Fab Fund, Fab Academy
Joseph Jackson
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/is_mit_obsolete/
The only problem with providing ordinary people with modern means for
invention is that this doesn’t fit within the conventional categories
of education, industry, or aid. To fill this void, the fab lab network
is now inventing new organizations: a non-profit Fab Foundation to
support invention as aid, a for-profit Fab Fund to provide global
capital for local inventors and global markets for local inventions,
and an educational Fab Academy for distributed advanced technical
education.
The Fab Academy is a network rather than a place, with teachers and
students in fab labs around the world linked by broadband video,
shared online information, and common technical capabilities. Its
purpose is to keep up with the remarkable kids who are getting hands-
on technical training in fab labs that is outstripping what they can
learn in their (frequently dysfunctional) local school systems.
Through this network I see colleagues above the Arctic Circle more
often than ones who are in the same building at MIT, because on campus
we’re all so busy juggling all of the activities that are happening in
that single location.
The heart of MIT is its intellectual rather than physical
infrastructure: a research culture that creates room for new ideas by
emphasizing their evaluation through rapid reduction to practice, and
by mixing short-term applications (both serious and silly) with long-
term research. It’s much harder, however, to make room for new people
by squeezing them into the same limited campus space. I recently
helped plan substantial buildings to accommodate research growth at
MIT and in the fab lab network; the former, at $100 million, was about
100 times the cost of the latter. While there are advanced
capabilities that remain available only on campus, that boundary is
rapidly receding.
This moment is akin to the turn of the last century, when
philanthropists funded the spread of libraries to provide community
access to the kinds of collections that had previously been available
only to institutions and wealthy individuals. Fab labs are like
libraries for a new kind of literacy, the reading and writing of
objects rather than books. Instead of building a few big labs, it’s
now possible to build a network of many more-accessible smaller labs
that can be used for technical empowerment, training, incubation, and
invention.
A few hundred top universities with a few thousand students each can
hope to host only millions out of the billions of people on the
planet, but insight and invention do not stop there. The MITs of the
world are far from obsolete, but instead of draining brains away from
where they are most needed, these institutions can now share not just
their knowledge but also their tools, by providing the means to create
them. Rather than advanced technological development and education
being elite activities bounded by scarce space in classrooms and labs,
they can become much more widely accessible and locally integrated,
limited only by the most renewable of raw materials: ideas.
While on this topic, also have a look at this direct micro-lending
site
http://www.kiva.org/
I think something like this could effective when coupled with FAB
labs. I know there was some skepticism on the list about the Open
Hardware Bank, but some kind of financing has to coupled with this.
Shout out to Paul, be sure to check out Lost in the Meritocracy,
Walter Kirn's memoir of his meltdown at Princeton and what a horrible
ordeal it was/pretty much what we all know but good at least to see
some publicity around this.
Paul D. Fernhout
> This moment is akin to the turn of the last century, when
> philanthropists funded the spread of libraries to provide community
> access to the kinds of collections that had previously been available
> only to institutions and wealthy individuals. Fab labs are like
> libraries for a new kind of literacy, the reading and writing of
> objects rather than books. Instead of building a few big labs, it’s
> now possible to build a network of many more-accessible smaller labs
> that can be used for technical empowerment, training, incubation, and
> invention.
Just to link back to my previous related post:
"Re: [Open Manufacturing] Re: Comments on manufacturing as the next big
hobby"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/07204d7025a50265?hl=en
"Basically, I explain below why the US government should fund the
construction of 21000 huge flexible fabrication facilities across the USA at
a cost of US$50 billion, because is imperative for national (and global)
security reasons, to accommodate various social and economic trends. :-) "
Note that the Gates foundation has sufficient assets to do this project
entirely by itself, similar to how the Carnegie Foundation put libraries in
every small town.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
"Of the 2,509 such libraries funded between 1883 and 1929, 1,689 were built
in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland, 156 in Canada, and others
in Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, the Caribbean, and Fiji. Very few towns
that requested a grant and agreed to his terms were refused. When the last
grant was made in 1919, there were 3,500 libraries in the United States,
nearly half of them built with construction grants paid by Carnegie.
