Aaron Swartz, in his own words..

The following quoted text is excerpted directly from websites and blog posts written by Aaron Swartz. 

[[Taken from the AaronSW (technology and social change website), as read by Professor Lawrence Lessig in the documentary film “The Internet’s Own Boy” by Brian Knappenberger]]

“I think deeply about things and want others to do likewise. I work for ideas and learn from people. I don’t like excluding people. I’m a perfectionist but I won’t let that get in the way of publication. Except for education and entertainment, I’m not going to waste my time on things that won’t have an impact. I try to be friends with everyone, but I hate it when you don’t take me seriously. I don’t hold grudges (it’s not productive) but I learn from my experience. I want to make the world a better place.”

“I believe in good and bad. I support free software and limited copyright. I fight laws the restrict what bits I can put on a website. Politically, I am lower left, but I enjoy any well thought out political views. I’m a pacifist. I don’t believe in the science humanities schism. I want to be an artist. I have several annoying habits; I misremember things and overestimate the accuracy of my memory; I assume I am right even in areas I don’t know much about; and I misleadingly answer questions when I think a more truthful answer may cause confusion or strife.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[[Excerpted from “Schoolyard Subversion” Weblog post originally published on December 23^rd, 2001.]]

My Dream

Last night I had a dream of the way I want to live. I'm not sure it would appeal to other people, but I would certainly like it.
I walked in, not quite knowing what to expect. It was a modernly-designed loft with sleeping quarters, a meeting room, ping-pong tables and computers spread around. Windows were everywhere and light streamed making the place feel airy and bright. Many of my friends from the Internet were there, as well as a number of people I didn't know, but who seemed very friendly. We were all about the same age.
We were working together on a project that we thought would change the world. We were committed to it, and worked well as a team: we helped each other out with what needed to be done, and kept each other's enthusiasm up. We worked hard, but we also took time off to play ping-pong or go water-sliding. There was a bulletin board to coordinate events as we tended to keep irregular hours.
The team was rather large, but I got to know everyone on it well and we became good friends. We all worked to support each other, and everything was run democratically. New folks who wanted to help were invited in, but the group had to agree on them before they could join.
We learned all the time, both finding out the skills we needed to know ourselves, and teaching each other how to improve. While we knew there was a lot to be done, we focused on our one project with a single-minded determination, finishing it and solving all the problems that it raised.
If anyone wants to send me the money to make this dream a reality, let me know. :-) I already know the people and the project. The problem is we're flung across several continents, and this is the kind of relationship that just doesn't happen over the Internet.

Dragonflies riding the heat

I was lying on my back at the Rogers Park Metra station yesterday at about noon. I had missed my train by confusing the relative distances between Ravenswood and Edgwater and ended up deciding to just tough it out and walk up Clark street to Evanston, after a break.

The train platform was empty and stayed that way for well over thirty minutes, enough time to just relax and breath. Rogers Park and Clark street were really pretty quiet, for Chicago. The occasional traffic on the road, people working in gardens or on minor construction on nearby buildings. As it happened, I usually take a lunch break, not to eat, but mainly just to let my mind drift and wander. This was when I saw the dragonflies. Lazily riding the thermals about the curving expanse of railroad tracks. Raptors in miniature. Hunting or just enjoying the end of summer, I couldn't say?

I felt really and truly at peace. Couldn't have been more than five minutes, but the moment was a comfortable one. Free of anxiety. Free of fear.

The sudden juxtaposition of nature and the "built" and "engineered" city environment.

-GJS

End of a Chicago Summer

We are just slowly winding down from what I think of as "the sweet spot" in the Windy City.

This is a period roughly between the middle of July and the last few weeks of August when Chicago gets an uninterrupted succession of seventy and eighty degree days, which makes up for some of the months of miserable, grinding cold that sends the well off and less physically hardy, running for the coasts or the sunbelt. I have been distracted with other writing and doing some preparation for a long, cold winter so, no posts here.

I do want to post a top five or ten list of the best fiction books I've read over the past three months and I might have a good reason to increase what I post and when now that I am much less busy hunting for projects?

What I have done is make a commitment to at least another year just living and working in Chicago with a focus on developing my own fiction writing and then we'll see what things are like near the end of 2017?

"H4ppy Tr4ilz"  

Gearing up, Q3 and Q4

Kind of fun seeing those eight or nine hits on a given blog post? At this point, I don't see a really good reason to post big, long form blog posts, for example, at five or ten posts a month.

I'm not a journalist.

And twitter has the benefit of the speed and engagement with a small audience.

