I discovered Zach Johnsen’s Acid In The Ice Cream series while creating an archive of Color’s contributors for their website. I haven’t enjoyed an illustrator’s work this much in a while, so I thought I would spread some love.
Archive for March, 2009
Acid In The Ice Cream
March 31, 2009Exponential Times
March 30, 2009
Considering how the generation of people that read this blog get their information, and the fact that this video has over 1.2 million views, I’m going to assume some of you have already seen this, but I want to touch on one of its many points.
“We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.”
The people teaching today’s students cannot possibly prepare them for these exponential times because they are not naturals at adapting to the evolution of technology. The kids they’re teaching are. When it comes to technology these kids don’t need teaching because they are able to grasp most of it on their own. This is the case to a lesser extent with my over-estimated generation, but is definitely the case starting with the generation below mine.
Until, at the absolute earliest, my digital-from-a-formative-age generation is teaching these digital-native kids, students will outpace their teachers when it comes to technology. It is a distinct possibility that the teachers will never catch up again, because the sheer amount and pace of information is simply unteachable.
Yes we are preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet, where they will use technologies that don’t exist yet, to solve problems we don’t even know are problems. But that’s assuming these children need to be taught everything. Now. Considering the information we are giving them, and the example we are setting, my questions is this:
What will our children teach themselves?
All Night Long
March 29, 2009
When he conceived this shirt, East Vancouver’s own Calen Knauf felt what I was trying to say more than a year ago.
Something Other Than People You Feel
March 29, 2009
I was shaken up when I heard Shane McConkey was dead. I wasn’t expecting the knot in my stomach. I wasn’t expecting my first thoughts to be of his young daughter. I had never known him outside of a chance encounter and didn’t expect to be emotionally affected on that level. As the news started to spread, I received the same shaken reactions from skiers who had never met him. I wondered why before realizing that, as skiers we are all connected to Shane, and the debt we owe him cannot be understated. I’m not here to write his obituary, but to give him more than a simple R.I.P. by acknowledging the personal debt I owe him for revolutionizing my life.
It is indisputable that Shane did more to revolutionize ski design than anyone in the history of the sport. Every time I step into a pair of skis, every time I go skiing, every time I have the best day of my life, it’s a direct result of Shane’s impact on how skis are built.
I’m not going to lie to you and tell you Shane was my childhood hero because he wasn’t. I’m too young, and the skiers I consider heroes were the ones that looked up to him. But to me Shane and his relentless positivity always embodied what skiing should be. Fun. Fresh. Exciting. He lived skiing, and skiing lived through him.
What I admire most in Shane is that he was the absolute best at being himself. He lived life doing what he loved, he was the best he could be at it, and it was just a coincidence that his best was better than almost anyone else. People who are the best at something while being themselves are almost always doing something that has never been done before. They are the people that change everything. Freeskiing has lost some great humans, but none who have contributed as much to the sport as Shane did, and it will be impossible to forget him.
Walking The Wire
March 24, 2009
There are certain stages in my life when I’m forced to spend more time away from the Internet than usual. Often it’s just a couple of days, or maybe a week, and a few times a year it’s longer than that.
Regardless of how much time I’m spending on the computer, I get the recurring feeling that the pace of most stuff on the Internet is simply too fast for my heart. I think I do a good job of managing it effectively, but that doesn’t make managing it any less impossible.
I don’t find the amount of information overwhelming (more of problem with print media) but I do find its pace infinitely demanding. Keeping up with the constant flood of cool stuff is tough. I could ignore most of it, and I recognize that I don’t miss what I don’t know about, but I also have to ask myself what I am poorer without.
I’m often forced to consider at what point looking through all the cool stuff becomes a chore, and what the stuff I’m spending time with is really worth. Even the stuff that I’m certain I would be poorer without comes at me with such relentless speed that I simply can’t keep up unless I spend time with it every single day.
At what point does the Internet start taking away from the richness of your life? How much of your life is best spent enriching yourself through the Internet? Where is that fine line? How do you find that balance which is different for every person? I’m still looking for answers, but the one thing I do know is that something as amazing as the Internet should never become a chore.
