A craving for simplicity

With so much information to digest and internet services to consume, comes a thirst for simplification. No wonder as I walked down the usual isle at the bookstore of new techie books I craved for that tiny and simple little book, redundantly called The Laws of Simplicity.
About John Maeda, he is a professor at MIT's Media Lab and has explored both Computer Science and Artistic Design.
Off to the point, here are some of the rules Maeda brings up (I will gradually expand on all of them):

1. Reduce: Achieve simplicty through "thoughtful" reduction. There is a fine balance between how complex a system needs to be and how simple can we make it, so the idea is to remove functionality until we reach the complex barrier. A most interesting observation is that about "shrinking" objects. Maeda points out that we are much more forgiving about the functioning of a smaller object than we are of a bigger one, we are surprised when a small object displays a lot of functionalitis and feautures and praise it if so, however, if it doesnt then it is expected, after all it is a small object. Small and fragile technology is "cute", which makes me think that really, we pet our gadgets like we would a living thing.
After extraneous functionality has been removed, but we are still left with some complex functionality, an alternative is to hide it, so that "complexity becomes a switch that the owner can turn on or off."
2. The one: Simplicity is about substracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
3. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is not peripheral.
4. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
5. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

In my world we are steady, successful, adventurous, wannabe intellectuals, rational and opportunistic. In my world we value goals, over achieving, and careers that lead somewhere, oh yes, and the 'somewhere' is already planned. Because we believe life can be planned to a great extent, its many steps can be contained and imagined within our minds. We think we are, we know we are, elite.

In her world there are short term goals, very short term, but ones with the longest term consequences, like marriage for example. There is no hard plan for life, but there is a soft one, to stay close to home, to have a home, to have girls night out with friends from highschool. They marry at 25, 26, they happily expect a child the next year, and maybe another one next.

Verbifying the web

Do you ever wonder how the scarcity of simple available domain names has affected this wave of Web 2.0 technologies? Think about it, years before you could name you site something like NetSolutions.com, BlogSpot, PhotoAlbum.com...etc. But now we have to be much more creative and resort to strange names like Zazzle, Twitter, even Facebook is too much of a straightforward name for today's reality. These newest names besides being far from ordinary words also have a young and playful sound, they are meant to be catchy and easily "verbified" because in the end, they must stick to people's mind in some other way.
Perhaps we as users are in such a need to deal with our busy web lives that when a site offers us a simpler way to communicate (alas making their name easily verbified) we appreciate it.

Mi bella Cuba

Recuerdo la calidez de las calles de la Habana vieja cuando pretendia ser turista en mi propio pais, pero era inutil. La brisa marina me reconocia como hija y despeinaba mis cabellos al caminar sobre las geometricas aguas de adoquines. Buscaba mis raices, respirando la humedad, jugando a adivinar la proxima flor que creceria entre las grietas de los ladrillos de la vieja catedral. Esa era yo. Un duende perdido entre paredes y brisas de otros tiempos. Muchas cosas me preguntaba; por que las mujeres vestian como en tiempos de la colonizacion para ser retratadas con turistas? Extranarian el tiempo de exclavitud?

Es una revolucion de artistas sin firma lo que se observa si uno se aventura entre los artesanos de la Catedral. Junto a aromas a madera fresca, vez rostros humildes que acompanan esculpturas con suaves razgos africanos, tal como tallados con los dedos de Dios. Estos rostros de ingenieros, pintores, arquitectos y desocupados tal parece que no saben de su ingenio. Insisten en vender sus creaciones a los visitantes que entre naravillas no saben que escoger. Muchos se han convertido en artistas porque necesitan dinero. Sus manos que antes ojeaban paginas de fisica mecanica ahora entretienen a turistas con artesanias casuales. Sin duda los ideales del ser humano cambian cuando las necesidades basicas no estan satisfechas, cuando sus estomagos crujen como bestias. Despues de sonar con carreras exitosas, un dia despertarorn con la simple necesidad de comer, y vestirse. solo eso y nada mas. Se vieron obligados a descubrir un sin fin de creativas manas en ellos, porque sus estomagos crujian como bestias. Realmente somos criaturas simples.

