Cobbling Together your Digital Environment:<\/p>\n
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An Introduction<\/p>\n
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This site started from the idea that we have very powerful
\ndigital tools at our disposal. These tools are very new and are being modified
\nand superseded constantly. It’s axiomatic that tools change the culture in which
\nthey are used and powerful tools change the culture in powerful ways. Once a
\ntool has been adopted by a culture, its use may go on for some time, passed
\ndown through generations, without a critical understanding of how we use that
\ntool and what effects it has besides the immediate ones.<\/p>\n
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That’s where this concept starts, but it goes far beyond
\nthat. In this essay and in the original Digital Cobbler web site we challenge two statements that
\nwe are being constantly hyped with at the beginning of the 21st century. The
\nfirst statement is that we must surround ourselves only with the very latest
\ntechnology to be able to get anything done efficiently. There is no denying
\nthat smart new solutions to technical problems are being invented everyday but
\nwe reject the idea that we must throw out successful old solutions everytime
\nwe want to use these new ones. Much of the Digital Cobbler is about incorporating
\nboth new and old technology into our digital environments.<\/p>\n
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The second hype-statement we are challenging is that we
\nare “living in an age of unprecedented change”. The digital cobbler
\ntries to look at the history of technology to discover how previous eras handled
\nthe change they were faced with because many cultures have faced the results
\nof overwhelming technical change. We believe there is a lot to learn from the
\npast.<\/p>\n
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When we use various digital technologies together, we say \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n The ultimate goal, beyond simply wanting to have fun with \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n The rest of this essay, written by Philip Hall, lays out \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nwe’re building digital environments<\/strong> in which we get these digital
\ntools to work together for us. Building and maintaining your digital environment
\nis what this website is all about. There is a discussion forum, reviews of hardware
\nand software, and links to other resources. Whenever you, the reader, try to
\nget two (or more) pieces of tech to work together in your home, office, personal
\nspace or whatever, we want to hear about it on this site. The Digital Cobbler
\nhas been conceived as a place to learn about cobbling together and sharing your
\nexperiences with others.<\/p>\n
\nthis, is to look for ways to put our technology together that brings new ideas
\nand new results that lets us get the most out of the the new computer age<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nthe theoretical basis for the Digital Cobbler.<\/p>\n