Wisdom from people who live in cabins

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Tiny-house construction in the Beaver Brook community in the forest of upstate New York. Thanks to the photographer, Jace Cooke, for the Creative Commons license.

Head over to cabinporn.com for a real show. (Not that kind, you sex addict. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) The folks behind the site, the residents of Beaver Brook, posted this quote recently.

It’s my experience that artist communities are almost always camps because they appropriate space that nobody else wants (at the time), but by virtue of a creative progressive view of neighborhoods they create a demand from others that ultimately marginalizes them, so they are forever transient. – James Lynch, founder of Fforest camp.

Geohashing

“Now what?” This group of people found themselves at the same semi-random location in the middle of the British countryside one afternoon. Maybe they went to a pub! (Creative commons photo from the Flickr account of Yang “yangman” Zhao)

Imagine it: You want to meet new people and see new places. Whereas before, you’d maybe look up something to do in your local travel guide, or read the newspaper, or visit a travel agency… now things are totally different.

Now, for all intents and purposes, you throw a dart at a map and go to that place. (We want REAL adventure!)

What’s insane is that, at this exact random location, other people are going to be there. And, because you share the same sense of adventure—and in this case, the same nerdiness—you’ve just found yourself a new best bud or two, or a new significant other.

Screw bars. This rocks.

It’s called geohashing, and it’s the wave of the future, my friends. The Internet has become our extended reality, and in this instance, we’re simply reversing the roles: we’re using computers as our “home base” and extending our entertainment and socialization into the real world from it. This was inevitable; now it’s here.

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