What is a computer to you?
Is it a tool to get things done?
Something you can run a web browser on, play minesweeper, and do your taxes with?
Access to an "virtual" community?
A way to find information about random topics?
An easy source of news on demand?
A way to making a living?
A toy for entertainment?
Access to music?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clark
What makes a computer different from magic?
For a novice user (or even an expert, depending on the circumstances), what is the difference between a "magic spell" and the steps that have to be followed (to the letter) in order to complete a task with a computer?
But computers aren't magic. Even when they are unpredictable, they are predictable.
And computers aren't any of the things that I've listed. Not really.
Computers are a kind of potential energy. The trick is coming to grips with how to deal with it.
I'm often amazed by the different ways that people interact with computers, usually because of the limitations and expectations they have. I dread the day that I am so set in my expectations of what a computer is and can do that I can't adapt to change in an effective way. Or maybe that day has already come and gone. It's hard to tell, until someone else (usually younger, and brighter eyed) moves what you considered an unmoveable object.
The hard thing to do is to predict where this is all going. The power available in the average desktop now is unreal, but it's mostly squandered. Something will come along and it will be like flipping on a light switch. But what is that something?
I can see all of this information and power spinning around us waiting for a spark. I keep feeling like it might all lead to economic revolution and upheaval. There are too many things that people do today that could more easily be done automatically, but no one wants to change. When things to change, what well people do? Will you have a "job" where you do nothing just to "earn" a living? (or is that what we have now?)
See, I believe that there will come a point in time where we will have automated ourselves out of everything, or at least most things. But if you do that, how do you keep an economy working? If companies don't have to have employees, then they will get rid of them (to save on costs), but if no one has a job, then there are no consumers for the cheap products that companies are making. Of course, I think our economic system is flawed already. It will eventually change. But I digress.
So, what's the point I'm getting at? I don't know either. I also think that we're going to destroy ourselves soon enough anyway, so it doesn't really matter.
I had a dream about the semi-new computers here at work. Odd that I would dream about that.
My right eyebrow has been twitchy for the past couple weeks. I wonder why.
Sometimes, I notice some kind of audio sense memory. Usually related to a time when I listened to the same music over and over again, or in the same context over and over again. Uncommon Ritual reminds me of Age of Empires, for example.
Lately, I've felt like I should be creative, but I can't focus enough to do anything about it.
Malachi B-J Brown malachus+spencerandbrown@gmail.com