My favorite ideas are ones that entail the rethinking of existing behaviors or infrastructure. It usually begins with finding an interesting subset of behavior that occurs unintentionally as a result of societal circumstances. 826 Valencia is a great example.

Take writers, journalists, grad students, and other people who don’t work 9-5 and make use of their flexible work schedule. Match that with the need for 1-on-1 tutors–tutors who help middle and high school kids after school in the middle of the afternoon. Another great insight is the use of the Pirate Shop and other youth-themed stores (superheroes, spies, etc.) to not only circumvent city zoning requirements, but as a way to engage students in the first place.

Watch Dave Eggers’ above (he won the TED prize in 2008), it’s on the short list of most entertaining TED Talks. Checkout 826 Valencia too: http://www.826valencia.org.

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Walking around Mission neighborhood in San Francisco always provides a plethora of visual eye candy–and not just from the pedestrians. Tags, pasted on graphics, graffiti, stickers–cover nearly every possible nook and cranny of the main strips of Valencia Street and Mission. Here’s a sampling of a few noticed during a casual walk on a Friday afternoon. Enjoy their beauty, wonder and…truth.

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The Booksmith in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood is one of those places where one could get lost in for hours, getting inspired from one corner to the next. With the never-ending growth of on-line merchandisers such as amazon.com, there is still something refreshing and charming about the local book shop that understands and caters to its audience.  It’s not just about the smell nor the feel of the books, nor the quite sophisticated selection and curation of printed matter at the Booksmith that gives it its unbeatable aura. There are also the near personalized and hand-written recommendations about new releases, suggesting to one an enlightening read as if a friend has made a recommendation. I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly it is about going into the Booksmith that makes my day–every. single. time.–but there’s something about it that sitting in front of a laptop at home and clicking on “buy now” just doesn’t seem to provide the same satisfaction.

I’m wondering, are we at the cusp of realizing the beauty of the complexity of our analog, real world?

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Image via Synthetic Asthetics Blog

Is beauty within art and architecture universal? Does this beauty exist in the object or in the mind of the observer? Does the saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder, still apply today with modern brain scanning technologies?

Through brain scanning technologies scientist are beginning to understand the role of aesthetics in the brain. More importantly they are beginning to see that there are commonalities within all human races/cultures and time that beginning to show what it is to be human.

“Ten participants were shown 300 paintings and asked to classify each of them as beautiful, ugly, or neutral. Paintings rated as beautiful by some of the participants were rated as ugly by others, and vice versa. The participants were then shown the paintings again while lying in a scanner. “Beautiful” paintings elicited increased activity in the orbito-frontal cortex, which is involved in emotion and reward. Interestingly, the “uglier” a painting, the greater the motor cortex activity, as if the brain was preparing to escape.”(1)

(1) Costandi, Motheb. Beauty and the Brain. SEED Magazine. September 16, 2008.

Tomas Saraceno

Tomas Saraceno

Tomas Saraceno

Tomas Saraceno

“Utopia exists until it is created”.

For more work by Tomas Saraceno, click here.

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Talking about his child, he says, “the accelerating pace of technology means his eventual adult career does not exist yet. Of course it won’t be taught in school. But technological smartness can be.” Kelly goes on to list the key insights he tried to impart to his son. The one that caught my attention was this:

“Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it.”

The idea of focusing learning on awareness, skills, and processes instead of learning hard facts about the material (ie. arithmetic, physics, etc.) isn’t new (perhaps, we’ve been revisiting it more often), but applying it to technology is interesting at this point in history. This harkens to the teach-a-man-to-fish adage, except that this is a meta of that meta. Learning to learn. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. These, however learnable or unlearnable, are pretty valuable lessons and I wonder if younger generations are taught them better because of the increased pace of new technologies.

More than one relative has asked me to teach them how to use their iPhone. I’m sure a number of my peers have been in a similar situation. Frankly, it’s really hard to do (aside: it’s a little silly to invest a decent chunk of change into a device whose functions you mostly won’t use and who’s interface you struggle to understand).

Even with well-designed intuitive interfaces, gestures, etc., it’s still much easier for my generation and especially those younger than I to figure out how to operate an iPhone within a few minutes of picking it up. I don’t know if the lowered faculty comes with age or is specific to the zeitgeist or our generation. My guess is it’s both, but the latter more so. A time will come (if it hasn’t started creeping already) when our abilities will deteriorate and if we (or the runts a decade or two behind us) really are more adept at learning, how will that change the types of things that make our kids shake their head at us?

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In our modern age is it any surprise that our generation feels anxiety as we gently dance around our third decade of life around the sun? High expectations are constantly floating around us, expectations of immortality and longevity, before we have even begun to understand what it means to live and be alive, let alone be timeless. As we strive to make our marks–especially as creative individuals–we are over-saturated with information and constant input, searching for a nugget of individuality and originality in the sea of sameness and conformity.

What hasn’t been done before? What meaningful things are left for us to discover? How will we make this world a better place–for others, for ourselves? We are constantly running around, filling our time with busy schedules, packed calendars, appointments, meetings–but what of spontaneity? Where is our time for meaningful interactions, for fruitful exploration, for fearless curiosity, for moments of reflective solitude. We travel in packs and find comfort in shared frustrations, broken promises and unfulfilled dreams; we search for directions that seem to have been so obvious for generations before us; we carry not just our own burdens but those of our ancestors and of those to whom we will leave this world.

Where is the future we were promised? In our hands? If so, what are we doing to get there?

Let’s pause for a moment to consider.

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From May S. Marcy Sculpture Garden in Balboa Park, San Diego

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

(Author Unknown), San Francisco

“Music can negate a person’s awareness of directional time and space. Rhythmic sound that synchronizes with body movement cancels one’s sense of purposeful action, of moving through historical space and time toward a goal. Walking purposefully from A to B is felt as leaving so many steps behind and as having so much more ground ahead to cover. Change the environment by introducing band music and, objective, one still marches from A to B with seeming deliberation. Subjectively, however, space and time have lost their directional thrust under the influence of rhythmic sound. Each step is no longer just another move along the narrow path to a destination; rather it is striding into open and undifferentiated space. The idea of a precisely located goal loses relevance.

Normally a person feels comfortable and natural only when he steps forward. Stepping back feels awkward, and one remains apprehensive even when assured that nothing lies behind to cause a stumble. Dancing, which is always accompanied by music or a beat of some kind, dramatically abrogates historical time and oriented space. When people dance they move forward, sideways, and even backward with ease. Music and dance free people from the demands of purposeful goal-directed life, allowing them to live briefly in what Erwin Straus calls “presentic” unoriented space…people want to forget a space-time frame tied to goals, many of which are perceived to be unattractive or meaningless.”

–Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place

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