You’ve held your breath for almost a minute. It’s time to breathe. You stayed still at the bottom of the pool to avoid movement. It was about time when you were finally able to fill your lungs with beautiful, tasty air.
That’s my feeling this week. I presented at a conference last week, and it felt like I’d been holding my breath. I slept a lot the following weekend, and feel like I’m seeing things in a different light this week. Everything is lighter.
That’s the time my brain goes for deep whys, and this why is “Computing, Learning, Designing, Researching”. Why write here and on mikrobloggeriet.no? To compute, to learn, to design and to research. Why make Munit and present on Macroexpand 2025 Noj? To compute, to learn, to design and to research.
For me, this is creativity!
| computation | the essence of digital tool-building |
| learning | increase your capabilities |
| designing | postition your creations in the world with care |
| researching | aim to create and explain new knowledge |
The modern web is a fantastic tool to compute, learn, design and research. Your web-powered computations can immediately reach the whole world. You can learn from others. You can share with care. You can work out things you don’t quite yet know, and when the stars align, write that understanding down.
I made a point early on that play.teod.eu was a place of exploration. Now, I feel like everything is just exploration. There’s so much stuff! And the things are all different in nature. If I were to start over, I think categorizing in terms of computing, learning, designing and reseraching would be helpful.
To me, computing, learning, designing and researching feels like play. If we can play seriously with one of those pillars, I can find some motivation. But we have to slow down the pace. No pushing to finish everything quickly. That kills the fun for me the same way rushing through Borderlands without paying attention killed the fun for me (in Serial Focus).
Slowly enough to enjoy the scenery, feel the grass and trigger adrenaline instead of cortisol. We want “I got on the roller coaster!” or “I jumped from high up!”-fun, not the pain of being dragged into something we cannot know.
The bigger the group, the harder this is. How do we make the experience nice for everyone?
I don’t have an answer on how to do this, but I’m hoping this text can be a start.