Beginning in the late 19th century, women's clubs organized in the United
States, and were critical in identifying the need for libraries, as well as
organizing for their construction and long-term financial support through
fundraising and lobbying government bodies. Women's clubs were instrumental
in the founding of 75-80 percent of the libraries in the United States.
Carnegie's grants were catalysts for library construction based on
organizing by women's clubs. In the early 20th century, a Carnegie library
was often the most imposing structure in hundreds of small American
communities from Maine to California."
> While on this topic, also have a look at this direct micro-lending
> site
>
> http://www.kiva.org/
>
> I think something like this could effective when coupled with FAB
> labs. I know there was some skepticism on the list about the Open
> Hardware Bank, but some kind of financing has to coupled with this.
See also foundations that may make these investments locally:
http://www.stthomas.edu/openingdoors/norrisInstitute/index.html
"Norris Institute Case StatementThe William C. Norris Institute supports
innovation in education and the creation of new companies with socially
beneficial products and services by providing start-up assistance and capital."
> Shout out to Paul, be sure to check out Lost in the Meritocracy,
> Walter Kirn's memoir of his meltdown at Princeton and what a horrible
> ordeal it was/pretty much what we all know but good at least to see
> some publicity around this.
Thanks; I want to read it:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200501/kirn
--Paul Fernhout
Paul D. Fernhout
>> Shout out to Paul, be sure to check out Lost in the Meritocracy,
>> Walter Kirn's memoir of his meltdown at Princeton and what a horrible
>> ordeal it was/pretty much what we all know but good at least to see
>> some publicity around this.
>
> Thanks; I want to read it:
> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200501/kirn
You know, as I look at it, I have read it before. Don't remember when. But I
do remember this part: "The humiliations mounted. One afternoon a van from
Bloomingdale's pulled up in front of our dormitory, and a crew of men began
unloading furniture that appeared to belong on the set of a TV show about
single young socialites. ... "We figured out everyone's share of the new
living room," the boyfriend said. "Yours is five hundred and ten." I laughed
out loud. "But I didn't order any of it." "Well, you'll benefit from it,
won't you?" Jennifer said. This was my first encounter with a line of
reasoning that would echo through my years at Princeton: even unbidden
privileges must be paid for. Tuition, the university liked to tell us,
covered only a fraction of the cost of our education. What's more, the
benefits of a Princeton degree were so far-reaching and long-lasting,
supposedly, that for the duration of our lives we would be expected to give
money to various university funds and causes. I'd assumed that a deal was a
deal when Princeton admitted me, but I was wrong. The price of getting in—to
the university itself, and to the great world it promised to open up—was an
endless dunning for nebulous services that weren't included in the initial
quote."
But while I can imagine some people like his roommates at Princeton, I never
had such experiences. I'd be hard pressed to think of many people I spent
much time with there who were not pretty nice as people. Maybe I just got
lucky. There was a drug/alcohol-binge subculture there I steered clear of,
but even the people I knew of doing that stuff were mostly nice. Maybe even
in that span of ten years the institution was changing. But I spent two of
my three years there in the Princeton Inn College, which had a different
character than the rest of campus (this was before the widespread
residential college system), and then the last year was around friends from
there (and also had friends from the science fiction society and the band).
