Technology 11 | unobtrusive lucidity

My Computer has a First Name…

Because I’m a Mac user, I listened with interest to Apple’s recent iPad announcement, just as I do to all of their product announcements. I’m very loyal to that brand, and Apple’s tools are the tools with which I manage not only my workflow, but also my day-to-day life.

What’s interesting about listening to the discussions and analysis of these sort of announcements, though, is the quasi-religious fervor that they can cause. As much of a Mac lover as I am, I will never wait in line at an Apple store for hours just to be one of the first to get a new product. At the end of the day, the product is just a tool to help me do life. A very elegant, beautifully designed and functional tool, but a tool nonetheless. So, when I hear others begin to personify their devices, I find it interesting, and a bit concerning.

And, in the interest of self-disclosure, Karen and I name our computers, so its not like I’m removed from this phenomenon.

I think, though, that its a natural progression of our creative impulse. A few years ago, Karen and I put together and directed a workshop on the spiritual components of creativity. One of our basic starting points was that everyone is creative. I think that plays out in our technological developments, because it proves that collectively, as a culture, we are creative. We find creative solutions to manage our evolving lifestyles, to make our work easier, and to then solve the problems that those solutions create. Just as we were created, we in turn make things in our own image.

And that theology really begins to play out as we enter the realm of potentially self-aware artificial intelligence that science fiction authors have predicted for years. There begins to be a point when the technology we create begins to be something that we worship, at which point it stops being a tool that we use and begins to make us a tool at its disposal. In a sort of twisted progression, we have deified ourselves in our ability to make technological progress, only to lose our power to the technology that we’ve created.

A natural progression of this was discussed this morning in this NPR piece about how researchers are already considering a concept of “robot rights.” How will we treat the machines that do our dirty work if those machines are one day self-aware, feel something like emotion, and expect the same rights that other sentient beings hold?

Its easy to feel like technology has a life of its own, especially as it progresses so quickly. What I see to be almost universally true is that the technology outpaces the other cultural structures within which it is developed: the legal system cannot keep up with the Internet (i.e.: copyright law), philosophy and theology struggle to keep up with our explosions of creation (i.e.: can a robot have a soul?), and now sociology struggles to anticipate how we will incorporate the devices that become increasingly a part of us into our cultural structure (i.e.: how do we define personhood?).

This is something that is as almost as frightening as it is fascinating to watch unfold.

Practical Applications

While there’s a risk of deifying our technological progress, I think that the nature of the information age has raised some really interesting commentaries on our view of ourselves as a society.

Interestingly…or, perhaps, strangely, depending on your point of view…this occurred to me by way of a navigation app.

Just before re-locating to New England, I was turned on to a nifty little smartphone application called Waze. If you haven’t heard of it, this is basically a crowd-sourced GPS application that provides turn-by-turn directions just as your GPS would, while also permitting you to report things like road construction, speed traps, and accidents. Waze’s servers then collect this real-time data, determine where traffic is completely clogged, and then anyone navigating with Waze gets re-routed around the pending hazards.

What’s interesting about Waze is that it incorporates a sort of game component: the more hazards you report, the more points you earn, and eventually you “level up.” This keeps people motivated to use the application, which is important, because the more people who use the app, the better the app becomes. Even driving around with the application running in the background and not using it for navigation lets you take advantage of hazard reports from other drivers around you.

So, what does this spiffy little technological innovation say about culture? I didn’t really appreciate this until I moved and got the pleasure of dealing with Boston traffic every day. The sort of traffic that transforms Interstates into parking lots. I’ve always preferred dedicated devices for things like navigation, because, honestly Garmin has always done it the best. Having input about traffic data has become invaluable when dealing with this volume of traffic for my daily commute, though, and being able to get around major traffic jams has saved my punctuality a couple of times.

And, anyone who knows me will tell you, my punctuality needs all of the saving that it can get.

The cultural aspect, though, is that this is bigger than just being about my convenience. Using this application has made me feel a sense of responsibility to other drivers, because I know that my reports are helping them get around the traffic in which I just unexpectedly found myself stuck, or to avoid getting caught in the speed trap that I just drove by. I feel motivated, not by the game aspect of this application, but by the knowledge that I know that I’m helping other drivers, and that other drivers are helping me, with the shared goal of surviving the least attractive two and a half hours of our day.

We are, in fact, our brother’s keeper. As it turns out, there’s an app for that.

Words of Mass Consumption

Many centuries ago when I was an undergrad student, I was sitting in a communications course analyzing, as I recall, that most obvious method of ideological communication in a society obsessed with automobiles: the bumper sticker. In particular, we were talking about the phrase, “he who dies with the most toys wins.”

A tad materialistic, maybe?

I think about this occasionally because I’m really sensitive to the language that’s used in everyday discourse, because I think that it says a lot about our perspective as a society. In particular, as everything we use shifts progressively into the world of new media, and the music and books and movies we purchase arrive by way of download, I’ve found myself immediately concerned by the fact that verbs such as “listening,” “reading,” and “watching” are replaced by the umbrella usage of “consuming.” I’m sure you’ve heard this used if you’re a bit geeky at all, or even if you’re not. The phrase came as a natural result of developing online methods of carrying data. Much of the data that a website, for example, contains is referred to as “content.” Thus, when we read or watch of listen to the content of a website, we are said to be consuming the content.

