#i'm tempted to keep going just so i can take their strengthening classes

[arkon-z]

Why do I always remember that I never do anything right the first time after I do the thing? I'm too impatient and too impulsive to follow directions if they're only given as suggestions. Instead of taking a foundations class, I jumped right into what turned out to be an advanced class and I ended up wrenching my shoulder. If I don't find a way to get this impulsiveness under control, I am going to ruin myself, I just know it.

[anettrolikova]

Mastery and Mimicry by Sep Kamvar

You have everything you need right here, he told me. Look at it. Good surf, good friends, this sunset. The problem with having a lot of stuff, he said, is that at some point the stuff starts ruling you.

A recurring theme in science fiction is the idea that one day, our technologies will become self-aware, grow their population, and take over the world. Of course, humans will still be around, otherwise there’s no story, but they will be second-class citizens to the tools that they invented.

I've often wondered why self-awareness always comes first. Perhaps it's because it makes for a more interesting storyline. After all, a technology doesn't need to be self-aware to be self-reinforcing.

There is a story of Bill Joy asking Danny Hillis what he thought about the scenario in which humans one day merge with robots. Danny responded that the changes would come gradually, and we'd get used to it.

That's the way it is with technology. We get used to it.

When the mechanical clock was invented, one of its early uses was to set the arrival and departure times of factory workers during the industrial revolution. At the time, people hated the idea of getting to work at a certain time; it felt like the ultimate victory of machine over man. Now, it's seen as responsible behavior.

But if aliens come from outer space and see people wake up grudgingly every morning to the beeping of an alarm clock, they might wonder who is the master and who is the tool.

Inside of each of us, there are about 10 trillion human cells, and about 100 trillion bacterial cells. By cell count, we are only 10% human.

Given how outnumbered we are, it's surprising that we don't die more often from bacterial disease. You might expect that, of the hundreds of species of bacteria that live inside of us, at least a few would have the habit of getting out of line and growing at our expense.

We can give credit to antibiotics for saving us, but I think that would miss the point. Even before antibiotics, a surprisingly small number of people died from bacteria considering how many of them we host. And if we could invent an antibiotic that would get rid of all bacteria, we wouldn't want to. Our bacteria help us digest our food, store our fats, produce our vitamins, and train our immune systems.

The truth is that we are not alive in spite of the hordes of bacteria that inhabit us. We are alive because of them.

Relationships tend to develop a rich texture as they mature, and us and our symbiotic bacteria have been going at this for some time now. I'm reminded of an older couple, where both partners have their quirks, but each knows how far to go, when to pull back, and what to tolerate; where each knows the other so well, and is so dependent on the other, that it's hard to tell where one person stops and where the other begins.

The relationship between us and our tools is newer, like a younger love. It's fiery and exciting, and we're still trying to figure out our boundaries.

Our tools, like most things, have natural limits to their utility. Up to a certain point, e-mail makes us more efficient. After that, the mounds of e-mail in our inbox take time away from our real work. Up to a certain point, time spent on social networks brings us closer to our friends. After that, it takes away from time we spend with them in person.

Our bacteria can offer us some wisdom here. If we want tools that respect their natural limits, we can design limitation into the tools themselves.

If the idea of self-limiting tools seems antithetical to technology and capitalism, let me suggest that we already build them. A search engine is a self-limiting tool. As is an online dating site. When these tools succeed, people leave the site. Video games and TVs, on the other hand, are self-reinforcing. Their use doesn't lead to disuse; their use leads to more use.

The more self-reinforcing a tool is, the more likely we are to use it at our own expense. On the other hand, the more self-limiting a tool is, the more likely it is to die out.

The key is to find the balance.

Gandhi fiercely opposed expensive technology. And at the time, modern technology was expensive technology. If you opposed the factory, you opposed modernity.

But what Gandhi understood is that tools are most useful to the people that own them.

And villagers didn’t own factories.

We use tools to build our tools. We use an ax, a hammer, and a saw to make a cabin, and we use Python, Django, and Apache to build a web service. These upstream tools are crucial in shaping our society. A world with no hammers would have no houses.

The web, for the most part, gets this right. Most web services are built on top of free operating systems, databases, web servers, and programming languages. They are marketed by accessible tools like Facebook and Twitter and Adwords. And they are often funded by accessible funding sources like YCombinator, or Kickstarter, or by sales through App Stores. The pace of innovation on the web, and the outsized role that software has played in shaping our lives, is in large part because these upstream mechanisms for production, distribution, and financing are more available than they are in other industries.

Look for upstream tools that are accessible, and make them more powerful. The recent efforts around JavaScript, like Crankshaft and processing.js, are nice examples here.

Like the sun, our upstream tools should be accessible and empowering to all

When we build our tools, we should aim for the latter.

An individual ant is a feckless creature. It wanders around aimlessly, seeming to have no ability or purpose. But when you get a lot of them together, it's like alchemy. They transform into creatures that astound us with their intellect.

