Let’s start again.
This is a blog about everything, filtered through the voices who contribute to it, under the umbrella of one central theme:
While the world is full of a plethora of life, and while much of that life still exists only because it excels at adapting its behavior, biology, and even its environment, humans are unique in having such a profound impact that you can see it from space, and find evidence in the deepest parts of the ocean.
In fewer words but more sentences:
In order to survive, we modify our world.
By changing our world, not limited to the literal shifting of topography, we in turn change ourselves. We interact with our world in different ways, depending on where we live, what we use for transportation, how we get our food, how we occupy our time. There’s no ice fishing in Hawaii… except there could be. I mean, the technology exists to build some artificial ice fishing facility, though I’m not sure why one would.
Human creation in the form of design, media and technology, both physical and digital, is all around us. From parks to streets to offices to living rooms, design surrounds us at every moment1. You’re probably engaged with some kind of technology or other human designed artifact, during most if not all moments of your existence.
This publication seeks to question the composition of a world modified by hominids, to observe how it impacts our lives in different ways, to wonder how it can be improved, to make note of what already works wonderfully. From the personal to the cultural to the global, as Topography aspires to broaden horizons and collect options for the future we want to live in.
It gets better if we make it better.
My name is Ryan, I’m the founder and sole contributor (for now). Thank you for reading, I would really love to hear from you if you have any thoughts.
Unless you’re in the back country, but even then, you have your tent, or else you’re building a shelter. And you’re probably wearing clothes, right? ↩