« Ev Bogue's Edges
Ev Bogue is a fellow warrior. The two of us wrote our most recent ebooks side by side, over a variety of beverages in a handful of cafes during January and early February 2011. Ev and I have a dynamic connection - we bear witness as one, then the other, and sometimes both of us, approaches an edge. Then we stay present for one another while working that edge. I am a better writer for Ev's presence in my life because I'm now more willing to work my edges.
Gwen:
Time condenses and expands for you. In what ways does time travel inform your work?
Ev:
I’m a time traveler.
When I’m working edges, whether evolutionary, developmental, emotional, yogic... I have the perception that time expands.
When I’m existing in a space of boredom, monotony, routine, etc., a few years can go by in a lifetime. In contrast, from December 12th until the present moment, I’ve felt like 12 years have passed. I think this has something to with edges bringing me into the present moment.
Edgeworkers of all sorts have described this experience. As long as I’m pushing my own personal edge, time/space can become infinite. Like the dodging bullets moment in The Matrix.
When we talk in person, there's so much exuberance there. When you write, it tends to be from a more self-assured, steady-at-the-helm pace. Do you edit out exuberance? If not, where does it go? Does exuberance inform your work only in the ideation phase?
I think exuberance is really hard to convey in language. This is why I’m trying to take my second selve’s presence on the Internet into a more dimensional realm. You can do exuberance in video, I think.
You're ruthless in leaving your past behind. You are a proponent for throwing away relics from the past. In what way do you separate out the concept of history (personal/global) from the past? Does deleting your archive free you? Do you ever feel completely free of the past?
I think we find ways to anchor ourselves in space/time in order to not have to ask important questions about where we’re going. By deleting our pasts, destroying our stuff, we can move forward in space/time faster. This creates the experience of many years condensed into seconds.
(I have a few relics, totems if you will, that I carry in order to anchor me as I travel to stay grounded in the past enough to stay on the planet.)
In my experience of you, you wear your emotions very near the surface. Is that intentional?
You frequently use provocative language. Rather than choosing a more pedestrian word, you'll use a more colorful one. What's the purpose of doing so? What do you gain from throwing people out of a comfort zone? How does it inform your work/practice?
They have to ask “why does this invoke this emotion within me?” which leads to a deeper understanding of self.
Your purpose seems to shift with each movement you create or destroy. I have a hunch that's not actually the full story. I think you have a core purpose, a core offering, one whose thread shoots through all of your work on and off the web. What is that purpose?
I’m trying to describe to those we leave behind what the edge of evolution looks like.
What gets in the way of that purpose?
The only people who are going to survive this are the people that unfollow everyone.
But also…
Face-to-face is the highest data transfer point. So I use the Internet, mostly Twitter, to get me to tea.
If you were going to die on December 31, 2011, what would you do differently starting today?
I’d be doing my work, hopefully better than the day before. I’d be with the people who help me do my work better.
You help me do my work. Vice versa. So I want to be with you.
*
Comments are open for 24 hours. If you'd like to ask questions, do so within the next 24 hours (Current time is March 2, 2011 - 2:30 MST. This time tomorrow, comments close automatically. Neither Ev nor I will monitor after that time. If the question you ask makes sense to add to this interview in a post-script, I will add it. If not, it will disappear when comments close. The comments are open to add a level of interaction and a layer of data to this interview.)
Gwen Bell
Reader Comments (12)
Thank you for sharing this interview Gwen, I'm fascinated by Ev's approach. Always drawn to minimalism for my own lifestyle, I hadn't thought about the weight of my digital content (old emails, multiple harddrives, lapsed Ning accounts, etc.) Ev's statement in a recent post really got me thinking: "Our first evolution was relinquishing the need for physical possessions = accomplished. The second evolution is relinquishing control of our data = something to work with."
