a means to an end

i’m old enough to remember a time when people didn’t own or have access to computers - well not personal computers. i remember a time when an idea like the internet was an idea that came up simultaneously in many places including a reading course i was participating in at trent university. we were talking one night about feedback loops, noise and other cybernetic associations connected to gregory bateson’s book “mind and nature”. i conjectured: wouldn’t it be amazing if i were to have a question and were able to send it out to an ecologically linked collective of computers, the operators of which could then send back their thoughts thereby ramping up the collective knowledge and understanding of the ecology? that was 1981.

now, twenty six years later, without this computer i would be unable to fulfil my obligations as a teacher. i would be challenged to maintain communications with friends and family. i would be restricted in what i could learn and in the sharing of my own learning through this blog.

i work and play and write and think and learn and create on a mac. i always have and i expect i always will. it “thinks” the way i do; often intuitively, often without consulting guides, or owner’s manuals, always with an eye to the computer being no different than a pencil or a paintbrush, or a key on a keyboard, or a string on a guitar. it supports my direction or at the very least, it acts like a magic carpet when i have a sense of direction.

how then to establish and maintain a healthy relationship with what is essentially a tool but which i am dependent on for so much?

the first step in configuring the relationship is to care for the machine. typically i am lax in the maintenance of machines. they are nominally less than me and yet each serves a purpose i can't fulfill and so they need care in all its forms if only to honour their purpose. the next step is to see beyond the machine and to develop an awareness of the fact that in the way in which i choose to use it, it essentially reconfigures creative and social energies into electrons and pixels which in turn affect the whole. the final step is to take that awareness and apply it in such a manner as to know that actions have results and so how best to use the interface to bring goodness to the whole?

here i am with my ibook




it ain't love - its appreciation!

here are others for whom the mac is a means to a creative and purposeful end:

musician, artist, video artist, and conceptual thinker brian eno

amazingly talented artist sarajo frieden

and gifted musician and video artist takagi masakatsu

and of course, there are more .