Maeda's SIMPLICITY

Green Clouds

No, it's not a satellite image from Google Maps. It's my windshield.

I have a thing for trees, given that it's probably the one thing I write here about the most. There is the house made of tree bark, the trip to Amazon, the cactus in LA, the anti-tree, and then there's the quiet tree sitting in the snow. My fascination with trees probably comes from my connection to writing computer codes, or "programs." Every computer program is essentially a tree. You begin with a starting point, and then you continually branch out into subprocedures. I "grow" trees daily on the computer. Most of them are gnarly little fellas that probably should be more classified as "bushes" than "trees." But I like to give them the benefit of the doubt.

A side-effect of the return of the spring season is one of my greatest nemeses: tree pollen. Clouds of green dust abound in my neighborhood and my dark-colored car acquires a completely American Pop light green tinge. Being one of the many people out there lucky to be born with the hayfever gene ... is it luck or is it just fate? ... I eagerly await the departure of this pleasant looking green powder that causes me to choke and bring my eyes to a painful teary squint. I wonder what the equivalent of pollen is in the digital world?

Media Lab PhD candidate Push Singh writes, "Allergies are due to an oversensitive immune system triggering an immune response to things it shouldn't. Maybe it's like when non-spam is identified as junk mail. But I'm not sure if there is any digital analogue to 'seasons' (an analogue to the blooming of Birch trees.) Does anything in the digital world happen once a year or on any regular schedule? Perhaps new versions of the Mac OS...." I love upgrading my OS as much as I love having hayfever.

Posted by maeda at May 12, 2005 05:24 PM