Mark's Myth
My_Ideapod March 2014 :: March 2019
Seems like the perfect time to add to my #whoswho since its been five years to the month since Ideapod launched in beta and I fell through the front door. For the first year, every month I would post an epilog to that month’s ideas. It’s time for an update to my idea journal, a five year milestone… both the epilogue to yesteryear and the prologue to what may come next.
As time and circumstance would have it, the ongoing conversations have been reignited with Erik Adigard adding more fuel to the fire of this “never ending idea” reflecting upon how I feel about it all at this very moment in time. I’ll let my response to his recent email serve this purpose…
Hello again Erik,
Its great to reconnect face to face and always a journey when we do.
Humm, I’m not really sure of how I am embracing all of this, specially now that this experiment for The New Story pod has been seeded. But thanks for asking.
Ok I’m going to let go, jump into the flow and see where this babbling brook leads…
Once again we stand at the edge of history peering out over the horizon.
First there is this feeling as if I have come out from under a rock over this last year to try and discover the various collaboration platforms and multitude of websites who have communities that are doing wonderful things to hopefully better the conditions of life on earth…or how about the plethora who claim to know the “truth” and what ails us.
It just so happens I had fallen into Ideapod beta five years ago when it was just coming out of incubation, befriended the founder who has been listening to me ramble on for years and afforded the opportunity to play around and hack their platform, creating a gallery of ideas and milestones along the way.
Do I think it is the end all or the “perfect” platform… not sure there is such a thing. Not sure I’ve got the patience to still wait for Prince Charming Platform to come along. Maybe it doesn’t even exist and that is why Tim Berners-Lee is working on a new version of the interweb.
It seems obvious there are a lot of caring smart people trying to build something of value on the web. I guess its just a matter of who’s definition of value we are talking about.
Maybe its all heading in the wrong direction and has been co-opted by the autonomic perpetual self-propelling notions of progress.
We discussed this in our recorded conversation a few years ago in which we picked up on our ideas from 1980 when we first met focusing on the scenes from the last fairy tale playing out before us.
I just don’t know. But it does feel in my guts like something is still out of balance, even more off kilter than before. Maybe its just the evolving cacophony of complexity ringing in my ears.
I actually do think many of these websites with simple threads, text and memes piled up onto each other is not the best thing, cumbersome, too much noise and not enough signal and maybe I am just part of the problem.
If we have to write a manual to be able to communicate well…maybe we’re just not there, yet.
As you have said, maybe we are speaking the wrong language, paying attention to the wrong signals and are completely missing the point. Look at the bible and the dictionary, we try so hard to find or create the commonalities yet still need to bridge the misunderstandings we make along the way with our symbols, words and narratives.
Fortunately there is something that has been claimed as sacred, that gives space to creativity, to an open-mindedness, something to confuse and confound us…art from deep within.
I don’t believe our brains work linearly, nor are they machines or computers yet we try to structure and manage thought that way and may be causing irreversible harm to the commons of mind …hence, polluting the noosphere.
Maybe we are already too mired in our recent old story and might be missing the point of the ancient new story.
This may well be the challenge of our times… being stuck in the simple notion of duality and polarity.
Oh now there I go again with that electron and proton thing, that electing between the pro and the con thing, that adding consciousness to the mix thing. That sciencemythic metaphor thing.
Every other moment I question WTF am I doing this for. Why. For who. What’s the point. Who cares.
Sometimes I feel as if all of these thoughts are just channeling through me and not absolutely of me but more of we.
Shhhh… don’t tell anyone this or about my #omnidirectional time-travel as they’ll soon be attaching the electrodes and quieting my brain with that constant drone of a current to wake me into a somnambulant existence so many seem comfortable with.
These thoughts ricochet between notions of grandeur and just wanting to forget about it all and go for a very long walk with no need for electricity. To take in every sunset as if its the last, soothing that internal synaptic electrical discharge lighting up my brain.
But really it may just boil down to listening more closely to nature, and nurturing trusted friendships.
Like with Justin for not giving up on Ideapod when his ideals were battered and nearly broken. Or with Stacy who invested in Ideapod which helped to get them through the hard times and provides me with a #senseof place for my mind. And Deborah who listens to my nonsense 24/7 and still sleeps next to me.
And for you who keeps his third eye on the good fight to keep on questioning, designing, mentoring and doing. And with all of those beautiful beings I just met at Esalen who sense a more beautiful world is possible.
And of course, for my daughters who believe in me with the pure deep connective tissue of love.
Honestly, maybe I just am full of it and simply need a place to get my thoughts out of my head to hopefully quiet the commotion in there. Will anyone actually show up and dance together. Dunno.
But at least I am getting this stuff out and have been re-inspired after all of these years to stir up my brain that had been dying slowly from a thousand paper cuts.
Am I just a broken record with nothing but a simple silly game of #wordplay trying too hard. Dunno. Does it matter that I am heard. Or would rather think of myself as not being part of the herd. Maybe that’s it. I just shouldn’t care. Not give up, but lower and manage my expectations. I’m not sure that’s possible. For some deep seated reason I believe in us, all of us.
Homoevolutis has entered my thoughts through temps immémorial telling me, “we can do this, we are doing this!”
This is the noise in my head.
These are the #2birds who visit me more of late and seem to whisper in my ear…
Don’t stop, sit quietly.
What a conundrum, a friggen’ double-bind if there ever was one.
Life.
This is our platform.
Time to improvise and make do with what we have while retooling in flight with the time we have left.
Time to get back to the alchemic cauldron before it all boils over.
Time for a new mythOS.
…time…
XO -mark
Mark’s Myth is an exploration into the synergies of ideas… riffs blending wordplay, story telling, technology and the arts weaving together a tapestry of synapses and milestones.