So, it was quite possible I got lucky in all that, and never saw the worst
side of undergraduate life. I can remember one person who was surprised how
nice the people were that I hung out with when they came to a dinner we made
in the dorms, so maybe I just took them for granted, falling into a great
bunch? Ironically, for the most part, it is mostly not a bunch that goes to
reunions. :-)
In "Class",
"Class: A Guide Through the American Status System"
http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253
Paul Fussel makes the point that the reason places like Princeton let in
bright middle class kids like me is essentially to refresh the eternally
fading elite gene pool that is fading from inbreeding. :-)
I suspect that it is more that high grades generally indicate a high degree
of conformity and willingness to follow arbitrary orders and so make
effective employees:
http://louisville.edu/journal/workplace/martinreview.html
"There are two key ideological processes in professional education,
according to Schmidt. One is favoring students who pick up the point of view
of their superiors, behavior Schmidt calls "ideological discipline." The
other is favoring students who direct their curiosity as requested by
others, a trait Schmidt delightfully dubs "assignable curiosity." For
example, the teacher sets the class an assignment, say on symbolism in a
novel. It doesn't matter so much whether the novel is by Austen or Gordimer.
The question is whether the students will do as they are told. "Good"
students will undertake the assigned task conscientiously, perhaps even
going beyond what the teacher expected -- but in a way that pleases the
teacher. "Difficult" students may do something different, refusing to accept
the task as given. No prizes for guessing which students get encouragement
and rewards. "
That does not say much very good about my character having graduated from
Princeton or gotten a graduate degree elsewhere. :-(
Returning to the general Fablab theme, as a parallel, it was exciting to
think about computers in the classroom supplying arbitrary learning on
demand; but the overall system seems to be counter-subverting that:
"TeacherMate:This classroom tool only looks like a toy"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0605/p22s01-legn.html
"""
"One, two, three, all eyes on me," commands the young teacher, prompting the
room of children – mostly the sons and daughters of Asian immigrants – to
pay attention to Ms. Sonny, as they call her, at least for a moment. "What
kind of voices should we have when we're on our TeacherMates?" she asks,
after passing out what look like toy gadgets, à la Nintendo's Game Boy.
"Soft," they respond in unison, as they fidget with the plastic
minicomputers, switching them on and plugging in headsets. ... Perfecting a
computer for young students is not necessarily a technological feat, says
Ms. Adams. The technology exists, but finding the right formula of hardware
and software has been elusive. She says TeacherMate may have hit that right
mix by giving teachers control over the technology and allowing them to
customize it to fit different curricula. ... "We call it TeacherMate for a
reason. The concept is that this is supporting you, the teacher," he says.
It was important that the tool supported what was already going on in the
classroom and followed the school curriculum. ... Ms. Sonny returns to the
center of the room. She claps twice, snaps her fingers twice. The students
reluctantly look up from their TeacherMates. "Unplug your headsets, put your
handsets in the bag, and power down."
"""
Lego/Logo was a similar failure, in the sense that Papert's ideas were great
(even if there was a "secret sauce" in the subtle "scaffolding" instruction
he provided); but the implementation in schools mostly failed as schools
tried to turn something open ended on purpose into a very structured
experience related to specific schooling objectives to be done by all
children at the same time.
"Failure to Connect"
http://books.google.com/books?id=vJxZfMAB5RoC&pg=PA270
"""
"But nothing can be more absurd than an experiment in which computers are
placed in a classroom where nothing else is changed. The entire point ... is
that the commuters serve best when they allow everything to change", argue
LOO supporters.
"""
Still, to the extent Fab Labs act more like public libraries that public
schools, I have some hope that kids will be able to be intrinsically
rewarded for their using their native curiosity, not extrinsically rewarded
for using assignable curiosity.
By the way, someone just told me their child comes home with rewards from
school for sitting quietly at their desk with their hands folded together
and not bothering the teacher. So basically, schools are now so bad (as well
as overwhelmed by social problems like ones created by violent media linked
to violent toys) that they are now investing heavily in training kids to do
*nothing*. :-( Just to make them "manageable".