A big project for me is really getting to know the Chicago area and it's history, which with access to really good local libraries on a daily basis, means I can focus really deeply on whatever research area I want to work in. That freedom on a daily basis is deeply satisfying.

My skill in writing right now is limited by experiential factors and so just reading massive amounts is a key goal for the next twelve months. I have the time and ability to just build something slowly and build it well. I need to get a few more of the posts in my draft pipeline finished here and if things change it will be updated here. My plans for this space are definitely in flux right now. 

The moral aspect of the creative individual, Intro

This is something I've been considering for a very long time in terms of useful work. To summarize somewhat broadly, "what moral and ethical duties does a creative person or an artisan in any field, science or industry or any broad field of endeavor have to oneself vs. the requirements of larger society?"

In one sense, we can say that any person who exhibits creativity is inherently unique and finding ways and means to enhance their creative output over the course of a lifetime is in the best interest of the creative individual and in what utility and quality that person can contribute to society? In the best case scenario, both of these vague and generalized entities benefit where maximum utility and maximum quality of life converge. This is a very idealized case but one that has been born out to a significant extent by the success of democratic legal frameworks and market capitalism in tandem, to a point.

Where the more general case from an ethical standpoint starts to become more interesting is where the individual diverges from society given that absence of a clear path to reasonable utility and quality of life? I think I want to give this line of inquiry more thought and get more deeply engaged in a series of posts, so I hope you will be patient while I refine my thinking on some of these questions?

-GJS

The Past Three Months, Q2, 2016

This post is sort of a follow on, now that I've arrived at a more stable schedule. In part, this is also to encourage accountability from myself in terms of what I've been dealing with and working on?

I'm also going to get into some of my reticence and a sense of the ambiguity of full, un-censored disclosure in a later post, but for right now, I want to establish a format where I post one of these every quarter or so and update goals or just explain why updating here has been erratic or what exactly is going on?

First off, it is probably fair to address the fact that this blog's url is "urbanengineering" and is written by an erratically employed Engineer with Engineer in Training (EIT) Licensure in the state of Illinois.

However, (yechh pardon the grammar choice) this blog rarely deals with specific engineering or science topics and is more a repository for fiction or writing projects that don't fit anywhere else and sometimes has more to do with philosophy and culture.

I have a plan for creating another blog, possibly in Fall or Winter of 2016 that is going to deal more directly with science and philosophy of technology, but this project is strictly in the planning stages and might be deferred to my "hold" or "wait" lists until 2017, depending on how or if my employment situation changes?

All that having been gotten out of the way, the past few months have been busy adjusting to a new schedule, getting research reading in order for the rest of the summer (maybe even the Fall) and doing planning and initial note taking for some fiction stories. Rest of my time is divided between looking at employment, interviewing for jobs and trying to bootstrap a chunk of my old thinking on real world testing of emerging machine cognition theory into something more complete?

I may get to that in a future post here, but for right now, that is what I've been working on. You can get a closer look at some of my more recent thinking by following me on twitter @GregStaskowski or search for most of my previous work just by typing in "gjsengineer" into the search engine of your choice?

I don't expect this blog to have a significant audience anytime real soon, but for those of you who do check in from time to time, I expect my posting frequency to go up possibly targeting five to ten posts a month depending on what specific posts seem most useful or relevant?

"Happy Trailz"

So, what have I done for you lately? 1

Answer, not much.

My problem in writing when I'm trying to build something entirely new is I eventually reach a point of compounding and stacking unrealistic expectations and anxiety where I go from "trying to write" to "now it is impossible to write" and there is no way to make progress whatsoever.

This leads to a very simple and specific outcome where I need to stop hammering on myself, step back from the computer, close the awful thing down and then find something, anything, else to do, for two to three weeks until this amorphous, soul destroying negative feedback loop has effectively dissipated and I can try to get back to work.

So, how was your end of May?

I did end up doing quite a few things I really like that had absolutely nothing to do with real specific work. These included.

1. Hiking the Green Bay trail in the Chicago Far North and just generally doing my bohemian dropout routine. Took pictures and explored quite a bit, finding really nice comfortable libraries I like and just getting exercise and thinking.

2. Found a number of fun used book and record stories in various strategic and useful places.

3. Spent some time at the Chicago Botanic Gardens which always hugely relaxes me even when I get to hike back to the Metra train station in the rain, which somehow was still pretty fun.

I admittedly should have said something before now, but if you keep up with me on twitter, I think I made the point that I needed a vacation and I took one? 

The "mild Frustration" Post

Might as well, get directly to the "point." The past month and a half, my work in this medium has really not met my own, somewhat unrealistic standards and for that, I offer a sincere explanation, if not an excuse?

