Titanic, I’m sorry, connections, pieces, artistic vs technical, fear of tech, mind dump
Dear Hank
June 13, 2006
Re: Titanic, I’m sorry, connections, pieces, artistic vs technical, fear of tech, mind dump
I have a projector that plugs into a computer. It’s left over from my days as an instructor. Twice in the last month I have responded to requests on our community listserv asking for the use of a projector. Both times I have received responses which I would categorize as “I don’t know anything about all this technology.” In one case the person concluded with “When I get closer to needing it can I call on you?” (in this case to project a movie) and in the other case the response was “I’m too busy to learn any new technology and it seems Rick won’t be around to do it so we better keep looking.” This was a request to video for several hours peoples’ memories and to show a one and a half minute DVD; I offered my projector for their use in showing the DVD. In both cases I tried to explain that the projector plugs into the monitor port in one’s computer and the other end has three RCA plugs color coded red, yellow, white that are just like the plugs on any standard electronic game that kids play off the TV screen. This was too much technology.
I have just finished rereading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; a book I claim to be modeling my own work after. In it he spends a great deal of time talking about his friends, John and Sylvia Sutherland, a couple that have their own motorcycle who accompany him and his son part way on Pirsig’s journey across the west. Pirsig discusses people’s fear of technology and uses as an example John’s and Sylvia’s complete ignorance of how the cycle works and their unwillingness to learn or even want to learn. He finally realizes that it’s not that they can’t learn but they don’t want to learn. The reason he concludes is that for them the motorcycle represents an escape from all those annoying details of their everyday life and they want to be free of them when they are on the cycle, learning about the cycle would open the door to all those worries. This leads Pirsig to conclude that there are two ways of looking at something, two realities, and that Western thought is divided into these two camps: one is artistic and one is scientific. One looks at the world the way it is in the here and now, the other looks for underlying explanation. One “grooves” on what is, the other explains what is as underlying form and function. Neither is an incorrect way of viewing the world, just different, - rarely do the two met; for someone entrenched in one of the worlds, it’s hard to see the other reality.
I have also read recently a good explanation of what technology is and its effect on society. Technology is something new enough that all the kinks and bugs haven’t been worked out yet, the standards aren’t set. The example this author used was cars and then computers. Cars were the new technology in the first half of the twentieth century. By the mid 1960’s all the bugs had been worked out, one car was as good as another, once that happened cars ceased to be technology and became a commodity. Computers are going along a similar path; all the bugs aren’t worked out, therefore one could argue they are still in the technology phase.
Another point here is about Edison, he invented the movie camera. He had the first movie studio where he produced cinema movies no longer than a minute and a half because he said no one would sit still longer than that. It wasn’t until the movie camera was ripped from his fingers and given to the artists that the movie industry was born. This is an example of something moving from the scientific world to the artistic.
There’s more but I gotta go.
Maybe tomorrow.
June 13, 2006
Re: Titanic, I’m sorry, connections, pieces, artistic vs technical, fear of tech, mind dump
I have a projector that plugs into a computer. It’s left over from my days as an instructor. Twice in the last month I have responded to requests on our community listserv asking for the use of a projector. Both times I have received responses which I would categorize as “I don’t know anything about all this technology.” In one case the person concluded with “When I get closer to needing it can I call on you?” (in this case to project a movie) and in the other case the response was “I’m too busy to learn any new technology and it seems Rick won’t be around to do it so we better keep looking.” This was a request to video for several hours peoples’ memories and to show a one and a half minute DVD; I offered my projector for their use in showing the DVD. In both cases I tried to explain that the projector plugs into the monitor port in one’s computer and the other end has three RCA plugs color coded red, yellow, white that are just like the plugs on any standard electronic game that kids play off the TV screen. This was too much technology.
I have just finished rereading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; a book I claim to be modeling my own work after. In it he spends a great deal of time talking about his friends, John and Sylvia Sutherland, a couple that have their own motorcycle who accompany him and his son part way on Pirsig’s journey across the west. Pirsig discusses people’s fear of technology and uses as an example John’s and Sylvia’s complete ignorance of how the cycle works and their unwillingness to learn or even want to learn. He finally realizes that it’s not that they can’t learn but they don’t want to learn. The reason he concludes is that for them the motorcycle represents an escape from all those annoying details of their everyday life and they want to be free of them when they are on the cycle, learning about the cycle would open the door to all those worries. This leads Pirsig to conclude that there are two ways of looking at something, two realities, and that Western thought is divided into these two camps: one is artistic and one is scientific. One looks at the world the way it is in the here and now, the other looks for underlying explanation. One “grooves” on what is, the other explains what is as underlying form and function. Neither is an incorrect way of viewing the world, just different, - rarely do the two met; for someone entrenched in one of the worlds, it’s hard to see the other reality.
I have also read recently a good explanation of what technology is and its effect on society. Technology is something new enough that all the kinks and bugs haven’t been worked out yet, the standards aren’t set. The example this author used was cars and then computers. Cars were the new technology in the first half of the twentieth century. By the mid 1960’s all the bugs had been worked out, one car was as good as another, once that happened cars ceased to be technology and became a commodity. Computers are going along a similar path; all the bugs aren’t worked out, therefore one could argue they are still in the technology phase.
Another point here is about Edison, he invented the movie camera. He had the first movie studio where he produced cinema movies no longer than a minute and a half because he said no one would sit still longer than that. It wasn’t until the movie camera was ripped from his fingers and given to the artists that the movie industry was born. This is an example of something moving from the scientific world to the artistic.
There’s more but I gotta go.
Maybe tomorrow.
posted by Rick Kinnaird at 2:44 PM
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