Maeda's SIMPLICITY

45 Minutes Away

I had a great time at the MIT Media Lab, and now I am 45 minutes away in Providence, Rhode Island at the Rhode Island School of Design. You can read about what I'm doing on my new blog.

Thank you for visiting all these years,
John

Manga on the Web

My friend has launched an online service for publishing manga on the Web called MangaNovel.com. The site is unique for its ability to let you look at manga in different translations that are user-generated in a WIKI-like fashion. If you're curious about the future of manga, it's an interesting platform to checkout.

Reebok Emoretion

My new limited edition shoes for Reebok will launch March 31. I'm certainly getting emoretional about the launch date.

Haiku Remixed

Clifton Burt from Mississippi writes, "I just wanted to let you know that our design resource center recently used letters from a discarded sign to construct the haiku from your Simplicity blog post of April 21, 2007." Thanks Clifton!

E15 Continues

It seems that every time I see my guys working on E15, something new feature has been added or refined. The guys are currently setting up my machine to program in this new system. Staying in pace with the times is certainly a full time job.

Past and Future

Last week in Los Angeles I had the pleasure of seeing the past and also the future. Today I am in the present, I think.

Representation and Participation

In academia there are many committees as compared with industry. Committees enable the sharing of viewpoints in an open forum of members who are committed to the cause of the committee. If you turn that around however for someone who is not on the committee, from the outside it appears like a closed forum and makes those that are not inside the committee feel less committed to the cause of the committee.

A committee is usually formed of representatives for particular constituent groups. It is the responsibility of the representatives to provide representation, and more importantly to report back to their constituents how they did with enough details such that they feel properly represented but also they know how to become more committed, albeit indirectly.

Minutes are an important tool for sharing the issues discussed in a meeting, knowing who went or didn't go, and when shared openly provide for greater accountability. Starting the meeting with an agenda is important; sharing the agenda ahead of time for feedback is even more important. Finally, executing the meeting in the promised allotment of time is critical.

Even and fair participation is important. Otherwise the viewpoints become skewed and the outcome fails to benefit from the strength of diverse opinions. The leader needs to be careful to solicit opinions from quiet constituents, and at the same time ask for more vocal constituents to grant some extra room for the less vocally-gifted.

A committed core needs to connect with the uncommitted masses. Otherwise the committee has no meaning to exist. Communication in every which way is everything for the leader. Without communication, she is the leader of a team of one -- her own mind.

The Economist: Debating Simplicity

I am debating on The Economist this weekend on the proposition, "This house believes that if the promise of technology is to simplify our lives, it is failing." Initially I had wanted to be on the PRO side, but ended up on the CON side and had great fun with my submission. I found it important to support the advancement of technology, and am beginning to find a voice inside me that I had long forgotten. My upcoming move to RISD has given me much opportunity to think about how technology stands in opposition/harmony to the arts and design.

Y(our) RISD

I have begun to start a diary of my various emergent understandings of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). The URL is our.risd.edu and will give me a chance to reacquaint myself with ideas that focus primarily on the arts and design. Am trying to figure out where to move the other functions of this blog (which are mainly as a place to work out my feelings) as I begin my transition out of MIT. I probably need to have it in order to help me think straight. So that will come eventually.

The Silence of Creativity

2008-02-05 00:37:16.480 painter[2462] REQUESTING load file named: mydata_blank.xml with numberid 1 out of 9
>>>>############ DOING CLEANUP
>>>>#### cleaned
>>> TOTAL LAYERS IS 33
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> set time to zero
**** drawview clearframep = 0
########################################DOING COMMON

> Prepping fb mgr ...
> Done.
/Users/maeda/python/bezshape.py:146: DeprecationWarning: integer argument expected, got float
for i in range(ni):
0 1
412.112297299 42.8183057777
2 3
333.76680165 156.817400328
4 5
371.739947367 112.152049732
6 7
152.322836043 96.5593323427
connecting
>> data 0
>> xml
>> lengths
>> scanning id
>>>>>>>>>> IDNUM IS 277
>>> made it
>>> going ahead with (102, 7, 3)
************************** GOTTA FREE LOTS OF MEMORY SOMEDAY HERE ************
**** drawview clearframep = 0
########################################DOING COMMON
> Prepping fb mgr ...
>> Brushes cleaned.
> Done.
0 1
240.368698757 65.0427509257
2 3
72.7788784829 71.6847370451
...

I realize that in my 41st year of life, one thing remains the same: I still listen intently to the strange codes that emit from the computer during the debugging of any new work. Programming to me has never been something I've enjoyed -- I've been quite open about that. Sure, there was a time in my life when I teetered on enjoying the process of it all more than the finished work; and then I would quickly swing back to a preference of focusing on the outcome instead. I owe that thought to one of my mentors from long ago.

For me, it is maybe the process of simply thinking about something in a creative sense ... that gets me excited. Does it have to result in something? Yes. That seems odd really. Because if all I cared about being creative was just to do something creative, then I wouldn't need to get to a finished result. No. Getting to some endpoint seems to be the real enjoyment. It's not for others to recognize the fruits of your work; it's for yourself. The desire is to complete a thought. So then ... you can go on and find a new one to torment yourself with. The intellectual torment ... is ... fun? Hmmmm. Difficult to say. Perhaps it is a kind of acquired taste for an odd pleasure.

Gerry Sussman put this all succinctly for me the other day quite graciously. And my debt to MIT continues to grow ...