The documentary we shot during the Warjammers MMORPG addiction experiment has been put up on youtube (thanks anna). Looking back, I REALLY value what we did.
Didn't get much support, didn't succeed in becoming addicted,
...learned a lot about the way things work in academia and the un-force-able nature of play.
I took a good two weeks off from touching a computer. Again, the effect was profound. I slept better, thought better and felt better when I wasn't wired in. Computers accelerate the mind and split it into a thousand places (if you know how to find the information and how to scan it fast enough). Useless garbage...
Yet without a laptop I also do about 5% as much. I am trained to write / research / think with this tablet as a guiding force. Way fast, very extensive.... incredibly limited in ways I am only beginning to realize. So What's the next step?
Learning how to program.
haha. yeah, close the window. Who the hell cares about programming? People turn away from it, laugh at it. They fear it. But that's why I'm going in. "I am a designer" is often just an excuse for not being willing to figure out how things work on a basic level. NO ONE in our society has any idea how their computers are really working.
This whole time spent looking at a Digital Humanity and I never took coding seriously, never thought I could. I was scared away from it by a hostile intro to compsci prof, by the stigma. I spent 2 years studying that fear, looking at what computers were doing to me.
So now I'm getting my hands dirty, seeing what I can do to it. Logic logic logic. It's beautifully different from how I am used to thinking. It seems like every programmer I've met has let go of a certain degree of flexibility (spiritual?). I hope I don't lose touch. But I don't think I have to. Programming is the newest artform, and only a certain kind of person has been willing to engage with it. As the forward in "Foundation ActionScript 3.0" explains:
"Today, we look upon programming as a purely technical pursuit. We talk of a divide between the creative and the technical, and lump programmers in the latter. The programmer is today as the filmmaker was early last century: an artist toiling in relative obscurity, awaiting a code-literate society to appreciate the nuances of her art. Will it take a century to happen? I don't think so."
1 comment:
You said, and I quote:
“I took a good two weeks off from touching a computer. Again, the effect was profound. I slept better, thought better and felt better when I wasn't wired in. Computers accelerate the mind and split it into a thousand places (if you know how to find the information and how to scan it fast enough). Useless garbage...
Yet without a laptop I also do about 5% as much. I am trained to write / research / think with this tablet as a guiding force. Way fast, very extensive.... incredibly limited in ways I am only beginning to realize. So What's the next step?"
Computers accelerate the mind and split it into a thousand fragments only if you allow it to do so. There is absolutely no need to go through the internet and "surf" through useless garbage... surfing is defined by the dictionary as "riding on the crest of a wave, typically toward a shore while RIDING on a surfboard". The crest of the wave you're riding on when you "surf" the web is one that takes you further away from the shore and out into the seemingly endless horizon.
And you're right that most people find themselves useless without the computer. But notice that when you do have the computer, you become distracted and end up being productive about 5% of the time anyway. True that you might only be able to do about 5% of what you can do manually without the computer, but the computer should be a tool, not something that takes you further from where you need to be, namely the "shore". So use the computer, allow it to assist you in your needs, whether they be communication, information exchange, obtaining materials, but be sure to do your own diligence so as to avoid drifting to the end of the world. You've got to ground yourself, restrain yourself, control yourself, and consciously come back to shore.
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