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aroundsquare forum

 

we’ve got a forum now.  you can check it out athttp://groups.google.com/group/aroundsquare/  in fact you SHOULD check it out athttp://groups.google.com/group/aroundsquare/

 

i’ve got a bet going with myself on how many days until the first visitor, and how many weeks until the first person signs up.  you can help me win.

and don’t mind this bit: 

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/6dt2gb53cy” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

 

introducing clatter

 

a simple and engaging baby toy, with tactile, visual, and auditory aspects… check it out here http://www.aroundsquare.com/clatter/home.html

or if you want you can even buy it here http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=8310208

 

the shortest distance

 

the shortest distance to the cutting edge is to fall behind and then stand still until everyone catches back up to you.  i’ve been making things all my life… simple things, low tech things.  i had a phase when my main tools were pipe cleaners and rubber bands, and a phase when i banged stuff together with a hammer.  i had another phase when i made my own baggy corduroys, my own silly shoes and my own fuzzy hats.  but the point has always been, that on a certain level, i see the world as something that we’re able to participate in.  beef doesn’t come from the supermarket, it comes from cows, and those cows grow somewhere with the help of a guy in overalls.  if we want something and we have a little perseverance, we can probably make it happen.

 

and while i’ve been doing more or less the same thing all this time, the rest of the world has changed a lot.  now we’ve got the internets, which we never had before.  lots of people are talking about how the internet levels the playing field, how its democratizing our world, giving more people a voice, and allowing people to make something from nothing, almost.

 

but most of that is in the context of doing things online, high tech things like blogs and web businesses and stuff.  i’m interested in seeing how much the internet really flattens things out when your primary interest is low tech.  wooden toys… stuff made from logs instead of blogs.

 

it started before monkey knuckles

 

i’ve always liked toys.  i remember when i was a little kid and i first learned what the word mature meant, i equated it with losing interest in toys.  i worried for a little while that i would never get mature because nothing was more interesting than toys and i couldn’t imagine a world where i didn’t like them, just like i couldn’t imagine a world where i would have the patience to sit and watch the news.  as i got older i sort of grew up, but i never lost my interest in toys.  the coolest toys for me were the ones that you could do the most with.  i liked toys that i could find new ways to play with, so naturally i gravitated to skill toys, yo-yos and the like.

 

one day a few years back, i saw a toy i had never seen before.  it was super simple and super cool.  it was astrojax, three balls on a string.  it blew my mind that something so elegant could have escaped invention for so long.  i set to work making me a set, and as always, i was compelled to start messing with things.  i started playing with new configurations and slowly something new evolved.  i realized that by freeing up a second ball to slide on the string, a lot of new possibilities opened up… and monkey knuckles was born.  a solution looking for a problem.

 

monkey knuckles was the first, followed by moknuckle, the one ball version…

 

and then the flood gates opened and out came a rush of new ideas, designs and well garbage too.  rich in means, poor in ends.  but i think there is opportunity.  although my ideas are low tech, the internets have made it possible to connect with interested folks, manufacturers, suppliers, and to start building a little and unprofitable business from this love of toys.

 

freedom to play

 

it’s hard to know the right balance between freedom and structure… but it’s not an either/or type of balance.  the point is that some structures actually enable freedom.

language is a structure that limits our thinking… if you don’t agree just spend a minute trying to think of something without language… we think in terms of language… and it’s hard to bust out of that.  but by the same token, language enables us to think about things in ways which would not be possible if we didn’t have that structure.  it lets us dig deeper.

 

so it is in the development of children.  toys and tools dictate, to a certain extent, how kids can play.  round toys roll and square toys don’t… but things that roll and things that stay put are both useful for going beyond having nothing to play with!  the the differences in extent are important… the best kind of toys are the toys that give kids a chance to develop some creativity… the ones that are not totally closed to interpretation… the more open the better.

 

about becoming aware

about becoming aware

 

being around infants is amazing… their world is really incomprehensible to us.  imagine though, as they come into the world… they have a direct interface with everything around them, filtered only through the senses.  it’s wide open… but it’s all just raw data.  born into the world, it’s still life, but not like we know it… stimulus and response in the reptilian brain, but no interjecting awareness.

