This I Believe

The relaunch of Wetmachine on newer blogging and serving platforms is a good opportunity to re-introduce myself. I’ve been working on this project — this atttempt to make on-line places where real people can really work together — since October 29, 2004 (and bloging about it since the next day). I write this blog for my children, to read in the future, to show them why I’ve loved going to work each morning.

I want them to know that I believe that right now, we are transitioning from the information age to the imagination age.

I want them to understand how important it is that learning should be play, and that there’s nothing that any of us cannot understand when we can explore it in a tangible, tactile way, if it is defined within our vocabulary.

I want them to understand my deep-seeded distrust of so-called “resasonablness.” I trust models that are simple enough to explain to a child. Understanding a model also includes an understanding of when it applies and when it does not.

I believe that I’d better make what-ever-I-do actually do something.

I admit it was a mistake to ignore marketing and politics for the first 20 years of my career.

I believe that at any scale you want to look, our culture is what we are. Our dominant medium dominates our culture, and our dominant medium is quickly becoming telecomputing.

I believe that bad design produces bad results, that single failure points and conflicting goals are hallmarks of bad design, and that huge corporations are single failure points with goals that often conflict with mine.