Get in touch with your inner computer geek, next weekend at the Kelvin Grove QUT Creative Industries Precinct where technology will be celebrated at the Next Level Festival. It’s a free program of events happening from the Friday 26th to Sunday 28th October, with music and multi-media performances, movies, stalls, exhibitions, competitions and arcade games. We use technology and computers so much we hardly even think about how it filters into our lives and urban environments. A keynote session is “Stranger than Fiction - The real time city” which will explore how sensors and hand-held electronics are changing the way we describe, understand and design cities and the impact of technology has on the physical structure and spaces of our cities. This session highlights the very interesting and innovative work of the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
It would have been rather interesting if Next Level also talked about creative solutions to address the often overlooked issue of e-waste that comes with the advancement of technology. Funnily enough, that very same weekend, Apple are doing their bit to address this by offering free computer recycling around Brisbane. Looks like Apple might have listened to Greenpeace who have been asking them to “Green My Apple”.
I’m giving kudos to the “Our Future, Our Say” series of articles and forums. This collaboration between The Courier-Mail, Channel Nine, Griffith University’s Urban Research Program, and the Brisbane Institute, is exploring the complex urban and regional issues which whether you realise it or not, are shaping how you live, work, move, play and interact. The series says that urban planning is a worthy conversation that our community ought to be having, and I can’t agree with that enough! The next forum in the series is happening this weekend - Sunday 26 August, 10am, Griffith Conservatory at Southbank. It’s about sustainability and the speakers are Peter Garrett and Malcolm Turnbull. Continue reading ‘our future, your say’
Caution to reader: this post is peppered with wanton well-worn phrases. Do you suffer with the philosophy of what I have termed the “I’ll just” syndrome? It’s a way of thinking which I (unfortunately) sometimes subscribe to: I’ll just save enough money and then book that trip to India. I’ll just finish uni and then I’ll focus on my career. I’ll just lose a few kilos before I call that handsome boy. Its the syndrome when you think that very soon, in the near future, life will be just that little closer to perfect or a little closer to complete. But have you noticed that this near future I speak of never arrives like it promised? *Never leave for tomorrow what you can do today* It’s funny how sometimes you realise that ‘real life’ is on your doorstep. Today, we are taught that we can have it all. Being on the cusp of Gen Y and Gen X, I subscribe to the well-known Gen Y trait of expecting to be getting gold stars in all areas of life, NOW. Instant gratification, please. As a result, I think I can have a progressing career, earn big bucks, have an enviable social life, huge network of friends, lots of family time, achieve HDs in higher education and regular sabbaticals to Spain. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Thank you very much. But this is teamed with a constant pursuit of that something more; something else. It’s so easy to forget to enjoy it NOW. This is life. Life is now. Right now. *Life is not a dress-rehearsal* I’d hazard a guess that for most of us, life is pretty perfect right now. Soak it up. Squeeze a little bit more out of the day. Stay up later. Get up earlier. Don’t wait for something to complete you. Enjoy it NOW. *It’s the journey, not the destination*
I feel a little under the weather today. I think I’ve been experiencing what some environmentalists such as John Seed and Joanna Macy term ‘despair’. It’s a lonely, cementing feeling of helplessness and inaction in response to the current ‘climate’ of local, national and international events. In search of an offer of knowledge-a slice of my soul, a question from the grey that matters to share with you, I opened up a book I’ve been reading called Massive Change. It proposes that a new breed of designer is needed, one who is in the words of R. Buckminster Fuller, a “synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist”. Continue reading ‘buckminster fuller.’
Tell me a story son. Of when you raised people from their knees. Of when you saved 40 litres of water a day and grew a hundred thousand trees. Tell me a story son. Of how the world changed its ways. How they went from money hugging lost souls to forgetting the price of gold and sharing wealth with everyone. Tell me a story son. Of how we left the coal in the ground. How we used the sun’s light to power our buildings and the wind to travel over the land.
Continue reading ‘tell me a story son.’