If software follows content, I imagine we'll start to see lots of APIs that do small things. But they will easily interact with one another to together do big things. And if hardware then follows software, I imagine that we will see lots of small devices that do simple things alone, but complex things together. They might remind us of ants.

When we build our tools, we often depend on metrics to guide our development. We keep graphs of unique visitors and pageviews and watch them closely. This keeps us honest. It's hard to convince anybody that we're building a useful tool if our metrics show that nobody is using it.

But we must take care when we use metrics. Metrics can be like the horse in the old Zen story. Once we decide on them, they have a habit of setting the agenda. As the old adage goes, what gets measured gets managed.

It is useful, therefore, to have missions to balance our metrics. Of course, each tool should have its own mission. But if I were to suggest one mission for all tools, it might be this:

Every tool should nourish the things upon which it depends.

We see this principle at varying levels in some of our tools today. I call them cyclical tools. The iPhone empowers the developer ecosystem that helps drive its adoption. A bike strengthens the person who pedals it. Open-source software educates its potential contributors. A hallmark of cyclical tools is that they create open loops: the bike strengthens its rider to do things other than just pedal the bike.

Cyclical tools are like trees, whose falling leaves fertilize the soil in which they grow.

It’s difficult to build cyclical tools because the alternative is so tempting. Cars are faster than bikes.

But you can’t measure the impact of tools on their own. You must measure them by the ecosystems that they co-create.

Our heads cultivate reason. Our hearts cultivate intuition.

Our heads seek opportunity. Our hearts seek purpose.

Our heads maximize utility. Our hearts give gifts.

Our heads think of self. Our hearts feel connection.

Today, our technologies reflect reason and utility and opportunity and self. But this may be an artifact of our time. We could equally imagine building technologies that reflect intuition and purpose and gift and connection. I might say we're already starting.

When people talk of gift economies, often they talk about them as a replacement for the market economy. But gift economies and market economies have operated side-by-side for much of history. Child care, until recently, was exclusively a gift economy — neighbors would babysit one another’s kids. The creative arts and science have historically been gift economies, and to a large extent they still are. And today, free, open-source software sits alongside ad-supported and paid software.

[annashoemaker]

Hi! So I'm relatively new to seriously drawing and painting (2ish years) and I tend to hyper focus and work for up to 5 hours at a time, leading to hand and back issues. idk if you have any but if you have any tips to help with this at all it would literally save my life

Ok, I sometimes struggle with advice like this because I have no idea what your experience is and what your work station is like. Please bear with me, this will be a long one…

Hyper Focus:

I SO get this, and it was something I really struggled with starting out.

When I first started art school, pretty much ALL of my teachers imposed a rule that we had to take a break every hour. I felt like it was a huge waste of time, but just taking a few minutes to take a lap around the building kept me from getting too stiff over a long period and I came back to whatever I was working on with fresher eyes. This has been so ingrained in me now that I will usually automatically take a break after an hour or so of work. I think you might really benefit from training yourself to do this, too.

You could just simply set a timer to go off every hour and make yourself step away from what you are doing. Or — something that worked really well for me outside of class — have some kind of background noise that has a built-in break. Something like a TV show (I love streaming shit from Netflix and Hulu), a movie, an audiobook, or a podcast (three that I have really enjoyed are Serial, Criminal and 99% Invisible). That way you have something to help you keep track of the time without constantly relying on a clock or a timer. I would suggest a show or movie that you’ve seen before though. You don’t want to get so interested that it keeps you from working.

Hand and Back Issues:

There is a LOT that can contribute to this, not just the hours you spend working.

I feel like there is a certain amount of strength required to draw for any extended period and sometimes it just takes a little while to build up. If I ever go a long period without consistent arting, I will get really sore or stiff the first few times I put in a long session (even with breaks). Since this seems like it may be a consistent  problem for you, I really recommend you look at your posture and how you hold your tools.

If you are hunched over all day that will KILL your back. Make sure you are sitting up fairly straight and comfortable, get some back support for your chair if you need to, and make sure your work surface is at an angle so you won’t be tempted to lean over your work. If you don’t have a drafting table, there are drawing boards available at most art supply stores that you can kinda lean up on the edge of a table. Some are pretty inexpensive, like these.

Do you use a death grip on your tools while drawing and painting? If so, make a conscious effort to loosen up and relax your hand. If that isn’t enough, change your hand position or buy a special grip that will FORCE you to hold your pens/pencils/brushes/whatever a different way. I personally have not used one and I don’t know your particular issue, so I can’t recommend a specific grip for you.

There are a lot of exercises you can do to alleviate some of these aches, too. Here is a short video on a variety of hand and wrist stretches that might help you out. Here is a short yoga routine you can do IN your chair. I do some variation of most of these if I get really stiff while I’m working. It also doesn’t hurt to strengthen some of these areas. I’m a big fan of Blogilates. Cassy happens to have a workout focused on posture and she just did a super hero series which pretty much makes her my favorite person ever right now…

I hope some of these tips were helpful. Good luck!