The internet is becoming entangled in the ‘bottom line’ of our lives. What’s the minimum internet we can get by with? For a long time, for most people in the world, this will be none. Personally, the internet has embedded itself in my habits, relationships, identity. Many of my habits revolve around internet-related activities, and a generous percentage of my waking hours are spent in front of a screen.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s healthy.

A friend linked me to a write up of Aaron Swartz’s month-long internet diet:

“… my normal life style isn’t healthy. This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that requires a break to learn. I imagine people with unhealthy lifestyles know they’re unhealthy. They come home after work and say “I can’t go on like this,” they cry randomly in elevators. But I didn’t know. Life online is practically the only life I know.”

This blog post is my crying in an elevator.

My vice is my iPhone, where I’m vulnerable to all the newest forms of communication imaginable.

Twitter, RSS feeds, IM are all part of my communication habits, though I only need them as much as I invest time in them. The minimum internet I need is email; the rest is habit. I’m not sure how easy it would be to change my habits. Really difficult, in fact, unless I completely changed my lifestyle.

Going completely internetless on a Greek island for six months would be an interesting experiment, but not a permanent fix—and I wouldn’t object to trying it, especially if I were on a Greek island.

It would undoubtedly be excruciatingly painful in the first month. After a week I’d give up reaching for my iPhone. Yes, there’d be an iPhone-shaped void but by then I would have weaned myself off it using an identically-shaped piece of wood. In my leisure time, I’d lie in the sun, eating feta and avocado salads. Then to fill what might’ve been time spent reading Tweetie, I’d disappear to my cabin where I’d spend a phenomenally productive afternoon dreaming up novels on my typewriter. Maybe I’d even paint. Much like they did in the old days, before the internet came and the artist’s flow was interrupted by a Growl notification, or an IM popup window, or a new email.

It’s difficult to align plodding, physical, material life with the super-fast-technology-fetishism-fest that I’ve chosen to work with. I love the new. People love distractions. I find glowing rectangles and networked computers hopelessly appealing. Given that combination of weaknesses and interests, it’s difficult to exert self-discipline and lead a balanced life. I have nobody to blame but myself, as nobody is forcing me to edit this blog post at 01:36 02:05 02:11 on Monday morning.

Huxley was right: what we love, and our infinite appetite for distractions, will ruin us. Unless there’s balance.

I love this idea from Uday Gajendar at Ghost in the Pixel, which is rapidly turning into one of my favourite design blogs.

Yes, it’s great fun being a firestarter. Not every culture may respond positively to this kind of approach but as I’ve said on this blog several times, taking the position of “informed visionary” can only empower yourself as a designer, thus improving the product and customer experience…and thus the business overall. Sometimes you just gotta provoke and light that fire, before being suffocated by the tunnel-vision induced mediocrity or bureaucratic processes. It’s good to provoke discussion, debate, conversation, to get ideas flowing and people talking about ways to make things better. Sometimes you just gotta ask forgiveness, not permission, and do the right thing.

I think the position of informed visionary is quite natural for a designer, whether or not it’s consciously taken. But it takes confidence to be a firestarter, especially if a company’s culture runs counter to it.

Thanks for the inspiration, Uday.

Apparently my blog looks decapitated because I’ve removed the header. So I thought I’d seize this opportunity to explain why I’ve decapitated it, and explain my philosophy towards my blog more generally:

1. I’ve done away with my blog header because it too strongly resembled a Wordpress theme. That is a bad thing because it’s too samey, and therefore a little dull. What value did the header add, beyond satisficing a convention?
2. Even without the blog header, you can tell that it’s a blog. It still looks like a blog. It has the side-link bits, the post content bit, the comment bit, and all the other reassuring bits which soothe and confirm that you are looking at a blog.
3. It’s my personal scratchpad, notebook, what-have-you. I’m not bound by anything someone else wants—it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to!

The base for technology and science, mathematics, can have yes/no answers. Art is not based on yes/no answers. It is not possible to be RIGHT in an English essay. It is not possible to be RIGHT in an art exam. With a mathematics exam it is possible to be 100% right.

John Maeda in his foreword for Processing (see previous post):

Hybrids that can fluidly cross the chasm between technology and the arts are mutations in the academic system. Traditionally, universities create technology students or art students—but never mix the two sides of the equation in the same person. During the 1990s the mutants that managed to defy this norm would either seek me out, or else I would reach out to find them myself…

These ‘mutants’ lie somewhere on the scale between technology and art. I’m naturally in the latter camp, but I want to be closer to the middle. I’ve chosen to design systems and services which make use of technology, so I need to know my platform. Technology needs ambiguity, too: as without creativity and ambiguity, a technology is an unused palette.

Image by Jared Tarbell (Complexification), made with Processing—this is rather brilliant, so look at the others.