Why I write: Hope, Worry and Opportunity
Complex, Neglected, Impersonal and Challenging
I’ve been writing for a while, on two blogs technorabble and urabanorabble. It’s been a bit of an off and on affair, but I’ve never clearly stated why I write, or more specifically why I write about what I do.
I’ll work backwards there, and start on the why of the what, because I think that reveals more about me than the more general why. I tend to write about what I think are complex topics, and two interests rise to the top today, cities and global economic development. In a personal way, I’m drawn toward complex topics because they are challenging.
Another dimension is that I feel drawn toward topics that seem systematically probable to be neglected. That’s why I was involved in climate change activism for over a decade, leading local groups for Sierra Club. I wasn’t a typical environmentalist, motivated by a love for nature. I appreciate nature, but not with the same passion as the typical environmentalist. I’m more concerned about people, and the way that translated into climate change being the issue I spent my limited time on, was that (a) people depend heavily upon the environment, (b) was a complex system, where local thinking alone doesn’t get you to a complete solution.
My interest in cities partly stems from enjoying the experience of living in one, partly due to recognizing how useful urbanization is toward efficiency, and partly because they are complex systems with the purpose of both providing for people’s needs, but also with harnessing their great potential.
That brings us to global economic development. I’d call myself a humanist above all, and the perspective I’ve had is that there’s a lot of humans that get less opportunity than I think is possible. Opportunity means a lot of things, and I’ll save it for a future post to expand on that, but the most basic opportunity is to meet basic needs, to survive without pain, and so global poverty is very top of the list there. There’s different ways one might engage with that: one on one, or something similarly direct; through fundraising; through invention and innovation. I might do any of these at some point, but for the moment, I look for ways in which the complex systems that influence this are making mistakes. A little fix here or there can make the value of all that other engagement more valuable.
Hopefully that provides some context on the type of writing, even if the exact topics will be somewhat fluid. Since I don’t have a big audience already, who knows hot this goes. It may be little more than me clarifying my own thoughts, or maybe this builds into something else. My ideal would be that my thoughts are valuable to others, and spur a conversation around important topics.
Oh, and the name. Hopefully no one finds it exclusionary, it’s sort of an accident that I’m sticking with. The rabble is totally welcome here. My first blog, technorabble, I had trouble getting the domain I wanted, so I went with a two-parter, norabble.com as the primary domain, with a subdomain, tech.norabble.com. Later urba.norabble.com was started for as I wrote more about non-tech topics. So, the original intent was to be part of the “rabble”. I have an unconventional background, having skipped college, worked in a startup, and built most of my skills in organic, non-formal ways, so I’d somewhat self-identify with the term rabble. So, the “no” is a bit tongue in cheek these days.
I still work in technology, I’m sure if you’re interested you can find out where, but since this isn’t intended to promote that, and all opinions here are my own, I won’t highlight the details here.