You can poke around on the internetz for hours, reminiscing over old Talking Heads videos and feeling aghast at various types of excess that can be purchased by people with, as my mom used to say, “more money than sense.”
If you do that, though, you’ll get to this point where you might long for the days when the closest analog was flipping through magazines and mail-order catalogues and if that happens, you’ll realize it’s time to create some content, or at take a walk around the neighborhood.
There’s only so much you can take in before you have to expel; it’s like breathing in and breathing out or other forms of evacuation, equally common if not quite so polite.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors no doubt faced a similar challenge: they could spend many an idle hour examining leaves and tubers or they could rise up from their haunches and head out to slay a mastodon. While the former may have provided them with plenty of fodder for cave-paintings and ceremonial dances, the latter would have been required, eventually, for their protein needs to be met.
Today, we experience something akin when we’re compelled, at length, to stop diddling about and head to the supermarket for dinner items: one’s hunger, however slight, will never be satisfied simply by perusing recipes online.
All of this seems to suggest that human beings are hard-wired to make some sort of contribution to the world at-large; it’s not enough for us, in spite of what we’re told by Hollywood and the wireless technology industry, to simply observe the world; we also want to make it in some way.
Of course, it’s important to be skeptical about essentialist appeals to human nature; just because we’re genetically disposed to desire something doesn’t mean we ought to embrace it. Case in point: sea salt and vinegar potato chips.
Which reminds me: while the internetz will be here perpetually, the supermarket closes in an hour.
If you do that, though, you’ll get to this point where you might long for the days when the closest analog was flipping through magazines and mail-order catalogues and if that happens, you’ll realize it’s time to create some content, or at take a walk around the neighborhood.
There’s only so much you can take in before you have to expel; it’s like breathing in and breathing out or other forms of evacuation, equally common if not quite so polite.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors no doubt faced a similar challenge: they could spend many an idle hour examining leaves and tubers or they could rise up from their haunches and head out to slay a mastodon. While the former may have provided them with plenty of fodder for cave-paintings and ceremonial dances, the latter would have been required, eventually, for their protein needs to be met.
Today, we experience something akin when we’re compelled, at length, to stop diddling about and head to the supermarket for dinner items: one’s hunger, however slight, will never be satisfied simply by perusing recipes online.
All of this seems to suggest that human beings are hard-wired to make some sort of contribution to the world at-large; it’s not enough for us, in spite of what we’re told by Hollywood and the wireless technology industry, to simply observe the world; we also want to make it in some way.
Of course, it’s important to be skeptical about essentialist appeals to human nature; just because we’re genetically disposed to desire something doesn’t mean we ought to embrace it. Case in point: sea salt and vinegar potato chips.
Which reminds me: while the internetz will be here perpetually, the supermarket closes in an hour.
"Makerspaces" is now an official Library of Congress Subject Heading
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