Form over function

Form over function, this is a recurring phrase one hears when in any design school learning the basics of designing a space, a product or a palette which they choose to draw or create.  Steve Jobs of Apple has been quoted many times for being a strict man when discussing this topic to his design team and his engineers.  I've read articles about him that, if it were up to him, he'd have no buttons or visible seems on his button-up shirts or polos etc.  He was stating his claim of just how much he cares for form when discussing any one of his Apple computers or anything else.  

Form is something that should not dominate, but rather, work in harmony with the function of the object or space which you're creating.  This can be seen in oragomy, Tai Chi (or any martial art), yoga, cars, anything really.  

When reading, "The Brain has a Mind of Its Own" Dr. Restak states this discussion of form and function in terms of the brain and body.  Form, proportion, perfection, harmony--these are the elements that lead to something more---they lead to beauty, the one untouchable, yet tangible feeling we all seek; whether a garden, a good looking watch, car, house, etc.

In his book he states that given one's activities, and as the brain ages, the body is affected; "a person's walk, speech, and posture change."  I've seen this true in my yoga practice, just as Restak saw from his Tai chi practice.  Restak was furthering his argument that the mind, not the brain, but the mind and the body are one.  When you begin to use both in conjunction with the other given a certain exercise you become more in touch with yourself and your movements and see first hand just how intimate the mind and body can become.

I will give an example of this from another book i've recently read, titled, "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall, a journalist for Men's Health magazine, wrote this book which describes many different findings about the science and art of running.  In chapter 28, McDougall talks about the Kalahari Bushman, a small tribe in Africa who still hunt kudu (a cousin of the antelope).  In the book, McDougall interviews, Louis Liebenberg, a math and physics junkie who wanted to find his own way of doing things.  So he went to hunt with the Bushman.  "I had a vague gut feeling that the art of animal tracking could represent the origin of science (233)."

"When tracking an animal, one attempts to think like an animal in order to predict where it is going.  Looking at its tracks, one visualizes the motion of the animal and feels the motion in one's own body.  You go into a trancelike state, the concentration is so intense.  It's actually quite dangerous, because you become numb to your own body and can keep pushing yourself until you collapse, Louis said (235)."

McDougall, in response, says, "Visualization...empathy...abstract thinking and forward projection: aside from the keeling-over part, isn't that exactly the mental engineering we now use for science, medicine, the creative arts? 'When you track, you're creating causal connections in your mind, because you didn't actually see what the animal did,' Louis said (235)."

Restak, who practices Tai chi, gave this quote from his instructor, "After you do the form often enough, something marvelous happens: You and the form become one.  Finally it begins to do you (70)."

So, what activities are transforming you?  or making you either more in harmony or less in harmony with yourself?  Do you believe that your activities could benefit or deny your relationships with those you have and those you've yet created?

the difference of passion

The difference of passion.

This is a means to clarify two types of passion.  In our society today we have things, material things.  The products that either drive our thoughts, conversations or hobbies.  The other "thing" we possess is passion, or more clearly, the eros, the desire for feeling close to another. 

Us humans have many passions and desires for unity and harmony with one another.  We want acceptance, closeness with others, authentic relationships, the feeling of recognition--Hegel, a philosopher of the 1800s defined it as saying, "I am for you, as you are for me."--this, in his mind, was true recognition.

Now, these passions--the desire for products/things, or the desire for the untouchable yet very tangible feelings of harmony and unity with those around you--friends, family and your bf or gf.  

Here's my main question: Ever wonder if two people who are in love--fully devoted to one another, engaged and can't wait to get married, caught in that moment in their life when all they desire/want is each other--ever wonder if these two people have an increased or decreased desire to buy products or seek after new technologies or games etc.?  

Say, for instance, they're not yet looking at wedding expenses and all that stuff to buy for their wedding day, and all they have is each other.  Do they spend their money on time-valued investments or Material-valued investments?  Time-valued investments are activities that the couple can do together such as dates, renting movies, exercise classes together, cooking together, running together, etc.  material-valued investments are buying products or accessories that can rust and get old such as new TVs, new computers, new clothes, new furniture, new stuff of any kind.

It's been said that love makes you do crazy things...so in a society that continues to buy products and seek pleasure through them rather than one another, perhaps the craziest and most fun part about being in love is having that unity and desire for the other, to be for them as they are for you as Hegel would say, and to enjoy the pursuit of being with your lover rather than pursuing material products as a means to fill your inner most desires (being in love).  

In a society that esteems one's stuff, wouldn't the craziest feeling of all be that of being only concerned for your lover rather than how many or how big all your products?

"I am for you, as you are for me." ---Hegel

Junk food metaphor

The junk food metaphor is one taken from one of my favorite authors....you guessed it, Dr. Restak.

 from his book, "the brain has a mind of its own," He devotes a few pages to the problem of this information overload and how it IS a serious problem for some.  He compares junk food to the information overload our society has inevitably found itself in the midst.

