The Perfect Vessel for Reflection · 145 days ago

The other morning, in my rush to catch my ride for a day of Bogota sightseeing, I chose to leave my mobile and laptop behind. What the heck I thought. A day without the digital can’t hurt that bad. But as I ran down the stairs to the hotel lobby, a feeling as primitive as hunger pains raced through my body: “Must bring pen and paper”.

Maybe it’s the emptiness of paper that’s makes it more a state of mind than an object.

I went back.

— Sean

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Smile. · 205 days ago

I must never forget to pay attention to the small things…

...nature is always smiling.

— Sean

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Inspired. · 228 days ago

While eating lunch today I noticed myself in a trance, mesmerized by the leaves of an urban tree blowing in the wind.

Relaxation breathed through my fatigued body. For months now, I’ve been in a state of growing frustration over the complexity of my latest undertaking. Ideas have more or less stopped in my head. Each night I still dream. Occupied only with the same tasks I struggle with during the day. Day after day.

Openness, to me, means interchangeability, interlinkedness, fluidity, continuity. Nature is open. Nature can generate leaves with infinite variations blowing in the wind.

I’m beginning to feel inspired again. With a new dream; to mass produce something that is open. One simple idea reproduced in infinite interlinked variations. Like nature.

— Sean

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The First Thread. · 718 days ago

I honestly don’t have this planned out…I just have a simple idea to get started. Think of this place as a somewhat controlled environment. A comment starts a single thread. The topic of another thread will then be started from a comment within an existing thread. It’s the idea of collecting a group consciousness on a given topic. An attempt to create an endless well of inspiration — based on ideas, principles, philosophies, and even anomalies.

Here’s the first comment. From one of my heros:

“Technology, however important and however visible, will not be the most important feature of the transformation in education. Most important will be rethinking the role and function of schooling. It’s focus, its purpose, its values. The technology will still be significant, but primarily because it should force us to do new things rather than because it will enable us to do old things better.”
—Peter Drucker

I’ve started a project called OpenMoko. I like to describe OpenMoko as a movement to create a open platform that empowers people to personalize their phone, much like a computer, in any way they see fit.

One of my long term dreams is to help provide tools that will transform the way people learn. I am a self-proclaimed technologist. Since the mobile phone is the single piece of technology that I will carry whenever I go, naturally, this seemed to be the best place for me to start.

We chose to make the entire software stack open. From a control standpoint — the things corporations love — this borders on insanity. But I think by pushing these borders, we will let loose the possibility for immense innovation.

Innovation, in my opinion, is seldom found within the endless cubicles of a large corporation. Most commonly it manifests itself within the intense focus and concentration, that all individuals seem to have access to, when they stare at a single problem long enough.

Staying with a problem long after most would quit, is a luxury few companies can afford. Instead, I want to focus on the fundamentals — the framework — to use a more specific term. The include the following parts:

We believe that these are some of the key areas to solidify for innovation to form. And that this will benefit not just my company (FIC), but everyone who uses a mobile phone.

So here’s my question for you all. What can do we do — as a corporation and as a community — to help build better tools for learning? Or to use Drucker’s words again, how will an open source mobile phone, “force us to do new things”?. How can it help us all rethink “the role and function of schooling”?

— Sean

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