Thinking In and Out of Boxes
Kim Davis, the publisher of my off-the-wall account of Academy of Reality wondered if the manuscript lacked a sense of place. “Let’s try a map,” she said. I’m not a cartographer or facility designer, but I agreed that a map might be an easy fix. I tried to imagine a computer-assisted design, small boxes fitted into a giant brick box as big as the Academy home office. One small office-size square would have to accommodate even smaller box-shaped experimental chambers named after the famous psychologist, B.F. Skinner. Imagine: a big brick building with room-size boxes filled with humans. Imagine one room with small cages and small box-size experimental chambers for pigeons. There would also be a small regulation, ping pong court for the pigeons. It’s hard to imagine thousands of humans coexisting with a few pigeons, boxed up, all thinking in and out of their boxes.
Missing details: Where to squeeze in random picnic spots for Sid and Mia, without wasting valuable space? Maybe the building design should include the elevator locations, the abandoned generator space, the warehouse mezzanine, and the outdoor heated grate.
Cube Farms Devolving to Free Range
Supposedly, the Academy devolves from cube farms to free range. The truth: Cubists still work in cubicles. Free Rangers—techs like me, Carriers of Pigeons like Mia, and Facilities people with useful skills—are always free to move about.
Picture yourself fortunate enough to work at the Academy. Watch the keyboard jockeys vacate their cube farm, taking only their laptops, personal knick-knacks, and what-nots. The Free Rangers break down the maze-squared walls. The techs run new wire bundles beneath the floor to hook up phones and computers, and new wiring above for ceiling panel fluorescence. Picture the miracle of migration, a herd of keyboard jockeys, laptops in hand, returning to a cube farm more efficient than it was before.
Where Am I Going with This?
Free Rangers are on the move. Cubists imprisoned in cubes. Scientists claim that movement promotes mental health; cube farm life requires accessible places for keyboard jockeys to relax. Thanks to Mia and Sid for researching and writing Fifty Places to Picnic.
Thinking in and out of boxes? I can’t take credit for the idea. All I want to do is add a little background. Who would–what kind of author would write the Academy of Reality? The sixties counterculture question would have been, “Where are you coming from man?” Today, a better question might be, Hey man. Where are you going? At first, I thought the answer was to reverse engineer what I’ve already written. Instead, I’m going with backward thinking.
My family used to take Sunday drives for picnics in a park—in the 1950s, you could always find a place with trees, believe it or not. No matter what, my mother always asked, “Where are we going?”
“Crazy,” my father would reply. “Do you want to come?”