And in New York State this is costing about US$20K per child per year for
public school. I pointed that out to this person with four kids. New York
State will be spending about $80K per year on that family when all four kids
are in school, but would NYS just give the money to the family? Which in
general would produce happier kids and a happier society? US$80K to the
family a year (where the family makes its own choices about schooling,
including hiring tutors as desired), or US$80K a year spent too often on
getting four kids to sit quietly doing nothing? Or worse, breaking them
until all that is left is "assignable curiosity"? That's why more and more
parents are willing to walk away from having the state spend any money on
their kids by homeschooling -- even though, IMHO, a fairer system would give
the all the money to the parents to decide (and not some tiny "voucher" for
a few thousand they can spend at only another school).
If parents were getting $20K per year per child, there would be plenty of
money for local fablabs on every street corner, even some with those
"Personal Electron Microscopes" or the cheaper and more detailed Atomic
Force Microscopes Bryan mentions, probably built by the kids. :-)
But that is what is crazy about our society in the USA. So much money spent
for so little results (even negative results). Makes you almost think the
money is wasted on purpose, to create artificial scarcity and worse.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/bookstore/dumbdnblum1.htm
"No one in America today is better qualified to report on the true condition
of our government education system than John Taylor Gatto, the now-famous
educator who spent 26 years teaching in six different schools in New York
City and quit because he could no longer take part in a system that destroys
lives by destroying minds. In 1990 the New York “Senate named Mr. Gatto New
York City Teacher of the Year. The speech he gave at that occasion, “The
Psychopathic School,” amounted to a devastating indictment of public
education (reprinted in BEL, May 1991, under the title “Why Schools Don’t
Educate”). In 1991 Mr. Gatto was named New York State Teacher of the Year,
at which occasion he gave a speech, “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher,” so
insightful of the wrong-headedness of public education that it will probably
become a classic in educational literature."
Almost twenty years ago he gives such a public speech. And what has changed?
Seriously, I'd suspect almost every kid comes out of school without the
foggiest practical knowledge about how to do anything to support themselves
-- with few exceptions, can they garden, or fix a car, or do home repairs,
or make *anything* (even meals)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_arts
"One of the most important aspects of Industrial Arts is still that while
students design they ultimately realise a solution; learning the challenges
involved with working with materials and also the challenges of small scale
project management."
A blurb:
"Shop Class as Soulcraft" by Matthew B. Crawford
http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/product-description/1594202230
"Shop Class as Soulcraft brings alive an experience that was once quite
common, but now seems to be receding from society—the experience of making
and fixing things with our hands. Those of us who sit in an office often
feel a lack of connection to the material world, a sense of loss, and find
it difficult to say exactly what we do all day. For anyone who felt hustled
off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and
natural bents, Shop Class as Soulcraft seeks to restore the honor of the
manual trades as a life worth choosing. On both economic and psychological
grounds, Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone
into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from
doing, the work of the hand from that of the mind. Crawford shows us how
such a partition, which began a century ago with the assembly line, degrades
work for those on both sides of the divide. But Crawford offers good news as
well: the manual trades are very different from the assembly line, and from
dumbed-down white collar work as well. They require careful thinking and are
punctuated by moments of genuine pleasure. Based on his own experience as an
electrician and mechanic, Crawford makes a case for the intrinsic
satisfactions and cognitive challenges of manual work. The work of builders
and mechanics is secure; it cannot be outsourced, and it cannot be made
obsolete. Such work ties us to the local communities in which we live, and
instills the pride that comes from doing work that is genuinely useful. A
wholly original debut, Shop Class as Soulcraft offers a passionate call for
self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an
ever more abstract world."
I might disagree on how secure some of that is in the long term with
redesign and mechanization like 3D house printing we have talked about.
Also, the trades can be hard on the knees and lungs if done day-in-day-out.
