My friend threw a Christmas party and the crowd she invited was almost exclusively nerds (hence my invitation, I guess). We were engaged in making little ornaments out of various materials including wood circles that were cut from a fallen branch along with the usual crafting supplies. I got busy trying to do something overly complex on my little piece of wood, but I was mostly focused on eavesdropping on a conversation about something I'd never heard of before: a Moebius strip.
The engineer had cut a strip of paper, gave it a half-twist and then glued the ends together, making a weird, curvy shape—almost like a rubber band that had gotten twisted. He said that the cool part about this shape is that if you take your finger and trace the edge all the way around, you'll never find an endpoint. The shape's edge is a single, continuous line.
Woah, woah, woah, what did he just say?! I thought to myself. Abandoning my ornament, I slowly merged into the conversation like a squirrel cautiously inching closer to steal food. I grabbed a strip of paper, put the two ends together like a chain link, then gave one end a half-twist and pinched it together so I could compare my shape to the original. Once I figured out how to make it, I had to test this guy's claim that you could trace the edge around the entire shape (being careful not to get a papercut).
Turns out, he was right. I tried it several times, and even though it's tough to maneuver around the tiny paper, it really is made of a single unbroken looping line. A three-dimensional shape made of a two-dimensional line! It was the first time I ever crafted a paradox.
Drawing a Paradox
We've explored quite a few paradoxes here on CYBORG_, and technically the premise of this newsletter is a paradox: how can our technology extend our humanity? Putting together contradictions is a reliable way to inspire creativity, and I have a hunch that it can help us in other ways.
Collaboration, for example, is a process of two or more competing ideas or values being combined or satisfied in a mutually beneficial way. When working with other people, there is an important requirement that all parties come together in good faith, otherwise we end up abandoning rules or even civility, chasing our own ends at any cost (aka U.S. politics...)
However, I still think it's the best chance we've got, and that's why I like to examine paradoxes: they make me think. Usually, I get stumped, but they have a way of bringing me back despite my inability to "solve" them. As I attempt to make sense of a paradox, I end up exploring possibilities and concepts that further enrich my understanding or interest.
You may have noticed a new logo in the emails recently! I decided to create an official logo for CYBORG_ that visually represents this exploration of paradoxes, so I set out to try and draw one. I came across a famous visual paradox called the Penrose Triangle:
And I also wanted to capture a Moebius strip, because it's a visual paradox that anyone can make—not just an illusion or a trick.
As I played with a bunch of these strips of paper, I realized I could shape the Moebius strip into something a little more visually pleasing.
Combining these two paradoxes felt very meta. Not only helping me find a unique logomark, but for representing the process we all go through when we come across difficult circumstances. Creativity is really just problem solving. You first encounter something: an issue, an idea, some new information. Then you enter the "dark night of the soul" as you struggle to make it understandable or see if it can fit in your life or attempt to reconcile it with what you know. Eventually you emerge with a change. You've either solved the thing or you've changed yourself.
Now that you know what's behind the symbol, it becomes more than just some lines and shapes—hopefully it can serve as a reminder that paradoxes are an invitation to explore. We can't escape them in the real world, we can't avoid them in the theoretical world either. Paradox is the isometric exercise of the mind!