Todos traen sus tesoros al gran bazar de la plaza de la Catedral para ganarse unos centavos. Algunos traen los libros de sus heroes de infancia, libros sobre el Che y Marti que ya no le dan valor. A otros les bastan sus dotes musicales para impresionar al publico y con guitarras ardientes le cantan a la belleza de su tierra y mujeres.

Al doblar la esquina de la Catedral de La Habana se encuentra la Basilica Menor de un tal santo “Francisco de Asis”, una de mis memorias inolvidables. Se esconde de la multitud y sirve re refugio a pensadores solitarios. Recuerdo que al entrar, hasta mis pies se extendian figuras cubistas coloreadas por los vitrales de fondo y casi alcanzaba a ver las siluetas de monjes disfrutando la paz del silencio entre el viejo claustro de columnas toscanas. En alguna enciclopedia lei que una mantra sutil de cantos religiosos se hospedaba en este lugar, y su eco, atrapado por las columnas ingeniosamante disenadas, permanecia prisionero.

Hoy muchos ya no piensan en historia, arte ni ciencia, pero el aliento a Habana vieja les alimenta el alma. Ahora solo se sientan por doquier a hablar de temas prohibidos, o caminan por las calles roidas con un ojo en el suelo y otro en en cielo, temiendo que un vecino los bautice con agua infernal desde algun balcon. En cambio, los ninos, ajenos a las preocupaciones humanas, corretean por la callejuelas tropezando con los transeuntes y vendiendo Habanos a los turistas como les encargo su madre.

No es extrano tropezar con un historiador del arte que sufre en ricones la prostitucion de la vieja Habana, o un loco pregonando insensateces. Como explicar que en los balocones de marmol donde antes se sentaban senoras de tercipelo ahora se sientan viejas desdentadas? “Ironia”, se llama esta pagina de la hisotria. No les son utiles los muebles de caoba y cedro or el piso de marmol negro a estas senoras que anoran comida. Con cucharas de plata beben una sopa de agua azucarada en la manana y agua salada en la noche.

Es esta cultura descavellada la que le da la magia a la Habana, donde cada persona es un brochazo de un impresionista llamado Orate. “Gris, que te quiero Gris”, diria Garcia Lorca si visitara mi pais. Siempre te recordare.

Yet another trip to beautiful San Francisco. This was bonding time with my IBM peers while on a nice floating boat on the bay, I think it had wings too : ) Mmmm..nothing like that the fish smell all around and the breeze uplifting you!

San Francisco Boating

Blossoming Selves

Lately I have come across roses in my path, or perhaps they have always been there and I am just noticing now. They are of as many colors as one can imagine, serene yellows, explosive reds, insightful whites. You witness life as you walk by them, the essence of being without words.
My roses are people I know, and others I dont. They blossom around me and I feel Spring unfolding in the most mysterious yet obvious ways. They have fallen in love for a first, second, or third times. Their tears of happiness run down their souls just like dew embraces petals in the mornings, a beauty that cant be contained and explodes to reach every passerby. We are all contagious blossoming selves.

The Bits and Pieces of the World

How often we go looking for the world and we think we find it in statues from Bombai, or in an African wood figure of features that smell like a foreign land, or earings of metals that are between the cheap and the unknown, or in the generally miscellaneous artifacts we believe are handcrafted. I have always wondered why we pay such high prices for the unknown, for the exotic. If you have ever walked into one of these stores you will notice that prices are far from cheap.
It is like the essence of people and civilizations is contained within these objects and we just want to absorb it, like you would a scent, and let it fill you of life from other cultures. So we buy these things and take them home, with hopes that it will remind us of how interesting the world is, and most of all, reminds us of our desire to explore, desire that has been perhaps buried along with other dreams. But how often it is that we buy these objects, and they just sit on our shelves, or even our ears, inanimate, they deceivingly showed life of their own, but they are just objects after all. The hands that made them, the cultures that nurtured them, sit somewhere across the globe waiting to be discovered.
Today while wandering the streets of San Francisco I just happened to enter one of those stores.