White people + religious tolerance + smallpox – Indians = America
As a designer I am supposed to communicate, visually, a message. Be it to get the general population to buy a certain brand of soap, navigate easily to a news article or bring down the government with a series of well placed, ingenious posters. That’s why I’m in school right now, that’s why I give Belmont University over $20,000 a year and that’s why I am a bootstrapping young man. As far as the institution of education goes anyway…I’m learning to be a better designer, finding different ways to solve problems with the tools I’m given (pen, paper, x-acto knife, photoshop), perhaps by even creating my own device or using the standard tools in an unconventional way. This whole concept didn’t really fly too well with me my first semester at school…I slacked off a lot and had a 2.5 GPA, which really blew. Eventually I realized I was an idiot and got my act together, struggling through typography, grids, hierarchy, the adobe suite and illustration until I finally Grokked everything during an all-nighter which began with me as a frustrated mess but ended with a stroke of genius and then a long nap. I became a better learner and began to look at projects differently instead of being pissed off that we were getting such stupid assignments. I didn’t realize these things at the time, but the last few class discussions have thrown my subject into a new light. I’m very taken in particular to the “all creativity can be understood as taking in the world as a problem” quote. The whole idea of being inspired by a problem is really…for lack of a better word….cool. It is damn cool. Rather than letting the problem own and dissuade you, make it your muse. So yeah. That’s how I’ve figured I’m related to the web 2.0.
Ah yeah, until class tonight, I had rather thought of the computer as no more than a very creative toaster. Thinking about it in a new light, as something malleable and able to become anything I want, I’m very curious as to if it will finally start going in the direction Engelbart originally thought it out to be.
Also, Dr. C’s idea of a system being unable to be made without some sort of flaw got me thinking a lot about my previous post of wanting to destroy the internet as it is now. I hereby retract that statement. Unless mankind somehow figures out how to not be mankind, the systems we put in order will continue to imitate our behavior. I’m sure our founding father’s had a very different America in mind than what we have today at the end of the Revolution. No doubt the colonials had a different idea of what their new country would be and going back further, I’m sure the Native Americans never suspected a few white people would eventually turn into gifts of blankets coated in smallpox. These odd sort of things just happen, nothing seems to ever turn out exactly as it was intended. The world and, getting bigger, universe is a constantly changing being. Perfection is a ways off.