macwright-com-rbiipx.txt (3446B)
1 [1]Tom MacWright 2 3 [email protected] 4 5 [2]Tom MacWright 6 7 • [3]Writing 8 • [4]Reading 9 • [5]Photos 10 • [6]Projects 11 • [7]Drawings 12 • [8]Micro⇠ 13 • [9]About 14 15 What if people don't want to create things 16 17 2025-10-21 18 19 Almost my whole career distills down to ‘making creative tools’ of one sort or 20 another: [10]visualizations, [11]maps, [12]code, [13]hardware. I try to live a 21 creative life too - between music, photos, drawing, writing, and [14]sewing I 22 have some output. Never enough, but it’s something. 23 24 When I look back on [15]TileMill in 2010, [16]Mapbox Studio, Observable, the 25 whole arc: I can’t help but worry about the supply of creativity in society. In 26 particular: 27 28 If we give everyone the tools to build their dreams, very few people will use 29 them. 30 31 That’s it. Only tools that are both free, easy to learn, and ideally profitable 32 really take off and become commonplace: TikTok has a lot of ‘creators’ because 33 the learning curve is shallow and making videos is socially and economically 34 beneficial. 35 36 But few people want to make maps. Few people even think about the fact that 37 anyone makes maps. The same goes for so much in society: the tools for making 38 [17]fonts are free and learnable, but to use them you need time and effort. 39 Beautiful data visualizations are free to make, with lots of resources and 40 opportunities, but the supply of people who really love and know [18]D3 is a 41 lot lower than I expected it would be. 42 43 I worry about this when it comes to software, too. I love [19]home cooked apps 44 and [20]malleable software but I have a gnawing feeling that I’m in a bubble 45 when I think about them. Most people’s lives are split into the things that 46 they affect & create, and the things that already exist and they want to tune 47 out and automate, and our lives might be tilting more toward the latter than 48 ever before. It’s so possible to live without understanding much of the built 49 environment or learning to build anything. 50 51 It’s not a personal issue: surely this comes downstream from a lack of free 52 time, a cutthroat economic system, and companies that intentionally lock down 53 their products - operating systems that only run approved software, coffee 54 machines that only accept [21]proprietary coffee pods. 55 56 But some of it is a personal inclination: the hesitance to share one’s art or 57 writing or to tinker. It’s a shift of values from what you can make to [22]what 58 you can own. It’s a bigger cultural thing that I could ever wrap my head 59 around, but I do think about it a lot. 60 61 62 References: 63 64 [1] https://macwright.com/ 65 [2] https://macwright.com/ 66 [3] https://macwright.com/writing 67 [4] https://macwright.com/reading/ 68 [5] https://macwright.com/photos/ 69 [6] https://macwright.com/projects/ 70 [7] https://macwright.com/drawings/ 71 [8] https://macwright.com/micro/ 72 [9] https://macwright.com/about/ 73 [10] https://observablehq.com/ 74 [11] https://www.mapbox.com/ 75 [12] http://val.town/ 76 [13] https://config.com/ 77 [14] https://macwright.com/2025/09/27/porteur-bag-2 78 [15] https://tilemill-project.github.io/tilemill/ 79 [16] https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-studio 80 [17] https://fontforge.org/en-US/ 81 [18] https://d3js.org/ 82 [19] https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/ 83 [20] https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/malleable-software/ 84 [21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keurig 85 [22] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/oct/21/why-the-manosphere-clicked-for-young-men-a-visual-deep-dive