I think you make a great point about maintaining grounding when pushing edges. It's all too easy to go too far, too fast and drive yourself into mental breakdown. You have to work up to an edge, rather than jump in guns blazing. Your ability to remain grounded evolves over time, practices like Yoga defiantly help evolve this ability.
Most of the difficulty I've been facing recently comes from this point. Once you start to see the possibilities tech brings, there is no going back. Normality looks scary, people being robots, working towards goals that really do not matter. Knowing what I do, entering that world is not possible, at least not for any great length of time.
Recently I have been pushing the edge of the meaning of mental disabilities. It's been a huge exercise in learning to remain grounded, often pushing the edge too far. But its still been worth it.
I'm now thinking that so called mental disorders are not actually disorders at all, but a form of mental evolution. Have people always thought the same way? I doubt it highly. Some of these disorders actually appear to be superpowers in the new information driven world.
One last thing. Everett, I think you are taking the ``opinions as facts'' thing a little too far. i.e. Apple's tech is great in some respects, but its not be-all and end-all.
I have been a minimalist for 10+ years. I was explaining to someone the other day that minimalism is just a means to an end. You still have to pursue your dreams. Letting go of needing all the stuff just empowers you to move forward.
I'm perplexed by this "cyborg" terminology. But I'm curious Ev.
What is it you really want in life ?
Wow, thats quite a good interview. It shows me why i like those words of Ev. He totally rocks with what he does. But what is not part of this interview and what is quite important to me is the fact, that Ev is defining and leading how things work. He says "Fuck Minimalism" and it feels real. People read it and like it or hate it. I love that. He creates true fans and pulls apart fake-fans. Thats awesome. I noticed that several times and I think Ev is a true time traveller for many people. It's crazy. I don't feel left behind. I work on a dayjob and for this moment in Live it's the best thing I could ever do. This thoughts from Ev are not meant to dictate ones Lifestyle what some people may feel, but rather inspire the reader to develop his very own thinking. I think that's best described by multidimensional writing. It conntects to me even if I'm in a total different situation. I am the creator of my own think-universe and the influence of other people is one of the most important factors by building this universe. So one Key-Feature of Universe-creation is the ability to decide what to read and who to listen to.
Excuse my not HD-English-Skills,
From Germany with Love,
Monkey
@Dorothee, exactly. We hold on to so much, data, physical, etc. It tethers us in ways physically/emotionally/cognitively we can't even comprehend. The good news is that we can let the systems in the cloud take care of much of that for us, we don't have to dedicate brainspace anymore to much of it.
@Rob, I really enjoy the work you're doing. You're right that The iPad isn't the be-all. I don't expect to own one myself. I just see it as a multi-dimensional broadcasting tool for the masses, the challenge is finding a way to stay above all of that noise. That is our work. When everyone is a broadcaster, how do we find the broadcasters that matter? How can we be the broadcasters that matter? Over time this becomes more and more of a question for me/us.
@David. Hah. I didn't intend to be a cyborg, it happened to all of us. Some faster than others. My work is exploring how that's effecting us and how we can find ways to rise above the noise in order to continue to communicate with the world in a way that's beneficial.
@Monkey <3 !
For those of us who love our work but not the environment we work in (I'm a historian, my work is academic), how do those of us stuck in really rigid, change-resistant fields accelerate our work & disseminate useful things, & rise above the noise level, when our fields & our jobs hold us back? I find my limits when doing research, when diving into the past and leaving myself behind to see the world as it was a thousand years ago, eight hundred years ago, challenging easy assumptions and looking for unasked questions -- time-travelling to live in the world that was, and see where we've come from (to plot out where we want to go). Do you think if educators, teachers, professors, etc. push to live in the edges of their selves and their research, that the field will follow? You've used the internet as a tool for teaching two movements -- do you think this is the direction "traditional" educating needs to evolve towards? Where are the leaders bridging the gap between self-education and formal, recognized education? Traditional education is at risk of being left behind, because it is caught up in its own history & self-importance. How do traditional educators learn to evolve educating to help humans achieve their maximum potential?
