Live, Create, Learn
There is something within us that makes us want to learn. Our minds are curious as to what is beyond our existing knowledge. After reading the articles by Gershenfeld and Kahn, a relationship can be found between the two messages.
Gershenfeld describes the contemporary position of personal fabrication tools and the surprising impact that these tools have when made available to people from MIT students to villagers in the form of Fab Labs. When Gershenfeld titled his class, “How To Make (almost) Anything,� he had an overwhelming response of enthusiastic students willing to use their creativity to explore new ways of thinking. Gershenfeld noted about the students, “Their inspiration wasn’t professional; it was personal.� These intelligent kids were motivated to create things they had always wanted, but did not yet exist. The excitement about the student’s projects only grew as they progressed. Learning from their peers, students began mastering new capabilities. When equipped with the right tools, anything is possible. Gershenfeld’s hope is that Fab will inspire more people to start creating their own technological futures.
The link between these two articles is about having a desire for creativity. As Gershenfeld’s articles goes on, he stresses how an individual’s needs are fulfilled when the solution is personally designed. One of his students, Kelly, designed the ScreamBody. Kelly often felt the need to release her emotions but she was always in the most inconvenient places where screaming was deemed inappropriate. Her solution: creating something that directly catered to her needs.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~monster/screambody/
Shelly made an alarm clock that one had to physically wrestle in order for it to turn off. The result: one is fully awake by the time the noise is turned off! Inventions such as these were inspired by individuals who were driven to use their own creativity to fill a personalized void.
Louis Kahn’s article was about silence and light. Kahn commented that, “To the silence of humanity’s innate urge to create comes the suns life-supporting power, giving to silence the ability to act.� One quote that really resonated with me was this: “The beautiful in the material is transformed from wonder to knowing which in turn is transformed to the expression of beauty that lies in the desire to express.� There is something inside every human being that urges them to create and express something about them. In Gershenfeld’s article, people were expressing their creativity by creating something they felt necessary. In Kahn’s article, expression is defined in a sense of nature. “Man through his consciousness feels this record sparking his desire to learn that which Nature has given him and what choices he made to protect his desires and self-preservation in the Odyssey of his emergence.�
I would like to have faith with out question. I believe there is something deep inside each individual that begs them to express whether it be learning and discovering something new or creating a new invention or showing how they feel through artwork. Kahn said, “To me, when I see a plan I must see the plan as though it were a symphony…� The language of man is art; we must express our own uniqueness. “Tremendous discoveries of expression lie in such a great man, as it did in other great men.� Man has a natural desire to live, create and learn.