gyrmination

There are two ways I approach a computer, any computer. In each mindset it is nearly impossible for me to escape to the other. One: the computer is a tool. Two: the computer is a metatool. When I treat it as a metatool, a tool to be sharpened, honed, tuned for greater efficacy, I delved deeply into it, I am led along myriad paths exploring the work of others who deal with it in such a way. But I am unable to create with it in the sense of letting my life energy flow into unhinged expression. I can code and tinker within the construct of the machine, but my effort does not attain a higher level of meaning. My actions are utilitarian, satisfying perhaps in the sense of purchasing a new product or fixing an existing one.

When I treat the computer as a tool, a finished tool I do not need to inspect, I accept it in its present condition, whatever that may be. I am freed from the delving, the proposition of a bottomless search, breadth first or depth first, however you slice it. I objectify the computer; it is what it is; I repair only what is necessary to allow me to continue my work. I bear no emotional relationship with it; having been severed by my determination to the task at hand, the computer itself is utilitarian to me, a conduit through which I catalyse greater movement and push on towards the real possibilities of growth, in writing, with pictures and patchwork media.

Something in my psyche drives me towards one attitude or another. I want to observe myself and learn. What is it that drives me, eggs me on to flip the switch first thing in the morning? The belief that by completing the little actions, checking the mail, surfing to news sites, I have done something useful? It is a nervous habit founded upon the aesthetic (misinterpretation?) of success, of successful usage of time. I can do things so quickly on the computer. Is this fact alone not enough to justify the accomplishments based on computer usage? Or, what “things”? Such actions are empty actions. Sometimes I find myself checking my mail with absolutely no intent to respond to any messages I read. This seems no mood to have when checking mail. It is as if simply by reading sorting deleting those new messages, flagging the important ones for reply at some later unspecified date, I have done something useful.

Time to accept the futility of utility, the use of uselessness.

The web browser is a particularly tempting tool for creation-stifling. Its eternal promise of more information leading to ever more information is a siren’s call to human weakness. Single points of entry in the graph quickly spin off into exponential reams of information, all at my greedy fingertips, consumable for free free FREE if you don’t count the time and the health of my eyes. I look up and find that I have ten or fifteen tabs open in Firefox, the tab titles are packed so densely that they can only hint at the content stowed in their respective pages before petering into ellipsis. Information pushing information is not necessarily a bad thing, but the upshifted pace of this process on the internet skews me towards a kind of cursory approach to information gathering: broad and shallow. I often find myself impatiently hopping between pages with quite disjoint content while other pages are loading. In the end it becomes impossible to truly focus on any single news article or task. This is the illusion of multitasking the computer makes possible, failure with success its mask.

I should treat my entire session interacting with a computer as a single unbroken tightly woven thread, not unraveling in every direction, tangled in splintering interests and shards of attention. I dive in, I swim out, despite the schools of dazzling rainbow fish that tempt me to pull open the curtains of water and sink deeper.

Computer use while traveling consisted of an alternative paradigm. Whenever I frequented an internet cafe, I knew which tasks were at hand, and I knew that my time would be limited - time was money, as the faded saying went. I prepared hand written journal entries to type directly into my blog. I checked my mail quickly and replied immediately to many messages. Internet cafes were something like otherworldly portals that would mysteriously appear in our dimension, we could enter and interact with that world, but everything we did there also stayed there. In longer term travel there is no concept of local storage - all information meant to be preserved must utilize one sort of web service or another, whether it be a blogging host, email, or a personal website. This is actually a pretty liberating model of computer usage (one Google is pushing for?) that unties one from ownership of any specific computer. Strangely enough, it was the very inaccessibility of internet cafes that made my time on those computers so gratifying and productive.

Welcome to the All-You-Can-Eat buffet of the computer you own. I’m watching to see who gets consumed first.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 at 15:32 and is filed under Observation, Rumination. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.