Partly, daily events have a way of exhausting my internal resources and also in part I have this sense or image currently of "a fallow field" waiting for new things to grow in terms of daily writing?

I can only remain optimistic and hopeful that a more productive summer will come and additional inspiration will arrive in a timely manner?

Plans for an additional web log focused more on technical aspects and engineering continue apace, but I really do not expect to have the design and focus complete until very likely August or early September? In short, "stay tuned" from time to time.

Ta

-GMB

Chicago and a sense of "Place", Part 1

Lately, I've been hunting for novels and books that address more of a sense of "place" just related to Chicago as a city? I have a short list of books I think start to make use of Chicago as a "place?" I will have to read those books and see if my preconceptions match up?

I bring up this sense of ambiguity because there really is a tremendous amount of activity that goes on in Chicago and regionally, but the Midwest still seems to remain a "backwater" in American intellectual life? It seems to me that people start here in various ways but rarely do they stay in Chicago? I don't know how accurate that supposition is?

What I'm trying to articulate is the strange sort of dissonance in the "language of place" when it comes to Chicago? For example, it is very easy to just say to someone, in a first meeting, if they aren't from Chicago, "well, I live in Chicago, or I am from Chicago" and that won't really be questioned? But if you try saying something that simplistic to an actual Chicago native, immediately "Well, where did you grow up? Suburbs, Uptown, Wicker Park.. So where did you go to High School?"

There is this very detailled exchange that happens and the "suburbs" doesn't "count" to the Chicago native. New York City and L.A. just don't have the same sort of very granular identification of origin and "place" that Chicago does? Which is interesting, because traditionally, the roll of large American cities involves the re-creation and reinvention of personal identity and community? Or, I'm generalizing but trying to explain some of what I have observed?

Partly, Chicago and the surrounding sprawl are large enough but also contained enough that a sort of interesting anthropological and infrastructure study of economics and social life isn't as murderously complex as it would be in the two or three largest American cities?

Stay tuned, I want to think about this more. 

And another thing, 1

I, really, really hate these. But. The idealized schedule for this blog was going to be six to ten, well thought out posts over the course of a given month? April unfortunately, completely fell apart two weeks in and so here we are in early May?

The tentative good news, is that my schedule has been slightly re-arranged so I shouldn't be off and away as often as I have been the past few weeks. So, wow, April 2nd seems like a very long time ago, just now?

Stay tuned. Periodically.

Sunrise

Still cold this morning, but much less frost in the grass compared to yesterday. I found myself enjoying the sunrise as I sat in Lillacia Park. An egotistical conceit, I suppose, but I felt that somehow the park and the warming morning was "all for me?"

What I was considering was this idea of a seeming impoverishment that seems to overtake the "beingness" of daily life when all life consists of is ones labor? Is this not a terrible bargain where one is provided with all the benefits of advanced society and warmth and relationships, but only so much as one's labor is of high quality and high value?

Should it not be so, well certainly, keeps everyone honest in the economic game, yet I found myself focusing on "not thinking" and simply "being" in that Park at seven oclock this morning.

Is it not enough, simply to be alive? Breathing. Conscious and engaged with the world?

Some specific influences on my writing.. 4/5/2016

First, little bit of autobio history.

I originally went to Michigan State University for an Engineering degree and to study fairly commercial genre science fiction. I was big into people like Heinlein, Spider Robinson and Charles Sheffield with a "hard science" focus. Then 911 happened right after graduation and things became more interesting.

Much, much more interesting. To begin with, the amount and quality of hard science fiction has been upped significantly across the board, witness Ramez Naam, Madeline Ashby and Paolo Bacigalupi just to name a few emerging and excellent authors in hard science fiction. Then contrast the old guard authors who have also broken new ground this decade like Lois Bujold, China Mieville and John Scalzi?

Needless to say, anyone who writes fiction had better have read way, way widely and be prepared to deeply know the genre fiction and standouts like Cormac Mccarthy, Haruki Murakami, and David Foster Wallace. It has taken me close to thirteen years just to reach the point where I feel comfortable that I have a decent grasp on what is going on in certain areas of fiction?

It also took me this long to find authors like George Saunders and Haruki Murakami that I could identify with and that spoke to the kinds of fiction I really wanted to write? Suffice to say, just developing some potential commercial projects that might build into publishable, saleable work took me a long time.

And it is still a long haul...

I'll get to other variables effecting my output in a l8ter post.

"Happy Trailz" fellow knowingnesses

This is how it starts...