 

but as time goes on, you can literally watch the awareness develop.  the baby realizes: these objects drifting in and out of my vision are part of my world.  then, incredibly, if there is a sound over there, there might be something making that sound, and if i turn my head, i may be able to see it.  then, these things here at the end of my arms part of me, and i am able to control them!  and not only that, but if i handle things in just the right way, these things–let’s call them hands–can let me interact with the other things that are part of my world… and heh! damn! i can use them to put stuff in my mouth too!  and that opens up a whole new way of sensing and knowing the world…

 

the first steps in the process are gripping to watch.  i wish i had so many epiphanies myself these days.  for babies, the paradigm is always flexing and breaking and morphing… but the paradigms, like the rest of the kid, become less malleable as time goes on.  it might be true that the more we learn the easier it becomes to learn more… but it might also be true that the more we learn, the harder it becomes to step outside that learning–even for a second.  it’s harder to shock ourselves.

 

once language develops, we’re pretty much goners.  our minds are locked into a way of thinking, our language–for most of us–becomes the only way we can think.  Confucius said we should rectify the terms… which would help in some cases, but i don’t think it’s enough because no matter how upstanding our terms are, they’re still going to limit us.  language, like all good structures, scaffolds… is allows us to go beyond the original limits, but imposes new limits based on that structure.  there’s probably some greek myth about that.

 

anyways, i think it’s helpful if we can all just be like babies sometimes… i guess people who meditate kind of do that–thoughtless awareness… who knows, but if we set aside the limits of our mental structures–in some way–once in a while, it opens us up to new possibilities.

 

about crafts

about crafts

 

craft is the natural product of creativity… with some basic skill and ingenuity to focus the creative energy, production invariably ensues.  all creation flows from the same process, but as the medium becomes more sophisticated, the creative tendencies lose their organic edge and things get so tied up in figuring out the process that they’re hardly fun anymore…

 

when i was a little kid i used to love making crafts.  it usually mean something like melting crayons, or gluing pretzels to a piece of felt.

 

as i got older i started to think it was more sophisticated to make more complicated things, and things on computers, and things with batteries… but as I soon started to lose interest because the processes were complicated enough that it became about the process rather than the act of creation.  imagine, whole universities set up to teach people how to use a tool to make something!  creating things feels best when the process is stripped down to the minimum, and the number of steps between creativity and creation are the fewest.  there’s something to be said for finger painting… not to say that there’s nothing redeeming in silkscreening and airbrushing… but the raw interface of the crafting process is the invigorating part for me.

http://www.aroundsquare.com/aroundsquare/home.html

 

 

 

 

 

about wood

 

about wood

i read a cool essay once by buckminster fuller, about wood.  the gist of it was something about how wood, actually biomass in general, is the result of thousands of years of sunlight pounding at the earth.  but instead of just bouncing off or getting absorbed and becoming heat, a portion of that light gets grabbed by the little green things in plants.  and those little green things use the energy to make stuff, real stuff we can touch.  and over the years it builds up to the point where we have whole ecosystems with animals and big trees and stuff.  but the point is, that that’s not just some big tree… it actually represents years and years of stored energy from the sun, like a massive spring that’s been wound up tighter, season after season.  all the more with the coal and oil underground.  massive batteries that take eons to charge.  if i remember correctly, his point was something about global warming as we release eons of this stored energy in the space of a few decades.  

 

but the cool part for me is about the coiling up of the spring.  most of the world tends towards chaos, but with nothing more than this persistent source of primal energy, plants are able to weave order from the chaos around them… to intentionally take little bits of this and that from the dirt and air around them, and weave them into something super orderly… seems like almost in direct opposition to entropy.  but i don’t really understand entropy.  but that’s not the point.  the point is that when we hold a hunk of wood in our hands, that wood represents something really cool when we think of it.  the secret lives of ordinary things are always amazing, but there’s something especially cool about the secret lives of things in nature… i think it’s because the plot is never simple… never sterile.  complexity makes things interesting, but the cool thing in nature is that the complex stuff all looks really simple on the surface, so there’s an entry point for everyone.  not like algebra.