Corsetier Executive Officer
Name: Alex Peake
Birthday: March 17, 1982 (27)
Occupation: Fashioner Memeticist
Alex created tactical corsets to make tactical gear for the rest of us. You can read the story in full.
Game Developer: Alex is also the game developer Primerist founder of OpenPrimer.org, a world of games where anything is learnable.
Q&A
What is a fashioner?
Fashion is a verb that means to fashion something. Every engineer is fashioning something even if it's technical beauty is only apparent to fellow engineers. So to me fashioning is an extension of being a maker, a person who makes things that make life more awesome. And making functional fashion is about more than just fashion design.
Functional fashion is equal parts engineering and aesthetics. I was already into gear design before I started making tactical corsets. Fusing practical gear development with fashion design is a technical and artistic challenge that makes the creative process even more fun and interesting. It multiplies the possibilities beyond simply making things look cool to making what they do as cool as how they look. Experience aesthetics make functional things a joy to use and the aesthetics of the experience makes the thing more approachable and elegant, adding to the functionality rather than compromising it.
You see this fusion in iconic designs like the iPhone and you can hear the fashion designer tones in Jonathan Ive's voice as he describes the sexy sublety of form and function in his latest object of lust.
The more fashionable our creations, the better they function.
What do you do as a Memeticist?
As a memeticist I make learning game called Open Primer to make One Actualization Per Child and human a reality. I try to spread good memes (learning) and counter bad ones (lessons). And I'm not talking about spreading lolcats over 9000. Meme means much more than most people realize. What is a meme?
Memes are a unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. (The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word μιμητισμός (pronounced /mɪmeɪtɪsmos/) for "something imitated".) Memes are cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures. Memes evolve by natural selection (in a manner similar to that of biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success.
My chief project is to develop a game that makes every human being's education a game because games are addictively fun and learning should be too.
How did you get into tactical training and technology?
All of us think to ourselves at one time or another about what we would do to survive if things suddenly went sideways. Many people just hope that police, military and rescue teams will save them if anything bad happens. But what if they arrive too late? What if things got so bad that they needed rescuing too? Law enforcement cannot respond in time to guarantee your survival, and preparing yourself means the difference between needing someone to rescue you and being able to help others.
Like many peace-loving people I grew up something of a pacifist by nature until I thought seriously about survival. I decided I wanted to be in a position to take care of myself and protect others. I took an interest in survival and tactical training only after I had already begun my career as a software developer so I was not not ready to serve in the military. Instead I looked for civilian tactical training opportunities.
I became an avid marksman, outdoorsman and military simulation airsofter. I train with a combination of live-fire shooting and airsoft MILSIM using the M14/M1A, one of the few great rifles still legal in California. I participate in MILSIM operations with a non-profit group called Cimmerians. Cimmerians ops raise funds for soldiers' charities like the Special Operations Warrior Fund. I highly recommend Cimmerians for those interested in experiencing the highest level of MILSIM excellence.
Cimmerians conducts large-scale ops such as Delta Thunder which is three days of amphibious jungle warfare on multiple private islands with zodiak boat assaults, night time wetsuit diving raids, and other evolutions so cool that I'm not at liberty to discuss them. I enjoy the opportunity to practice stealth with my ghillie camouflage which I am continually tweaking and customizing. There are few thrills like being so close to your prey that they stare directly at you thinking you are a pile of leaves and step on you without noticing.
While I'm primarily focused on creating a peaceful future through educational technology like OpenPrimer, it's also important to realize how fragile our peaceful daily existence is and how quickly routine can turn into crisis. Tactical Corsets is my way of spreading tactical preparedness, especially for women, who are all too often targeted by violence. Everyone has a right to defend their lives and become a survivor instead of a victim. By training yourself, you're one more person who won't need saving.
Art Credit: Drawing by Suzanne Forbes, Portraitist
Ariel makes everything right with our corset production process. She's in charge of overseeing the measuring, patterning, cutting, sewing, and testing of our corsets.
Photo by 