Jon Mitchell

Spirit animal (at WeWork SOMA)

Now I remember

“Its leaves are fragrant.”

“What’s that?”

“Its leaves are fragrant!”

“Oh, yeah. They are, sort of. But I’m afraid it’s sort of… had its life span. Its flowers are all dried up.”

First neighbor laughs a little nervously.

“It’s used to warmer climates.”

Gamification

One-man GarageBand demo of a tune Kirk Benttinen and I wrote in the middle of the night.

Music

Breakfast

The art of survival

Current antelope status

literaryreference:

You know how it is, right, ladies? You know a guy for a while. You hang out with him. You do fun things with him—play video games, watch movies, go hiking, go to concerts. You invite him to your parties. You listen to his problems. You do all this because you think he wants to be your friend.

But…

I LOL’d with force.

I made this. :)

Stories about the future we’re making and what it’s doing to us. A cosmos journalism experiment by Jon Mitchell.

I did another story-for-octopus trade. I put this one on my big website because it was a trade with Sloane, so I felt like I had to take it super-seriously like a real ártístêê.

I agree with my neighbors.

Nope.

dbreunig:

“Hi Robert? This is Google. Can we chat for a sec? It’s just that we spent a lot of time and effort positioning Glass so it’s friendly, approachable, and, well, OK for normal people… You’re kind ruining all of that.”

Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew. Ew. Ew ew.

I had a teeny little Buddha on my desk, but it wasn’t working. I wasn’t noticing it. So I just got my biggest Buddha from atop the bookshelf in the living room to put here instead. Now I’ll be reminded constantly.

But it’s so strange for me to be so drawn to a religious symbol, particularly one depicting a human. I had my Jewish phases, but even then, those symbols never mattered to me as much as the Buddha. It has always mattered, even before I admitted I was a Buddhist with a capital B. Why does it make me so uncomfortable intellectually to have an idol on my desk when it feels so proper emotionally?

I guess I relate to it as a form of technology, just like the computers next to it. As Horace Dediu would say, I have a job to be done, and I’ve hired the Buddha to do it. It’s the job of reminding me to be mindful of what I’m doing. If an object installed for that purpose doesn’t meet the definition of technology, I don’t know what does.

That doesn’t seem like a particularly religious motivation, though.