engineers without borders

hey, now here we go - 'geers getting in there and helping people! too bad they didn't have this when i was in school....

EWB Canada

technology challenging poverty

here is a great bunch. sustainable use of technology to reduce poverty and it's effects (food and clean water are two big ones) throughout the developing world

Practical Action

it's hard to find ways to use engineering to benefit those who could really use it. maybe there are some organizations like this in canada!?

simple living

reading this post about facebook vs. myspace over at tim's blog got me to thinking. all these people living so much of their lives online. if they don't yet have a second life, they still invest a lot of time publishing their thoughts & stuff. why don't i? sure i blog, but it's fairly sparse and short. mostly we blog to post pix of the kids (but that's pretty sparse too).

it's kind of strange, being an electronics engineer at a semiconductor company - ooooo the technomages themselves - and yet take me away from professional life and something strange happens. i like to go outside. i like to walk. i like to read books - the paper kind - philosophy, theology, technology, astronomy, engineering, woodwork, fiction, whatever. sure the internet is great for research, but if i'm really interested i'll buy the book (or at least print the article off).

i'm very interested in unplugged life. unplugged from utility companies, media conglomerates, advertising, retail thieves, most of modern life. i tried to find a term that would apply to my attitudes: luddism, anarcho-primitivism, anti-modernism. none of them fit. but simple living seems to work.

technology is useful, a means to an end. but not an end in itself. maybe i'm an old-worlder, but i'm still firmly in meat-space.... until i start my real second life!