Go cart design, assembly and testing by the inimitable Team Tinker with snippets of boat model design and other moments of singular, whimsical tinkering mastery. Thanks to Moby for his song, Porcelain.
thinfilms is pleased to have the honor of working with Gever Tulley this summer in San Francisco.
Gever is a gifted, self-taught computer scientist and developer, having started his professional career at age 16. He is an inspiration to me and to many, many others. His work with the Tinkering School enables children as both learners and teachers, working towards the goal of bringing the next generations back into touch with play, discovery and the other whimsical tools that put our minds in closer natural proximity to innovation.
Here’s Gever’s most recent talk at TED, worth watching because he explains this like no one else can:
Part 1
If you didn’t care what happened to me,
And I didn’t care for you,
We would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain.
Wondering which of the buggars to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing.
Part 2
You know that I care what happens to you,
And I know that you care for me, too.
So I don’t feel alone,
Or the weight of the stone,
Now that I’ve found somewhere safe
To bury my bone.
And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing.
I’ve met some cool musicians while living in Barcelona and traveling elsewhere. Why not shoot some vids, have some fun and help them spread the word? In that vein, Coldcuts was just created to showcase these pals’ work. This weekend, we shot some tunes with Reuben Palmer in my flat here in the Born:
Easy to take this all for granted. Breathing. Walking. Seeing. Feeling. Any sense. Pick one. And it’s even easier to stroll through this whole thing blind to the possibility that this may just very well all be some dream. We know nothing about what any of us are doing here.
In the meantime, we find things to make it about: for some, it’s about love and a sense of belonging. For many it appears to be money and fame. That’s surprising, isn’t it? Celebrity only seems to present new problems. It doesn’t change anything. It steals privacy, creates further issues with identity, but doesn’t provide any solutions for this singular dilemma. Nothing does.
So I am writing this to myself.
When people die, people close to us, it kindles something. What is that feeling? It makes me calm, reminds me of our connectivity to everything. It may be morbid, but I am oddly comforted by that loneliness, walking around in that stupor. Pleased to be again so intimately conscious that we have no control over any of this schwack. I am at peace within the moments of tragedy in a way I cannot be to quite the same degree otherwise. i don’t need anything in those times. I’m not hungry or thirsty. I’m not tired. I just seem to be picking up some signal that can’t be known coming from somewhere, everywhere. Call it shock if you want. There’s something more going on there, something unseen that has properties. As if ocean waves generate this frequency that we haven’t even considered the possibility of, or clouds being ghosts that have trapped themselves here, not having let go of their lives here on Earth yet. I laugh at what we think we know. Even if it is correct, it is always, ALWAYS, only the tip of the iceberg.
We can buy this, travel there, pretend to be this or that but it doesn’t help.
As Vonnegut used to say:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
Are we evolving closer or further away from this awareness? What are the advantages of each? Disadvantages?
What could this awareness do for us? Is it important?
Does it change how we treat each other? Ourselves?
Do we care?
Team action in Senegal:
