I believe in prototypes and silly experiments. I have built my career on prototypes and silly experiments. I believe that through experimentation and tinkering we think and refine our ideas - it’s like sketches before we are ready to paint our masterpieces. I have been tinkering by attending maker fairs and doing Arduino tutorials after work and always loved watching the comic, yet endearing videos made by the ‘Queen of Shitty Robots’. Yet, I was not surprised by the Wired piece on how she moved on on bigger projects, since eventually we stop tinkering and go build things.
The opposite of silly prototypes are megaprojects - megaprojects are the humongous projects that can only be achieved by a large group of people through synchronized collaboration. These projects take time, a lot of time. They also take resources. Probably the most prominent mega-projects are cathedrals. Cathedrals take centuries to complete and rarely finished. Here is a piece by Nicolas Kemper’s piece on how cathedrals function as megaprojects . The process of their construction highlights R&D efforts, project management and put into perspective what it means “long-time”, which nicely contrasts with contemporary short-tempered world of ‘fast-everything’.
Cathedral in New York - January 2020
Cathedral in Barcelona - November 2019
Amazon for books? The new website Bookshop - Bookshop claims that is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support independent bookstores and give back to the book community. While I still enjoy and do my shopping in physical bookstores, I am going to give this website a shot for obscure books that rarely carried on the main shelves.