This last week I ran across a TED video about a couple who had a house full of stuff and $18,000 in debt. They sold all their stuff except what could fit in a couple bags and went backpacking in…
Blog Archives
Post minimalism
I’m suspicious of terms that start with “post-”. Often these terms are pretentious and inaccurate. When someone says, for example, that we’ve moved into a post-X era, they often mean that they didn’t like X and would like to think…
Appropriate scale
“Scale” became a popular buzz word a couple decades ago. Suddenly everyone was talking about how things scale. At first the term was used to describe how software behaved as problems became larger or smaller. Then the term became more…
Two contrasting articles on minimalism
This morning I ran across a couple articles on minimalism: Minimalism is NOT a viable intellectual strategy (30 Dec 2010) Minimalism IS a viable long term intellectual strategy (31 Dec 2010) The former has a sense of humor; the latter…
Maybe you only need it because you have it
Some cities need traffic lights because they have traffic lights. If one traffic light goes out, it causes a traffic jam. But sometimes when all traffic lights go out, say due to a storm, traffic flows better than before. Some…
Defining minimalism
I stirred up some controversy yesterday with an article critical of extreme minimalism. Some people took my article as an attack on minimalism in general. I wanted to clarify a few thoughts on minimalism. I’m attracted to the general idea…
Selfish minimalism
I saw an article the other day about a man who had chosen to get rid of all of his possessions except for a fair amount of computer equipment, a couch, and a few odds and ends. (I’m not linking…
