Keep Making Projects or Die
These things just keep growing and changing. I’ve been having some epiphanies as of late about how all these digital technologies, social networking sites and bite sized information status update micro-blogging blasts are actually hurting my memory and cohesive large scale output. I’m not a neo-luddite nor anti-tech, but I think its good timing for thinking about these things now that I’ll be at my parents in BoCoMo for ~ 2 weeks with that Deer on 1.5 second latent satellite internet. We have some good projects queued up for the midwest which will be fun to do and if you will be in the bocomo, most definitely ping me.
I had to read back through my bio and cv and see if my output and quality of output is down. The jury of peers in my mind is still out. I took the time to update my biography to be extensive and add in some new notes about Laoban, Cantocore, PDwiki and some other things. I’ve focused a bit more on overall direction. I must admit that sounds quite cheesy, but after devoting myself to other causes so heavily for 3-5 years, I knew that these last three months I needed to wander around and get lost a bit to connect up the way past, recent past, and present to get to the future.
I’m often asked why do I contribute to *Open* projects and I have to say I didn’t get into these mostly free projects for altruistic large scale society issues. It is fun and I really wanted to learn about software culture and how to build a successful global project (even beyond software). The “helping the world” view for my participation in FLOSS really is bolt on to what I’ve done previously in consideration of high level contribute-to-society goals. So, when assessing future goals and direction, I took into consideration the big picture of society and what these types of skills and projects can do.
Also, in considering things about my sister’s life, living in Beijing, re-connecting with old friends like Matt Hope, and concluding so many past projects, I asked myself, “Hey, why can’t I have fun? Why do I always have to limit myself to doing bigger projects and keeping so many old projects alive? Why do I have to take on the world’s problems directly?”
Whether the projects are a new soundsystem, an art exhibition pulling concepts from Cantonese culture or consolidating desertification in CaoChangDi, as an artist, I have to keep making projects or die. Oh, and I do have the large scale goals behind these projects, I’m just not going to take what I have done or myself so seriously anymore. I am who I am.
