Subtitled, “When in Rome, you feel like you’re designed by tinker.it”

Digging through a pile of old electronic parts, I found a packaged Arduino kit, which includes a solderless breadboard, USB cable, resistors, LEDs, switch and some connectors.

What are we grown-up kids learning and teaching?

I know all seven billion of us are connected so I wonder why a person wants to turn remote-controlled airplanes into flying bombs and break some of our good connections.

That’s not the way a well-educated hacker should think.

When someone says, “You’re the bomb,” they mean you have what it takes to make a positive influence on others, not that you’re literally a future newsworthy glob of spontaneous combustion.

Some days, I have to show how to be a positive influence by example.

Yes, an Arduino-based watch is interesting, and certainly scores points in the right social circles, but let’s think about the bigger picture, where engineering, design, social entrepreneurship and fun meet.

I’ve thought about setting up a photocell in the window of my study, connecting the cell to an Arduino and broadcasting to the Internet when enough sunlight is shining on the window to trigger the cell to “talk,” thus setting up a discussion about when solar power is appropriate for someone living in a cabin in the woods who’s connected to the electronic social network.

We’ll see.  Hacking is not just breaking in or breaking down maliciously – it’s also about cutting away the dead wood to find and nurture a living center seeking new ways to prosper.

Maybe I’ll program my solar cells to do something interesting, program an automatic birdfeeder that detects and scares away squirrels (thought: what’s the difference between birds and mammals? hmm…).  Maybe those high tech rednecks down the street can propose a useful idea for all the electronic junk in this room – CRTs, LCD monitors, old Macintosh computers, old laptops, electronic keyboards, model rockets, model airplanes, telescope, audio equipment, floppy disks, capacitors, resistors, transistors, Book of the Future, crystal ball,….

I’ve also got a storyline about our solar system to write, managing the location of killer asteroids/crashing satellites, my unhappy mother in-law, my wife’s stress load and an economy that’s naturally cooling down cyclically (the supercomputer shows that economies are like weather systems, with “seasons” that can’t be stopped, no matter how much we want to pump nutrients into trees (on which money grows) whose leaves are falling in autumn – winter is as normal in some parts of the world as air and water – are you part of an ant colony or a happy-go-lucky grasshopper?).

As 2011 draws closer to its end, I am closer to releasing the information some of you requested.  Think I’ll need the month of November to put it all together.

Well, there’s a call coming in on the secret network – the Committee wants my attention again.

Talk to you later.

Gotta see if the new Kindle lineup is worth prepurchase.  Most of them cost the same as a nice dinner date – which to choose?