From an amazing story about a woman who moved to a small island off the coast of Finland:
“I had to build a new jetty. I modelled it after others that I had seen. I cut down trees from the forest, and built a chest – a wooden frame – at the end of the jetty, which I filled with stones”, she says on the shore. “It isn’t hard to build a jetty. All you need is a chain saw and a brain.”
Which got me to thinking, what would I be able to reverse-engineer in my mind from memory? Anything? I’m going to try and give myself a quiz, and ask Foe to name 3 things which I then have to sketch the workings of from memory, and perhaps then how I would go about constructing them.
The island-living lady in the story works as a translator over the internet, but it’s not clear as to how much she relies on the net as a source of knowledge to be able to live alone in such a remote place.
I’ve thought before about the web, moblogs and stolen knowledge – collecting your memories of things, proceedures, recipes, constructions through your phone might result in not just a lifeblog, but a life-or-deathblog. Of course, in such situations, it might just be easier to use your mobile phone to give Ray Mears a call…
» Helsinki Sanomat: Living alone on a small island in the Turku archipelago
Petafloptimism 
Hmmm. This is interesting.
It makes me think of how we make distinctions between tools and practices. For example, if you look at things like blogs and e-mail as tools for expanding or maintaining social spheres, how can you distinguish between the tool and the practice?
It doesn’t seem like such a complicated question when you phrase that question in terms of chainsaws – but this example makes me think that maybe it’s still the same – except that the practices chainsaws enable generally have a start and finish and once they’re built, like a jetty, seem to generally are structural and hence fade more into the background, unlike communication.
But regardless of whether a practice is a finished jetty or a post in a blog – the tool still instantiates the practice, a particular mode of behaving… Just some thoughts.
I do have a question though – how is stolen knowledge different from tacit knowledge. Is it somehow subversive?
By the way – great blog! Thanks for posting ur thoughts!
I like that story of the woman with the saw it makes you stop and think that all it takes is the right tools and a little willpower and you can do anything.