We know a stonemason who is getting respiratory problems from his work after
a couple decades of it. But those are extremes. The more general point is
true. Related from a Native American tradition:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty always has a way putting the needed item into the hands
of the person who needs it. The keys to manifesting what is needed are
gratitude and trust, balanced with action. There is no need for scarcity in
the Fifth World. Abundance for all the Children of Earth is manifesting
Thought always precedes form. If ideas of sharing and equality precede that
reality in the hearts of Two-leggeds, the manifestation of physical needs
being met will follow. "
An audiobook version:
http://www.marshillaudio.org/catalog/arp002.asp
"In the age of think tanks, consulting firms, and IKEA, craftsmanship seems
to be in decline. Shop class is becoming rarer, and our children are told
that college is the ticket to an "open future" as a "knowledge worker." This
rejection of craftsmanship wrongly ignores the cognitive, social, and
remunerative rewards of skilled manual work, and wrongly assumes that
white-collar work always engages the mind. In this essay, political
philosopher Matthew B. Crawford recounts life as a motorcycle mechanic and
makes a case for the manual trades as an expression of human flourishing."
I'm suddenly glad for the one shop/home-economics class I took one year in
eighth grade or so, and a couple years of drafting classes, offered in a
more blue-collar school district, plus just being around my father who was a
machinist and then tool-maker and then Certified Manufacturing Engineer. And
one teacher who had a company involved with computers, and a science
department chairman who let me in early to use the computers, and also
helped me get a consulting job. If I had just done the normal "school"
stuff, and only watched TV at home (not played with electronics from
RadioShack, etc.), I can't imagine what my economic prospects would have
been, even with a college degree.
The issue has been raised here a few times about whether most people are
interesting in making things. This analysis of school suggests children are
being diverted from having natural curiosity in the world around them to
having assignable curiosity in relation to pushing a pencil around. I've
seen related studies about how the lack of play with water and sand for
young kids (in preference for a push to early literacy) is limiting kids'
understanding of science and technology.
Any wonder kids are trying to escape any way they can, including into
violent fantasy like World of Warcraft?
At least one avenue might be to bridge back from computer games into real
things. Thats why this is so interesting:
http://www.figureprints.com/
"We can recreate your favorite World of Warcraft® character as a fully
detailed 3D replica rivaling the beauty of any miniature figure ever made.
Using 3D modeling techniques pioneered by special effects houses and
manufacturing technology that allows even the most complicated of these
models to be created, FigurePrints® can bring your fully outfitted,
one-of-a-kind World of Warcraft® character to your doorstep."
But as people hoped computers and Lego/Logo would lead to self-motivated
educational breakthroughs (until the technologies were neutralized by
schools), I can hope that fablabs might really be the next big thing to lead
to such a breakthrough in bringing education into schools (or at least, the
communities around them). Perhaps the jury is still out on the significance
of robot competitions, somewhere in between lego/logo and fablabs.
But I suspect fablabs will not affect schools much. But, they may affect
communities.
--Paul Fernhout
Joseph Jackson
you quote is also in the book but he gives his whole life story from
elementary school onward, in
I was just about to mention Gatto's newest book, Weapons of Mass
Instruction which sums up his crusade since 1991 (I believe this is
when he retired). At the end he issues an invitation to join the
"open conspiracy" the Bartleby Project to end standardized testing.
http://www.oldthinkernews.com/Articles/oldthinker%20news/invitation_to_an_open_conspiracy.htm
I concur completely but don't know how to get the students to actually
rebel against this in sufficient numbers since they are so locked in.
I know if somebody tried to persuade me before I burned out on the
ratrace, I'd have thought they were a crackpot. I think the school/
university system will fall soon, within 10 yrs even, thanks to the
financial crisis (tuition now at 50K$ a year for undergraduate liberal
arts college. Demolishing ETS, and putting all those test prep
companies like Princeton Review out of business would be a great
step. I think that flash mob protests and coordinated disruption of
testing centers could be effective.
