An introduction to Interchangeable Parts

I have lots of things in my life. Some of these objects are for fun, some a spend most of their time just tak­ing up space, some are actu­al­ly use­ful, some are a bur­den but must be kept around anyway.

Many of the bet­ter objects in my life share a few com­mon traits. These objects tend to be:

• less main­stream¹
• more effec­tive
• more dif­fi­cult to use
• def­i­nite­ly more customizable

Most impor­tant­ly these items all:

• fea­ture inter­change­able parts

I’ve recent­ly noticed that I’ve been accept­ing more objects like these — ones that are a part of an open sys­tem — into my life. Why? This was­n’t a con­cert­ed effort but an uncon­scious desire for bet­ter expe­ri­ences… I guess. On a micro-level, each time I chose one of these items, I obvi­ous­ly believed that it would improve a facet of my life that I care about, and do its job bet­ter than its more main­stream, more avail­able, and (pos­si­bly) more con­ve­nient coun­ter­part. I also under­stand why not every­one uses these objects, even though I know their ben­e­fits and find them more effec­tive at their jobs.

So in the com­ing days (weeks, months, what­ev­er) I’m going to be high­light­ing these objects and what they mean to me, how they earned their place in my life, and why I ulti­mate­ly put up with them.

So stay tuned, or what­ev­er you do on the Internet.

1. Yeah, I know… but it’s true. So not a hip­ster. But isn’t that some­thing a hip­ster would say?[↩]