail to find a moment of reflection. To them, I say do less. Perhaps the superior model is the hybrid approach where you do both and engage in thoughtful doing or doing thoughtfully. I think I kn ow what I'm doing. But maybe I shouldn't.
Book(mark)'em Dano.
Another idea:
Do you know about them?
Essentially its about your mother. Does your mom comb the paper for obtuse articles, obituaries,pictures, recipes etc. and stuff them in an envelope with some sort of admonition to get yourself together, start being a good mother and other fun commentary. The clips are random and if I am in a good place, I will try and look at them globally to see what the big message is. Clipmarks is a function through Mozilla that you can literally "clip" web information, websites, pictures etc. and post them at the clipmarks site. Folks who read/like the clip can "pop" it as a way to rank them. There are significant "clippers" who are featured. Its tres cool. We are newbies here...and plan to watch it for a while and then stick our toes into this world.
Nice blog on clipmarks>
Brilliant day that became rainy and then back to brilliant. We are laking it tonight. Was trying to identify the mushrooms I am finding with some result. Am "on" the second paper for Syracuse. Am feeling a bit optimistic about getting into it.
Illustration Friday is driving a ton of traffic to my pictures. Got 105 hits yesterday from around the world. If I were running the world, I would make the ISDP students do Illustration Friday as its a quicky deadline, you get good input and without much effort your work is seen by a lot of people. Now to revise the luckystone website so I can link to Illustration Mundo. They will not link to a blog or any URL that has a backslash.
I like hiding behind the backslash. Guess its time to get in front of it.