2021 w37: the future of learning is behaviour
I just got back in from Brooklyn, it’s a neat vibe there, it seems there's a community full of many brilliant multi-disciplinary individuals, and I’m finding it feeds my creativity, I really want to go back there in September. It's been a minute since I have written to you so I wanted to reflect on a bit of the fundamental vision of Futureland.
In a world where we have access to unlimited information, why aren’t we all some kind of super human, each of us rapidly learning new skills? Why can’t we just strap into a YouTube binge and learn kung-fu like Neo? The answer seems to be that, unlimited information alone is not enough to rise to higher levels of understanding and talent because we are ultimately limited by our daily behaviours. A simple example is, if you want to learn how to code, it's not enough to just watch tutorials or read books, at some point you need to write code yourself, and to be a proficient computer programmer you need to write code every day. This applies to every dimension of life, we can use information to guide and inform us, but it is our daily behaviours that determine our abilities and our outcomes. In that sense, we believe that the next generation of tools and environments for learning will have more to do with behaviour than with information and this is a fundamental insight that guides everything Futureland is.
We have launched a lot since our last newsletter. I’ll start by describing our new Scheduled Journals and then continue on from there. Everything here was realized in collaboration with our community.
New Scheduled Journals
A scheduled journal on Futureland is a journal with any cadence that is not daily. You can schedule journals in two different ways, specific day(s) of the week or every n days.
This is a big deal for us because until now we only supported journals with a daily cadence or no cadence at all. We started to wonder, what if Futureland supported other cadences? What if Futureland could be some kind of behavioural operating system that we work through every day as a form of self actualization? What if each morning, we would open Futureland and it would show us all of our daily journals, but then also seamlessly integrate anything that was previously scheduled? What happens if we start combining elements of journaling, elements of community networks, elements of task management and elements of creative documentation all in one place? This is the kind of collective rumination that informed the creation of our new Scheduled Journals on Futureland. We hope you give them a whirl and explore for yourself. 💕
Some Tweaks and Improvements
There’s been tons of continual tweaks and improvements to Futureland, they happen every day, and at this point, it’s a process that’s entirely fuelled by our community. This is something we’re very proud of and we want to keep building on. Here’s a few recent improvements:
- Now we automatically show our sidebar when authenticated on FL desktop.
- We show new bookmark icons and labels on entries. We also improved the experience of creating a bookmark on Futureland.
- The display of habit (emoji) entries has been updated.
- New users now have default avatars.
- We removed our toolbar footer and replaced it with a new minimal help button.
- We improved responsive breakpoints for desktop and mobile.
- We made a bunch of tweaks and fixes to our text editor.
- We added rich text editing support to comments on Futureland.
- We updated public share links for private entries, now they do not expire unless the owner turns off the link.
- We improved the interface for selecting privacy states on Futureland.
- We now show the highest number of consecutive days with new entries at top of each journal.
- Our side bar used to have two sections, Daily and Not Daily, this has been adjusted to Today and Not Today. These seem like small changes, but they represent a growing understanding of what Futureland is and could be.
- And a lot more…
A New Editor and Block Based Approach on Futureland (in progress)
Publishing on Futureland has always been limited to placing a single piece of media at the top of an entry and any text would go at the bottom. This format might seem purposeful, but it isn't exactly. I won't get into all of the details here, but I created the first version of Futureland by myself and this format is the result of my early limitations as a computer programmer (lol).
Now, Futureland will be moving to a block based approach that will allow you to create much richer and flexible entries on Futureland. You will be able to embed multiple images, video and audio through out your entries, and over time our community will develop new powerful blocks that can also be embedded into our entries. In a recent comment on Futureland Meta, christian described the potential this way, "our new block editor will now allow us to build any sort of blocks we'd like; you might have a FL-specific block for entries or journals. It might allow you to "embed" a live preview or part of another journal/entry from inside an entry, a bit like a live version of quotebacks". Perhaps other forms of extendability can include Web3 mechanisms, embedding things like crowd-funds, NFTs, tipping, or voting on specific things directly into our entries and ultimately on a surface that is context of the creative process.
A new podcast titled, New Memoirs
I'm working on a new project called New Memoirs, which will start out as a podcast and might naturally evolve into a documentary series, or a show, or something. Here's a description of the project:
New Memoirs is an experimental podcast by Vin, a documentary filmmaker and the co-founder of Futureland. The ontology of New Memoirs is very aligned with Solarpunk* in that it explores the question, "What does a sustainable civilization look like, and how do we get there?". Vin travels to the front lines of shifts in technology, spirituality, society, and subcultures, conducting interviews in person, in hopes of coming back with stories that inform and inspire what we make.*
As a first experiment, I flew to Brooklyn to chat with some people to see what would happen. Some conversations had technical issues, and others had less, it was a lot of feeling it out. It seems like the first episode will be with John Palmer and I'm just starting to edit it. I'll probably do a crowdfund via Mirror to raise some funds for the project and then just continue on naturally from there.
^ Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY
Now, here's a few journals to visit:
raisupon is new to Futureland, she published her first entry in her Drawing journal yesterday night.
pixouls has been guiding and encouraging us in many ways. Here's a few of their journals, Mushrooms, Engineering Studies, Transition to College, Campus Plants, and Dance.
Okohaus by gndclouds is described as, "An experimental school looking to help translate climate research into action. We are starting as a community and looking at ways to support". This project and vision seems very exciting and I'm curious to see how things will unravel. gndclouds is a unique thinker in general, and has a few interesting journals on Futureland.
ethan has journals that I have been hanging out in a lot, more recently they have been Design, Nesting and Project Webster. Ethan has been using Futureland for awhile now and is a core contributor to our community, it's been really tight to see him evolving as a human and an artist.
lauriet is newer to Futureland and very consistent so far, she's been using FL to develop a regular drawing/animation practice and to learn Korean.
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ty for everything <3
We’re distilling our experiences on Futureland (FL) into mostly weekly emails. If you ever want to chat or hang out, just reply to this email. Your input helps a lot on independent projects like this. 🌀
And if you're curious about how you can use Futureland, watch this video on using it to design a morning routine. 🌞