The reason that this bothers me is that consuming something is not the same as engaging something. Consuming something is the result of an appetite. The verb carries the connotation of absorbing, using up, or devouring. I don’t want the things that I write to be consumed, because then my words and thoughts are simply one more way of temporarily quenching one’s appetite. I want my readers to engage what I write: to read the post or story or article, think about it, and engage in conversation about it, ideally with their friends and hopefully with me as well. Consuming is none of those things. Consuming is selfishly sucking something up and being done with it.

Consuming is utilitarian, and art of any medium should never, ever be used in a utilitarian manner.

I think that this phrase is the natural result of a culture that places a price on everything and everyone, and transforms every medium of expression into a commodity. My words and your words…or your music, photographs, painting, or however you express yourself…are not commodities created simply to be sold. Our work is more valuable than that. Our thoughts are more valuable than that. When our thoughts are consumed, they are treated as less than what they are. Or than what we are.

“Consuming content” robs us of the value that engaging and discussing the thoughts and works of others could bring. I really think that we should change that phrase, because it shapes the way we think. When we think we want to consume something, we must first possess it. That implies that we always want to possess more as we devour more.

Perhaps he who dies after having consumed the most content wins? That’s not really the culture that I want to be in. Do you?

The Right Tool for the Right Job

I had design professor in college for several different theatre courses. I have no idea what happened to him, as attempts to re-establish contact in recent years has been unsuccessful for me. What I will always remember him for, though, is a phrase that he used to toss around the scene shop: “You have to have the right tool for the right job!”

It’s a phrase that I’ve found myself repeating many times since then.

I think that we’ve always been fascinated with our tools. My father’s “man cave” was a wood shop that he kept in a separate, detached building from our home. He would retreat there to work on his various projects. I actually never understood why he didn’t sell them on a larger scale, because he could certainly have made some income with his talent. His shop, though, was loaded: saws, drills, hammers…all of the fun tools that you would expect in a shop, and not at all dissimilar from when I would be constructing sets in the scene shop. It goes without saying, I think, that when my dad had disposable income laying around for his hobby, it went to tools.

While I’m not in any way gifted at sculpting things out of wood as my father did, I need various tools with which to craft words, or write code. Whenever Karen and I have a disagreement over disposable income (including whether or not such a category exists for us on a given month), it frequently arises over my desire for a new tool: a new iPad, the most recent operating system, a new piece of software, etc. These tools consistently make my work easier and more productive, but my tastes frequently are bigger than our bank account.

The issue with tools is that, if I’m to generalize any sort of example from myself, we can often become caught up in the shiny news toys to the point of distracting ourselves from the project that we might be using them to accomplish.

Don’t tell her I said this, but I think that Karen’s reluctance to try new tools because the learning curve for them actually distracts from her productivity more than staying with an older system that she already knows, may be wise.

When I remember my dad’s wood shop, I can remember at least two or three items knocking around out there that received minimal use. I’m sure my bag of technological toys has a couple of those as well. Certainly, I’ve even loaded up our kitchen in the past with gifts for Karen’s culinary genius that have gone largely un-used.

Perhaps there’s a lot to be said for creatively finding ways to accomplish the task at hand, rather than over-equipping our arsenal of tricks with which to accomplish them. Perhaps we can accelerate our productivity to the point of being unproductive.

What do you think?

Capturing…and Editing…the Moments

Photography is one of those things that I’ve always wished that I had an eye for, but just don’t. When Karen and I visit art galleries, I tend to be drawn to the photography exhibits more than many others. There’s something about capturing real life as it transpires: the hope and pain in people’s faces, the tragedy and comedy of the play of life immortalized in picture. I love seeing the composition that my photographer friends place in their gorgeous images. I love how they transform certain moments by rendering them in black and white. The humanity captured through photography is so evocative.

I guess that’s why I don’t understand the trends I see in my Google + stream, or on Flickr, or on various other social media, in altering digital photographs in such a way that the colors are far too vibrant, far too “touched up” to be real. I see many photographs, and I feel as though I’m watching a classic film suddenly rendered in technicolor.

I’m not against editing photographs. I love the ability that technology has given us to improve our photos. I have forgotten what it was like to not be able to take three shots and choose the one that I want to keep on the spot, or to not be able to deal with red-eye later and save what would otherwise have been a glaring blemish in a photo of a family member or loved one. And all I use is iPhoto.

It’s when a landscape of an exotic location, for example, appears to have been suspiciously optimized for a retina display in a way that real life simply cannot appear, that I have a problem. Are we culturally so given to altering the aesthetics of our natural environment so as to “improve” it that we no longer want to view our landscapes as they really are?

I’m walking in slightly risky territory here, as I’m discussing medium in which I have no ability at all. I just think that there’s a difference between placing a creative lens on immanent beauty, and altering that beauty to something that we perceive as more beautiful.