To a great extent, the Digital Cobbler came from a very practical, hands-on way of
\nlooking at technology. However, another way of looking at the digital environment
\nis from a theoretical perspective. That is, a theoretical look at how we are
\nusing and developing technology in this culture, what we might learn from technological
\ndevelopments in the past and what that might tell us about how to use what we
\nhave go more effectively.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The theoretical perspective looks at technology as a vast powerful force that
\nhas in the past greatly reshaped the world and our place in it. Various theorists
\ndescribe technology as a system or an ecology and the age we are in as the beginning
\nof the age of computers (or "information" or "complexity")
\nand that this new age, while replacing one that has lasted for more than five-hundred
\nyears, may go on for as long as that or longer (but it is not the point of this
\nsite to guess the future).<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the broad, overwhelming implications that will be discussed here, most
\nof us continue to view the powerful technology we have simply as "tools".
\nWe increasingly have dozens of choices about how we choose to apply these tools
\nand, if nothing else, the purpose here is to give us a better context with which
\nto apply them and some understanding of the future implications that our choices
\nmight have. We are all likely already aware, to some degree, that these powerful
\ntools can greatly enrich our lives; that they can enhance our lives. Not by
\nany magic powers they might have but because they can allow us to avoid the
\nthings we don’t like doing and they can free us up to do the things we do like
\ndoing. However, we might not really be aware that the way we adopt these tools
\nas individuals will also affect how they are incorporated into our culture.
\nThis culture-wide adoption can be slow and inconsistent and it is not directly
\nevident how our own use affects our culture but I certainly believe that subsequent
\ngenerations will be using today’s technology (or its direct decendants) based
\non rules they have been taught that we first applied.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
James Burke , in his book The Day the Universe Changed<\/strong>, suggests \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n W. Daniel Hillis (Pattern on the stone, pg. xi) points out, “these days, \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n The fundamental reason to think about how we relate to new technology at all \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nthat people at a certain time and place act in a certain way because they know<\/em>
\nhow the world works. Burke’s examples are often the big ideas that changed what
\na culture knew to be true and led to a different perspective. We are not really
\nany different than our ancestors in this regard. We know<\/em> how the world
\nworks and how people are and how to apply the tools we have to get what we want
\nout of this world. Although computerization is changing the tools we use we
\nmust always remember that raw computing power itself is not much use to us and
\nmost people are never in a position to manipulate this power. The electrons
\nracing around a microchip adhere to a certain microchip design which is run
\nby an operating system of some sort upon which some kind of software application
\nuses inputs and outputs to help us do some job. As soon as you progress beyond
\nthe raw electrons in that scenario, each one of the subsequent steps has been
\ndesigned and built by some person or group of people. These folks are not much
\ndifferent than the rest of us. They are products of their time and place and
\nthey do their work within the context of what they know to be true
\nand what is known by the culture around them. As a result of this,
\nthere is no reason to think that the raw computing power and the electrons that
\nhave been harnessed to do some job for you can not be re-harnessed to do some
\nother job with exactly the same sophistication of tools. As we go back in time
\nand investigate the nature of technological discovery and invention of previous
\ncenturies we will see that many great developments that changed how people view
\nthe world were not really breakthroughs of new physics and chemistry but were,
\nrather, new assemblies of existing processes and concepts that had not been
\ntried in that order before.<\/p>\n
\ncomputers are popularly thought of as multi-media devices, capable of incorporating
\nand combining all previous forms of media — text, graphics, moving pictures,
\nsound. I think this point of view leads to an underestimation of the computer’s
\npotential. It is certainly true that a computer can incorporate and manipulate
\nall other media, but the true power of the computer is that it is capable of
\nmanipulating not the expression of ideas but also the ideas themselves.
\nThe amazing thing to me is not that a computer can hold the contents of all
\nthe books in a library but that it can notice relationships between the concepts
\ndescribed in the books…”. These comments are certainly apt. They point
\nus to the idea that when we begin using computers in their most common PC configuration,
\nwe are using the devices as they have been configured for the most common consumer
\npurposes; something designed to sell us an idea or mind-space in which to use
\nthe computer. In actuality, however, the computer is capable of a far greater
\nrange of functionality than is presented to us by the common consumer operating
\nsystem and by the applications that are sold with almost every home and office
\ncomputer. Much of the computing power that we have bought is used up presenting
\nthe information to us in a pleasant graphical format and running “type-ahead”
\nor word completion routines with our wordprocessor. It is possible, however,
\nto use this same computing power to provide entirely different services to our
\ndaily routines and getting us to think about what those other services might
\nbe is one of the main purposes of this project.<\/p>\n
\nis because we find that many people dislike, or are afraid of new tech. Tools
\nbecome cultural artifacts and people become attached to how the tools look and
\nhow we use them. The very fact of new powerful tools changing the culture is
\nvery threatening to people who fear these changes. This happens both in personallives and in professions andvocations.<\/p>\n