Gwen, I appreciate the intentionality of your questions. It's fascinating to see your friendship/partnership with Everett grow through this conversation...the dynamic between your questions and his answers makes this interview engaging to read.
Kari I know Ev will likely jump in to answer your question, but I do think in the asking it aloud you're beginning to push the edge. The next step may be to ask the question in a public way, with fellow educators. Whether that's on your own blog or at a conference, whether in board meetings or one on one, asking the question, "what's the edge? How can we do the work we do - steeped as it is in history, while engaging with it/our audience in new ways?"
If you're willing to ask the question, you have a responsibility to do so. If it scares you, you're likely onto something.
Caroline It's a pleasure to be deepening in connection with Ev. I would say my work is evolving in new ways thanks to our ongoing dialog around these topics. I'm thankful he's willing to open up the dialog in a bigger way as a result of the trust between us, and of our respective audiences. There's a complementary aspect to our work. It reveals itself over time, and I appreciate you being along for this element of the journey.
@Karl. Education is an incredibly large question, one that I know many people are beginning to ask. Is the price too high? Has the Internet surpassed humanity's ability to educate us? Why are we listening to lectures by anyone less than the people who speak at TED, when we have access to those lectures?
There's so much space for exploration in education, I echo Gwen in saying: ask, question, push the edge. I realize this is easier said from outside these systems than done from within them.
@Karl How education is changing is something that also really interests me. From my point of view, systematised education is dying. The net enables learning in an extremely ad-hock fashion, which puts doubt to the need for memorised knowledge. Knowing how to creatively use information and intuitively solve problems are far more valuable traits than having Wikipedia in your head.
Like Ev mentioned in passing, most teachers/lecturers are not experts in there subject, from my own (limited) experience they often have only a minimal level of knowledge / experience. Someone good at net learning can easily surpass them.
On a slightly different issue, the value of static qualifications is also questionable in this day and age. Knowing how to do something is no longer a prerequisite for being able to do it. You can learn as you go.
Anyway, it will be really interesting to see where things go in the coming months/years.
I just want to say, while I believe self-directed learning is ultimately the best and most effective form of education, it is interesting that even now the best facilitators of this practice - for example, MIT OpenCourseWare, which I am currently utilizing to bring myself up to speed on a topic (science, or specifically molecular biochemistry) I had been steered away from early in my academic career - still rely on the initial traditional pedagogic format. At some point, a "real" person got up in front of a classroom and delivered a lecture, which was then recorded and uploaded along with other supplementary, non-video materials. And I do find the lecture format much more efficient in terms of both the quantity and quality of the information it conveys. There is still something to be said for human intuition, it seems...
So, this approach does enable the ability to "creatively use information and intuitively solve problems" as Robert Hickman mentions, because it encourages learning from an internally- rather than externally-motivated perspective. But, as it requires the initial input of data from an external source (in this case, the professor) it does not seem accurate to characterize this as entirely "self-directed." Humanity (as you say) is still doing the educating; the Internet is simply facilitating this process.
I find it very interesting the direction the comments are taking have turned to education. This fall I am leaving behind everyone I have ever known and heading back to grad school to seek the now controversial "formal education" but the end goal is to become an educator myself. I think that this is where it starts. Todays students become tomorrows professors. It is up to us to fix the system. I totally believe in the idea that the internet has way more information than any given class ever could provide, but I also believe what Ev is saying about face-to-face being the best way to transfer data. I also believe that a classroom has the ability to take you out of your comfort zone and study ideas that you might have otherwise passed on. It is easy to get caught up reading only the blogs and post that agree with you and your ideas, having someone help expose you to new things can open you to things you never knew you loved. I believe if done correctly a classroom can be a mix of all the things that are good about learning including the internet, lets show a TED talk to illustrate a lecture. Isn't that what a cyborg is, a blend of the old human and the new technology. First step is changing ourselves, but I also believe in changing the future.