"Junk foods provide a good metaphor for this concept.  Much of the information bombarding us from our televisions and radios lacks redeeming nutritional value, dulls our sensibilities, and leaves us idea-wise, bloated with trivia yet at the same time intellectually deprived.  In short, too much nonessential news about nonevents may be hazardous to our mental health (60)."

Restak asks this question, "Just how much more info can the brain possibly deal with? (59)."  His answer is that the brain's processing power regulates how much info one can take in over an alloted amount of time.  The principles of information processing are based on the organization of the brain (59)."

Restak, describes a husband and wife who were his friends who suffered from information overload.  They routinely keep three tvs running in the morning so they can know all that's going on and "not miss anything important."  The husband rapidly scans three newspapers as the TV channels blare stuff and stuff about nothing and "everything."

After 3-4 weeks these info junkies just. flat. out. stop.  They unplug everything, cancel subscriptions and their conversations are nothing more than quips of the most minimal bits of words as possible to get their point across for responding to someone.

Information is trivial, wisdom is scarce.  Yet, perhaps we're all looking for one rather than the other, but which one are YOU searching for currently in your life?

Identity; the mirror which reflects one's consciousness

goal: 

assess and analyze through many ideas the common theme that one's identity is what they choose it to be, what they focus it to be about, and yet how it never quite resembles how others ID you.

Through ea. course I'm taking, Rhetoric, technology or health policy, i'm beginning to find a new and interesting theme emerge--Identity--the essence of who we choose to either consciously or unconsciously are to ourselves and others.

In health policy, identity is discussed by the gays trying to stand-out and identify themselves as a certain choice of sexuality.  The deaf, trying to either stand-out or cure themselves, seek to distinguish themselves by focusing on one main facet of their lives that dominates and differentiates them from all others.  The pro-anorexic do the same thing--through their actions they are identified by others and identify themselves.  

in this health policy course, it's apparent that the body is an underlying and yet, very noticeable means of identifying one's self.  Athletes try to do this as well, so too our culture--women are identified by their beauty and men by their strength--has anything really changed through-out the course of time? (no).

In my Rhetoric course, we discuss identity as a means of the conscience and unconscious as well as the means of it being either internal or external.  one scholar believes it's internal and another external.  A mirror does not identify us, it merely gives us a mimicry of flesh at that moment in space.  But if one sees themselves on video they say to themselves, "I don't look or sound like that!" But actually, one does.

In my technology class we discuss identity online and how that portrays us on the net and how it does carry over to who we are in the real world.  The mind cannot separate its self or its many personas with true divorce--Ever see Fight Club, or hear the story about Sybil having many personalities?

Aside from psychological disorders, the last point I will make is about how we choose to act and which friends we choose also identifies and labels us.  Many factors come into play when identifying ourselves. some just choose to focus on a particular one or another in order to broadcast.

reasonable men and the limbic system

From "The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own" by Richard Restak M.D. (Neurologist).

Chapter 5 had the interesting argument of what defines a "reasonable, everyday man."  In 1986 Bernhard Goetz was tried for murdering 5 men on the subway who witnesses said tried to attack him.  The issue of "reasonable" behavior is one of great concern in the court room in order to figure out if the alleged victim's behavior was rational with every bullet or stap used (in this case bullets) or if one's behavior was unreasonable therefore making the man guilty of murder.

The arguement of reasonable and rational behavior comes up because Restak, the author states his beleif and arguement that the limbic system, that part of the brain which creates intense emotions of aggression when combined with many other parts of the brain near it, can over power anyone when they feel so very threatened for their lives from something or someone.  

Bernhard Goetz, the alleged didn't remember his actions or committing the shooting.  This was no surprise to Restak bc when the limbic system takes over, given such an extreme and drastic situation, it takes over with full force and it's not uncommon for those in such a predicament as Goetz, a life or death situation, to forget or more specifically, have no recall of his actions due to his fight or flight situation and the immense power of the limbic system within our minds.

machines and the mind

most people assume that machines are what we interact with and our minds are what we use. but I believe it to be the other way around; machines are what we use and our minds are what we interact with.

machines, at the early stages, were used to help man with calculating bits of information we gave it.  now again, it seems this has been reversed.  given the rise of avatars and live global gaming, we have become the machines that are taking from the minds of these interactive games and social media.

we were created by God to interact with one another and our own minds.  To take time daily to reflect about ourselves, our relationships and situations, etc.  We were not meant to take time daily to interact with this digital environment and atmosphere which we have created, i.e. sims, World of Warcraft and the like.  

Machines are that which do something routine and predictable because that's all they can do.  Any human being can be considered a machine if their very lives, their everyday living falls into this definition.  The mind gets stronger just as a muscle if it is shown change and challenge.  That's how God created us so as to be able to survive, learn, and grow, just as the trees in which He created.  When man negates his nature, he'll either become something else or become something nature unintended.  