"How it got this way"

by G. Bishop

A long time ago, upon a time, an elephant was caught and crushed in a giant set of titanium gears left over from mankind's failed attempts at spaceflight. An insane tribe of aborigines deified the dead animal by making chili out of it and arranging the gleaming, polished white bones in the shape of a star while David fought Goliath and a musical note was heard in a small, capsized fishing vessel similar to the sound of an Ipod dying, but maybe not. "The cup is a lie", said the man telling this story to a troop of terrified Boy Scouts who dropped their goodie bags and smores, all except one boy, who didn't like the other kids very much and preferred to read books by Neil Gaiman rather than eat an identical egg salad sandwich every day, with all the other unpopular children at school. He would never be a "star" he thought to himself, but he was definitely not going to be "unoriginal."

The End..

Archives 2010

This Blog contains..

The focus of this blog for the next six months or more is going to be my more experimental writing, daily notes and experiences while #offgrid and finally, some posts related to the intersection of engineering science (my previous career) and society as it comes up.

That should be plenty to be getting on with.

"Happy Trails"

-GJS

Administrative nuisance 3/31/2016

Eventual idea for this blog is regular posting either every other day or every other week.

I expected the past two weeks to be slow because I'm shifting back from Colorado to Illinois.

So, no real news, thanks for stopping in?

I really hate blog posts like this and now you can join in, in a sort of group cry of silent, mild frustration if you happen to be into that sort of thing?

Since no one is reading this blog yet, anyway, I'm really engaged in a somewhat futile exercise with myself, at the mo. Then there is the additional faux pas of using "blogger" of all things, in lovely, modern sophisticated Web 2.0, 2016?

I know. I don't like wordpress for a whole host of reasons and until I can find a hosting solution I'm happy with and or a reliable income stream. Beggars can't be choosers.

-Tah

-GJS

It's "Morning in America."

Twenty years later...

And the kindly old screen actor from California said.. 'Let there be morning in America..'

For he saw that it was good.

Of course, this was before exploding space shuttles and the Drug War and Fox News and Monster Energy drinks and forty thousand varieties of craft beer and downsizing and rightsizing and re-shoring and regime changing and giant televised burning buildings...

But for a time, it was good.

Nostalgia doesn't exist in the morning. At first, there was some question of setting up a special blue ribbon commission to study whether permanent mornings could be hazardous to the health and welfare of the populace, but there was no question that mornings were when people were most productive and calm, unless you were old or poor or differently-abled? So people went to work and school and enjoyed the "most entertaining blockbuster epic since the last one" until some European guy who should have been off polishing magnets at CERN went ahead and screwed the whole thing up by giving away "the whole shooting match" in the form of lots of interconnected pages of text on computers.

And boy oh boy, did everybody get BUSY then!

Still, for a long time, it was good.

Since no one important had a soul in decades, being busy was a good way to get on with it and figure it all out and get in touch with yourself at this very important time in your life! This was widely considered to be where it was and since no one bothered much anymore to have neighbors or time alone or family they saw more than once a year at the "approved time of inclusive likely nondenominational holiday event of agreed consensus significance" for "quality time" and large, mildly indigestible gathering/meals. This neatly and comfortably put paid to the concept of "keeping up" with anyone let alone with the "Joneses" whoever the hell they were or are? Quite possibly, they couldn't afford Montessori or even the gluten free ice cream at Whole Foods?

Still, at some point, a bunch of young people came along, as young, poorly informed and silly young people do and got wind of an old idea that folks could decide who to boink, where to live, what to do and how to learn and after a whole lotta hoorah and shouting and excitement got a bit of a prod in the ankle courtesy of dogs, tear gas, bulldozers, police, a secure and appropriately religious homeland and the timely and unnoticed intervention of the "folks who really do run this here bright and shining light leading the free western nations to a prosperous and secure future of liberty, equality and fraternity.."

Also, at some point, the "communists" became "muslims" and no one really notices. Semantics.

But hey, twenty years later it is still morning and Starbucks isn't Folgers crystals so even if you happen to be poor or homeless or not precisely white.

Good morning, to you America.



   

Why I "disappeared"

I left what could be considered a "normal" 9 to 5 mediated, planned and middle class existence in roughly 2014.

The reasons really aren't that interesting. I'm no Thoreau.

I could probably look at my written journals up to that point and reconstruct the thought process, days leading up to and problems of identity, free will, social disruption and overwhelming sense of nausea and disgust, but that would take a very long time and have very little significance beyond my own personal viewpoint.

To sum up, I was terrified of compromising what is left of my life based on the need to make x amount of money for the next thirty years to service y amount of debt while working less and less on imposed and pointless problems in artificial ecosystems devoid of integrity, value and meaning.

Thus, isolated and deeply frustrated, I left.

There has to be another way?