I have some ideas on how to fix that. They’re not very good ideas, but at least they’re ideas!
Adam Savage
I hope that one of my machinations will someday find a world-changing application. Until then, they’ll live here!
When I started this site, I was studying Engineering in Upstate NY, where I spent 5 years destroying my social life and replacing it with knowledge! I found the lectures my major offered to be an incomplete experience, so I spent a good chunk of my time outside of classes and coursework applying what I’d learned to various projects. In the end, the opposite occurred – the projects helped me learn the concepts!
After graduating, I took a designer position at Formlabs, where I worked on a number of their products, including Form 3 and Fuse 1. My free time to tackle projects dimished while in this role, but I managed to find/rekindle a few other interests in the process.
As the CoVID19 pandemic cancelled projects, my hopes for growth at Formlabs were dashed. Instead, I made a somewhat carpe-diem decision to hop across the country to work on satellite-carrying Rockets in Los Angeles. This environment was worlds (heh) different from the product design space I’d previously inhabited, and the new territory came with several blessings and curses. I’m still working my way through understanding it all, but find the projects fascinating and I’m excited to see where this ends up taking me!
More recently in my life, something has clicked in how I see the world and my place in it. I study the design of Cities and Transit in my free time, and hope to share some dedicated content on those subjects here in the future. I also feel a strong concern for the climate, the loss of natural ecosystems, and have found a strong urge to make my mark on the world in those spaces. That thinking has muddled my career path – this is still a working product, but I would like to see myself eventually focus my man-hours in these areas:
Densification of society
Bringing cities and people closer together, bringing the things we need closer to cities, and making our existing dense places pleasant and vibrant.
Urban Agriculture
producing food near to where its eaten, enabling us to give some farmland back to the natural ecosystems which regulate our planet.
Making things which aren’t Disposable
In particular, redesigning and rethinking single-use plastics and gadgets so they can be easily recycled. Also: Zero Waste design, and improving recycling to accept more materials.
I don’t expect to accomplish all of these, but hey, it’s a plan. You have to give yourself options. Admittedly, most of what I share on this blog doesn’t reflect those goals, and almost all of it has no big-picture application. But, with some tweaking, some of them might. And who knows what lies ahead!
✌&💗,
Ben Parnas
