Week 10: Hacking and Utopias
My response this week is more of a personal reflection that just seemed to pour out at the threshold of thought as I began typing.
'A project without a constructive end' is one of the most beautiful elements of the entire genre. This principle remains at the heart of hacking, and productivity - or rather, production - is a natural progression. Experimentation is creativity in action. The process and exploration of what can be hacked is the cake; generating a 'product' is icing on the cake.
Out of all the readings from this week, this paragraph is what really stood out and resonated with me. I re-read it multiple times. I'm now recognizing that this is something I perpetually find myself doing, sometimes without realizing that I'm doing it. I have a burning curiosity to learn about new and exciting things and I find it easily sways my passion and focus for attention. In fact, my thesis sprung from this very manner. I became deeply curious about transportation from a young age and in high school found myself planning an improved T system in Boston. Overtime this side project of mine has evolved, being swayed by my travels to new cities. In a way, I have been conducting an on going research project analyzing and understanding each new city I travel to or live in. This summer, living in DC my focus naturally shifted to this new place and I found that in all my spare time I was making a concerted effort to learn more and more about the history of DC, where it came from, what it is today, and more importantly how I envision that it could be.
This is an exciting revelation that in essence I've been design hacking my whole life. My thesis is just one example but there are hundreds of others. I once designed a new and improved cell phone key pad layout when I was in 9th grade. In middle school when my town was proposing to build a new school and the plan was an atrocity, I took it upon myself to design my own proposal - examining classroom and programatic layouts and gathering spaces, something grossly neglected by the town.
Because of this burning desire of mine to examine those things that have interested me, I have also been easily distracted by the work that is actually on my plate. It's something I've become increasingly aware of but still unsure of how avoid it. In high school, it was nearly impossible to avoid as it was my only outlet to do what I truly enjoyed. In college however, it has been more of a tease than anything else. I'm finally doing what I enjoy but I still find that I'm easily bored of projects that I'm not genuinely interested in.
One other passage that stuck out to me:
Fuller's structures, in following the most basic mathematical models - triangle, tetrahedron, icosahedron - are thereby confirming their similitude to molecular forms - the 'big pattern clues' are also the details.
This has been a central theme of my thesis that I keep coming back to. I find it fascinating that Bucky was able to identify how this mode of thinking came about - as a result of his being cross-eyed as a child and only recognizing patterns. I have to wonder how this has come about in my own thinking - reflecting back it has definitely been something always present in my thinking.Week 10:L
