Look no further than the current political landscape of the United States to witness that one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia. But what does utopia even mean?
Since Sir Thomas More coined the term in his 1516 book Utopia, this Western vision of an ideal city has more often than not been shadowed by its impossibility. The US that began as a “New World” for religious freedom eradicated the indigenous life in its way, and more extreme attempts at harmonious communal living like Jonestown in Guyana culminated in a grisly 1978 mass suicide. The exhibition 500 Years of Utopia, curated byTyson Gaskill, Geoff Manaugh, and Anne-Marie Maxwell at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Doheny Memory Library in Los Angeles, considers the legacy of utopia on the 500th anniversary of More’s book.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