Ever wonder why those who live in villages or those who camp and hike or seek to be with nature find value in the small things and the beauty that lies in the smallest of details in nature?  my guess is bc they've found just how beautiful reality is rather than the digital world---alot can be said about the hobbies one expierences.  In the same way, so too does one's posture.

When you finally start thinking and reflecting for yourself, you'll start to undue the machine-like-thinking i.e. rountineness of your life and you may start to enjoy thinking.

the fallacies of new-age communications

after hearing of a few relationships that have been developed from students of different universities, i've realized a few new communication facets that only exist to my generation now.

1.  Texting as a means to converse RATHER THAN vocally conversing.

the issue/ problem with this:  the fact that, as we've learned in class, that texting, just like internet dating, can be too deceptive due to its ability to mask who we really are.  take for instance this example of a conversation i had with a girl friend of mine,

girl: ya, he's funny (odd) bc he always says the sweetest things in his texts to me when we converse everynight via texting, but i don't like it nor trust it anymore bc he never says those genuine, sweet things when we're together, face-to-face.  So it makes me feel like he's just able to say it through text and is actually afraid to be that genuine with me.

This type of conversing seperates the men from the boys, bc any boy can be sweet through a text because it acts as a masking mechanism, but a man will tell the girl how he feels to her face, let alone open the door for her (if he has any manners at all).

2.  Internet dating as a means to converse RATHER THAN actually go on a date

issue/problem:  as we see in the reading, that to compensate for lack of non-verbal communication, tone, pitch, laughter, gaze, gesturing, etc--all the things that make going on a date or out to coffee fun---these things are all lost when online with another, unless ofcourse, you've interacted with this person face-to-face.  But, due to this loss of "intimacy" with the other person, our reading states that people have to be more warm and inviting through their words than would otherwise need be.  This too, creates a type of masking, or misrepresentation of the truth of whom the sender and receiver.

3.  Avatars--simple problem = dumb. simple solution = get a life and go be with REAL PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE.

cell phones

what is your cell phone etiquette? have you given yourself one, or even thought about it?  have you given yourself social rules as to when to answer a call or not when you're with your friends or on a date?

how annoying when in conversation with a friend and they answer a call in the middle of listening to a story or opinion you have about something and they cut you off.  how many people can actually recall where they were in the midst of that story?!! i cant.  i feel it's rude to cut someone off.  

we have answering machines for a reason and eye-contact for a reason.  it's just a matter of knowing when to use them and not getting them flip-flopped.  

the brain and your mind

This is an argument taken from the book titled, "The Brain has a mind of its own," by Richard Restak, M.D. copyright 1991.

Richard Restak has written many best-selling books on neuroscience and he himself is a Neurologist.

on page 12, he states this insight, "Because the brain is a physical structure, it exists in space; but the mind operates in time alone."

reflecting on this, I marvelled at this understanding--that who we are is not defined by the physical matter of our brain, but by the operation and changes it undergoes within our lifetime which gives us our personality.  Then i thought, isn't this understanding the same as that of a computer or the network we call the Internet?  The computer is the physical matter and the Web is that always changing and connected network which works in time rather than physical space.  

another book I'm reading, "The Big Brain" goes into depth about the key similarities and differences between the brain and the computer--how they both evolved and how the brain easily trumps the computer in many ways given the brains structure, architecture and means of communicating within itself between compartments which enable us to hear, see, feel, taste, smell, think, react, and remember all while making dinner or going grocery shopping or driving and how complex these tasks are inside our brain while we don't think a second thing about the means of communication it takes.  

our bodies are the space with which our nervous system communicates, just as the Web is the space to which many computers and people can talk to one another.

the chains beneath our feet

alarm clock. yawn. barrage of to-do's for the day. songs from the bars last night continuing to repeat in your head.  laying aside your Xbox 360, PSP and your Wii. it used to be you'd give a kid a swiss army knife to go widdle things in the backyard when he was 10 yrs old.  now its a cell phone or his own blogspot or video games or a TV for his room.

(sigh) when's the last time a kid actually cut his own hand playing with his new knife rather than cut up some zombie in some horror fest videogame or a thug in GTA??  when's the last time a kid went running in the grass to feel the grass beneath his feet and the wind wipping against his face?  when's the last time a college kid did it?  i think the answers would be very similar given our highly tech'd out new generation of kids and college students.  

Socrates and Plato argued that writing was the decay of society because it dumbed the mind's ability to remember and therefore be able to recreate a scene for another orally.  The oral tradition of handing down heritage and eloquance were once well valued in the Roman society and in many societies for that matter.  But now, we see writing as eloquant in relation to those who play videogames or watch TV.  We see the latter as the decay of our society and its ability to think for itself.

so what are these chains that lay beneath our feet?  it's our addiction to technology--Xbox live, avatars, second-life, etc.  but again, it's not the technology that's at fault, it's our addiction to it--our overuse of it, like the overuse of an illegal drug.  

what's the summery of this arguement? just go out for a walk or run whenever you get the feeling of wanting to play videogames.