It’s a dream of mine to kinda live off the grid.  I say this is a dream, but really, it’s probably more about a vague goal and ideal.  Being a 21st century digital boy, I’d want some nearby cell towers and a satellite internet dish next to my solar panels and windmill powering my green house at the absolute outer edge of Amazon’s delivery capabilities.  And, as long as I had a crazy supply of ABS and a big enough RepStrap, I could make any freaking thing I wanted.  (Bruce Sterling’s article/short story on this point is an interesting read).

Part of the dream is about where I live and my lifestyle – it doesn’t say much about what I want to do.  I’d like to spend my time inventing and building cool thing and being clever.  :)  One of the most interesting things about my professional career is that it affords me the opportunity to be clever.  Perhaps it is due to a streak of narcissism or speaks to a need for attention, but damn I love seeing and doing clever things.

If you’ve seen Fight Club, you know Tyler Durden doesn’t think much of being clever.  I, on the other hand, think it’s cleverness that sets us apart from the animals.  At first we thought it was words or tools – but we’ve also found animals that use both (in their own way).  In the end, it probably comes down to being clever – using and sharing what you know, teaching others, and learning and thinking up new ways to do things.

There are a few times in my life when I recall seeing or learning something so clever, that I felt smarter for having experienced it.  I remember seeing a calculus T.A. point out a new way of looking at a problem which made all the difficult bits melt away.  The most recent was probably when I assembled my MakerBot.  I actually felt smarter for having assembled this machine – sometimes wondering at design decisions only to later realize the deeper purpose for this notch or that peg.