{"id":118,"date":"2008-12-22T21:29:18","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T05:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/?page_id=118"},"modified":"2009-01-01T22:40:08","modified_gmt":"2009-01-02T06:40:08","slug":"there-are-things-that-do-not-change","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/?page_id=118","title":{"rendered":"There are things that do not change."},"content":{"rendered":"

We still have physical needs. We sleep, we eat, we need to socialize with our
\nfriends and family, and so on. We also still see, hear, and perceive sights, sound, and
\nmotion. It might be quite interesting to consider some devices that
\nhandle site and sound (or media<\/em>, as they say) and look at how technological
\nprogress changes our ability to manipulate these media and perhaps changes our
\nperception of what sites and sounds can tell us.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

For creative types<\/em> (musicians, photographers, and filmmakers) it’s
\nquite common that their entire digital environment is built around the systems
\nthey use to manipulate their medium. I think that this will be increasingly common
\nas digital media systems mimic, and eventually replace, all forms of analogue and chemical
\nsystems for those practitioners, both professional and amateur.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

A very useful example of how changing technology changes the devices that process a medium
\nwhich does not change, but the manipulation of which changes our view
\nof the world, is photographic and cinematic devices. That is, digital photography
\nand digital video. This change is not<\/em> just that these devices have gotten smaller and
\neasier to operate and now allow a person with average technical skills to obtain
\nbetter graphic images, either still or moving. The technical development of
\nthese mediums has also meant that the processes used to obtain the pictures
\nare also much easier to manage than in the past. What is important here is that
\nthe chemical process of film (either moving or still) is being supplanted by
\na magnetic analogue process (for video, at any rate) and then that is being
\nsupplanted by a process by which the images are captured and stored and displayed
\nentirely by digital means. This has had (and will continue to have) great effect
\non how easily we can use these mediums and how much we expect them to be available
\nto us at any time.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

In both of these media, as well as with digital music, there are dozens of examples of changing devices that
\nhandle the physical properties of media, the properties themselves of which,
\nostensibly, don’t change. We’re just scratching the surface here but read more
\nabout Digital Photography<\/a>, Digital Video<\/a>, Digital Music<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding the preceeding discussion, I believe there are certainly limits
\non how much technology, especially digital technology, can be expected to change
\nour lives.One example that technology isn’t likely to change much for us is
\nour physical environment and how it affects us. This is, for the most part,
\na subject for another essay but here’s a brief overview.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

We all feel the weather. We all have some feeling for the weather in our own
\nlocale and even though weather forecasting is greatly more accurate than it
\nhas been in the past, we still benefit from our own understanding of what our
\nvarious feelings<\/em> of weather mean for us in the short term.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I live in a west coast city (Vancouver) and, although I’m about 4km from tidewater,
\nI am 150km from the open ocean. Further, there are 1,000m-high mountains between
\nme and the ocean. Most of us in western North America are aware that we live
\nin an area of westerly airflows that gives us a westerly flow of weather. However,
\nthe low-pressure systems that normally dump rain on this part of the world,
\nalthough they move from west to east, are actually circular patterns and this
\nmeans that where I live, weather <\/em>can just as often come from the
\neast as from the west. This isn’t something that I read in a book or was taught
\nat school. In fact, my Dad taught this to me. He was born and raised here. My
\nown experiences living here, of course, have served to bolster and fine-tune
\nthis knowledge. This is one of these counter-intuitive things that
\nI don’t think technology, or a media-rich digital environment affects as much
\nas the passing of generational knowledge and personal observation.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Go to Information Literacy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We still have physical needs. We sleep, we eat, we need to socialize with our friends and family, and so on. We also still see, hear, and perceive sights, sound, and motion. It might be quite interesting to consider some devices that handle site and sound (or media, as they say) and look at how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":27,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"withoutbars.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-118","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118\/revisions\/191"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.digitalcobbler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}