There is an ironic commercial that makes this point (I recall that you
don't watch TV much I think). Blackberry runs this add where the
principal is coordinating with other administrators at a highschool to
spot a truant student cutting class. Together the officials route him
"straight to detention." What is needed instead is to empower the
student body with mobile computing and totally disrupt the school
system--it is laughable that the principle would be getting "real time
intel" via text on his blackberry--the kids are the ones who will soon
use smartphones to subvert school.
One thing that might be especially effective is if the SAT where
somehow hacked/cracked or otherwise invalidated on one or multiple
occasions. I guess it would not cost them that much for them to issue
a nationwide retest. More costly are the AP exams where they have to
fly out all the teachers to hand score it--I just met a math teacher
in NYC who was flying to Kansas city to grade the calculus exams with
900 other teachers. What an absurd ritual in the 21st century.
I'm very concerned about breaking the "testing mentality" before
lifelogging and genetics technologies converge. We're so obsessed
with false measurements (IQ being another oft abused metric) that it
seems we create ratings for every conceivable category of life as soon
as the IT enables it. This could be very destructive as groups self-
filter. Imagine attractiveness ratings on display or automatically
recommended to you and submitted to your Augmented Reality HUD when
meeting people.
If you could check other's perceptions of you, you might be too
discouraged to woo them, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Many couples report that their first impressions were grossly
inaccurate and that their attraction grew during the course of
interaction. On the other hand, it would be good to have a lifetime
of past behavior in many contexts conveyed to you so you don't fall
for an attractive but totally shallow woman. Dating sites like
Eharmony are a very early precursor to the kinds of matching systems
that will be built. A lot of this is based on scarcity also. Of
course when body modification etc comes physical appearance will be
less relevant but we'll still judge people on their overall "pattern
of behavior" and the values they express. An important consideration
will be a "decay feature" for mistakes and other transgressions. How
will we ensure that people don't discriminate and use this information
against each other when once we know certain things about people it is
essentially impossible to suppress that knowledge and the unconscious
affects it has on our response toward them? Again I think, building
support systems and post-scarcity infrastructure is the only way to
guarantee minimal autonomy for individuals. Discrimination is
acceptable in that no one has an obligation to help you reach your
particular life project goals. There is a duty to provision basic
means, but not to assist you in an idiosyncratic project such as
making an ice sculpture of yourself or your favorite character.
Another worry is "real time evaluation" as in twitter, while someone
is trying to learn or practice or draft any kind of creative work. I
understand Google Wave is going to do this to your email?? The
pressure and performance anxiety of this--simply typing an email and
being concerned about spell check or wanting to rephrase something--
seems like a recipe for impairing performance to me. This is
especially so for things like learning an instrument or practicing for
athletic competitions. The urge to check the opponent's training,
strategy, and monitor their performance is sure to make you "psyche"
yourself out. I guess the coach will have to monitor that and blind
the athlete/performer to any input that is not conducive to training.
Then we're dealing with censorship and self-censorship as you could
always cheat and sneak a peek, unless the coaching staff monitors you
the whole time to enforce the information blackout.
Relationships, monogamy vs polyamory will also be in for a huge
shock. Cheating is literally impossible if defined as doing something
without the other party's knowledge. Just getting along with people
will be a challenge when every insult, perceived or intended, is
preserved for instant recall and replay.
Paul D. Fernhout
> There is an ironic commercial that makes this point (I recall that you
> don't watch TV much I think). Blackberry runs this add where the
> principal is coordinating with other administrators at a highschool to
> spot a truant student cutting class. Together the officials route him
> "straight to detention." What is needed instead is to empower the
> student body with mobile computing and totally disrupt the school
> system--it is laughable that the principle would be getting "real time
> intel" via text on his blackberry--the kids are the ones who will soon
> use smartphones to subvert school.
