I imagine the capitalist Armageddon, the war at the end of the world as we know it, where every blade of grass, every molecule of air, every variety of living thing, every action, every bit of information is owned -- or somebody declares ownership of it, and the war is between those who obey these declarations of ownership and those who do not.

This war started before your landlord claimed to "own" where you live; it was already old when the Europeans claimed to "own" the land the Indians were living on. It started when the idea of "own" was invented, and it's going to keep going until everything is owned, before nothing is owned.

GPS is a significant learning augment for me. The 'trick' is that I never use turn by turn navigation, but I study the map and find my own way.

This raises a question for techno-utopians: Which world is better, one where technologies are selected and designed so we can only use them to make ourselves stronger, or one where we are free to use technologies to make ourselves weaker? If the latter, what if most people use most technologies in a short-sighted way, so that on the whole, they make life worse? Never mind utopia -- how does this even count as good? I would answer that the freedom to make mistakes eventually makes us stronger, when we learn not to make the mistakes.

Today I'm going to Burlington, then Syracuse on the weekend, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. Oddly, Pittsburgh is sort of a Greyhound dead end. It's hard to get anywhere from there without leaving or arriving at a time when you should be sleeping. If someone in Columbus or Indianapolis can pick me up and drop me off at the station, I'll happily stay a night. Otherwise I'll probably take an overnight bus to St Louis, then Chicago if I have time, and end my bus pass in Ann Arbor, where a reader has offered to drive me to Minnesota, and another reader might drive me all the way back, or I'll take the train.

I like showing up for a group mountain hike where inevitably everyone's wearing specialized wicking techno-clothing, boots that cost more than my monthly rent, carrying giant back packs, and usually someone even has carbon-fiber walking poles. Meanwhile I'm there in my sneakers, cotton t-shirt, with my lunch stuffed into the leg pockets of my cargo pants and a big bottle of water in my hand. Guess who's usually the first to the summit?

The author claims not to be a minimalist because he does it for practical reasons rather than virtuous reasons. I would almost say the opposite: if you reduce your stuff for anything other than practical reasons, you're not a minimalist because you don't really understand it.

Also on the subject of more stuff being bad for you, an important argument that GPS navigators make us stupid. The idea is that without the devices, we have to build cognitive maps, which is great mental exercise. I appreciate all the people on this tour who have given me rides using GPS devices, but I would never use one myself. I always go on google maps (or openstreetmap.org) and sketch a map with pen and paper. When you're traveling, the most important thing is understanding where you are. With GPS navigators, I can feel the understanding of where I am being sucked out of my mind and locked away in a computer.

Trading up is only sensible in the context of having a strong sense of commitment to being good at a few particular things, something the dilettante culture of the American middle class resists. We like to think anyone can get good at gardening, or boatbuilding, or day trading, or writing memoirs, with just a little practice and a few good "...for dummies" books.

This reminds me of something I've noticed on my tour. A lot of people have books on far more practical skills than they'll ever learn. This is okay if you're building a collapse library for a community, but I'm afraid people are thinking, "I wish I knew how to do this, so I'll buy a book on how to do it and maybe the book will motivate me to learn." It doesn't work that way. If anything, reading about doing it will give you a false sense of reward and sap your motivation to actually do it. I suggest not reading a how-to book until you are so driven that nothing can stop you.

I have a deeper suspicion about tools. Consider the movie "It Might Get Loud". The Edge uses the most advanced electronic effects, and when they're switched off, his playing is totally lame. Meanwhile Jack White intentionally uses a crappy guitar because it stretches his own skill to make it sound good. In the PBS Rock and Roll documentary, there's a bit where a band tracks down the very same mixing board that New Order used for their most ground-breaking album, and they expect it to be effortless to use, but they find instead that it's painfully difficult. Ernest Hemingway, using a manual typewriter, spaced twice between every word to slow himself down. Tom Waits has been known to put his musicians in a cold room to make them play better. Or consider the clunky tools George Lucas had for the original Star Wars, compared to the slick CGI he had for the prequels. My point is, there is evidence that we are more creative when we're working under difficult conditions, so there's a danger that "good" tools, if they make the work easier, will reduce creativity.