The world is a built environment
Dan Sinker uses this blog post to discuss US politics and the systematic dismantling of important infrastructure. But I’m interested in the wider framing of understanding that you can take things apart, literally and figuratively. As Steve Jobs said, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.
Most everything I know, I know because I took something apart.
I mean that literally: I’ve cut and I’ve unscrewed and I’ve pried and I’ve desoldered to get inside electronics and appliances. And I mean it figuratively: I read the source code for web pages to build my own, I’ve deconstructed writing to make myself better at it, I’ve mapped entire audio stories with pen and paper to understand how to assemble them myself.
If I want to really understand something, I have to understand all the pieces that went into making it come together.
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Everything can be taken apart, and every step of the process is an opportunity to learn.
The world is a built environment, and I think understanding how it was built is key to being able to truly live in it.
Source: Dan Sinker
Image: KAT