On this:
"Fast Times at Fairmont High" by Vernor Vinge
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22fast+times+at+fairmont+high%22+vinge
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0518.html
"""
"Fast Times" obviously takes its title from the popular movie Fast Times at
Ridgemont High, but it's a little misleading because actually the story is
about junior high kids. It's set in the 2020s, I think -- a difficult era
for authors to write about because the world needs to be significantly
different from our own, but still recognizably grown from our world. (The
year is not stated, but one character's grandfather grew up in the 1980s,
which would suggest that the father grows up in the 2000s, and this kid is
about 14 so it should be the late 2020s.) ... One thing that was believable
is that it seemed that a lot of the kids cheated, and it was almost
impossible for the adults to catch them. With universal network connectivity
it would be hard to make sure kids are doing their work on their own. I got
the impression the school sort of looked the other way, the idea being that
as long as the kids solved their problems, even if they got help via the
net, that was itself a useful skill that they would be relying on all their
lives.
"""
On the other issues you raise on tracking and profiling, it is a bit like
living in a very small town. Still, as David Brin points out in the
Transparent Society (maybe saw it elsewhere?), if everyone can see everyone
else's foibles, standards and expectations might change.
The Skills of Xanadu story by Theodore Sturgeon had an interesting take on
privacy too. When people want privacy, they just have it in a mysterious way
by the community.
I won't comment on the civil disobedience points about disrupting testing.
It seems like it might just get too much bad public sentiment. Just not
showing up seems easier. And, things like homeschooling and avoiding college
are possible too.
"We're NOT Off to See the Wizard: REVISITING THE IDEA OF COLLEGE"
http://www.unconventionalideas.com/wizard.html
At some point, people have to decide that rather than become warped and
twisted Ivy League creatures (like maybe you and certainly me :-) striving
and failing to save ourselves by saving the world, :-) it might be better to
just be happy and make the world better through personal happiness (as long
as that happiness is not bought at the cost of another's).
"Be the change you want to see in the world." -- Mahatma Gandhi
But having become a warped and twisted creature is part through the Ivy
League conditioning process (and in part as an aftershock of those German
"Socialist" firebombs that destroyed my mothers home is Rotterdam when she
was a teenager that made me susceptible to the siren call of the Ivies), I
might as well get something out of it. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider
"Based on the ideas in the book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, the novel
shows a dystopian early 21st century America dominated by computer networks,
and is considered by some critics to be an early ancestor of the "cyberpunk"
genre. The hero, Nick Haflinger, is a runaway from Tarnover, a government
program intended to find, educate and indoctrinate highly gifted children to
further the interests of the state in a future where "wisdom" has replaced
military and economic power as deciding factor in international competition.
In parallel with this, the government has become a de facto oligarchy whose
beneficiaries are members of organized crime. ... The book ends
optimistically, with there being no more privileged hiding of information,
no more secret conspiracies of the rich and powerful."
I mean that mostly tongue-in-cheek though, even as there is a grain of
truth. :-)
As Alfie Kohn suggests:
"No Contest: The Case Against Competition" By Alfie Kohn
http://books.google.com/books?id=bLudHIk3gsMC
"If competitiveness is inherently compensatory, if it is an effort to
prove oneself and stave off feelings of worthlessness, it follows that the
healthier the individual (in the sense of having a more solid, unconditional
sense of self-esteem), the less need there is to compete. The implication,
we might say, is that the real alternative to being number one is not being
number two but being psychologically free enough to dispense with rankings
altogether. Interestingly, two sports psychologists have found a number of
excellent athletes with "immense character strengths who don't make it in
sports. They seem to be so well put together emotionally that there is no
neurotic tie to sport." Since recreation almost always involves competition
in our culture, those who are healthy enough not to need to compete may
simply end up turning down those activities. ... Each culture provides its
own mechanisms for dealing with self-doubt. ... Low self-esteem, then, is a
necessary but not sufficient cause of competition. The ingredients include
an aching need to prove oneself and the approved mechanism for doing so at
other people's expense. ... I do not want to shy away from the incendiary
implications of all of this. To suggest in effect that many of our heroes
(entrepreneurs and athletes, movie stars and politicians) may be motivated
by low self-esteem, to argue that our "state religion" is a sign of
psychological ill-health -- this will not sit well with many people.(Page 103)"
There were many positive aspects to those college experiences, many
wonderful people I met. We need to draw from the good roots and let wither
the bad ones. From:
"Creating True Peace : Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your
Community, and the World" by Thich Nhat Hanh
http://www.amazon.com/Creating-True-Peace-Violence-Community/dp/0743245199
"All of us can practice nonviolence. We begin by recognizing that, in the
depths of our consciousness, we have both the seeds of compassion and the
seeds of violence. We become aware that our mind is like a garden that
contains all kinds of seeds: seeds of understanding, seeds of forgiveness,
seeds of mindfulness, and also seeds of ignorance, fear, and hatred. We
realize that, at any given moment, we can behave with either violence or
compassion, depending o the strength of those seeds within us. When the
seeds of anger, violence, and fear are watered in us several times a day,
they will grow stronger. Then we are unable to be happy, unable to accept
ourselves; we suffer and we make those around us suffer. Yet when we know
how to cultivate the seeds of love, compassion, and understanding in us
everyday, those seeds will become stronger, and the seeds of violence and
hatred will become weaker and weaker. We know that if we water the seeds of
anger, violence, and fear within us, we will lose our peace and our
stability. We will suffer and we will make those around us suffer. But if we
cultivate the seeds of compassion, we nourish peace within us and around us.
With this understanding, we are already on the path of creating peace.
(Pages 1-2)"
And sometimes it is hard to disentangle the good roots from the bad roots.
I have only recently come to see the very subtle conditioning that the TV
series "The Prisoner" was about. :-) That series, supposedly about achieving
freedom, can easily mislead the individual to think their salvation can come
through themselves and an iron will, rather than some interaction of self
and community (and nature/universe/mystery/that-which-some-call-God).
By contrast:
"Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the
Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives"
http://louisville.edu/journal/workplace/martinreview.html
"Schmidt also draws on the US Army's manual that tells troops how, if they
become prisoners of war, to resist indoctrination, often called
brainwashing. Key elements are knowing what you're up against, preparing to
take action, organizing with others, resisting subordination and dealing
with collaborators by cutting off information and trying to win them over.
These ideas apply quite readily to graduate students and salaried
professionals, who of course are in a much stronger position to resist,
though perceiving the need to resist may not be so obvious. The book
concludes with a list of 33 suggestions for radical professionals working in
mainstream organizations, such as encouraging coworkers to read radical
publications, organizing a union, giving activists inside information,
breaking down hierarchy within your field and seeking to break down the
division of labor between professionals and nonprofessionals."
Fab Labs in that sense are part of an attempt to "break down the division of
labor between professionals and nonprofessionals" as well as to create a
focus for community organizing.
But it is all tricky, because you want to get rid of the bad without getting
rid of the good. And as you poke at it, it gets blurrier whether anything is
all good or bad even from just one point of view. Again, the Manuel de Landa
Meshwork/Hierarchy or Eastern Yin/Yang thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
"Yin-yang is a dynamic equilibrium. Because they arise together they are
always equal: if one disappears, the other must disappear as well, leaving
emptiness. This is rarely immediately apparent, though, because yang
elements are clear and obvious while yin elements are hidden and subtle. ...
Yin-yang is not an actual substance or force, the way it might be conceived
of in western terms. Instead, it is a universal way of describing the
interactions and interrelations of the natural forces that do occur in the
world. It applies as well to social constructions - e.g. value judgements
like good and evil, rich and poor, honor and dishonor - yet it is often used
in those contexts as a warning, since by its principles extreme good will
turn to evil, extreme wealth to poverty, extreme honor to dishonor."
--Paul Fernhout