Dispatches from the Cockpit 005: On Digital Beauty
OK, we all can feel like crumbling and that we cannot bear it anymore. But, there are times, when we cannot afford to crumble and luckily life goes on irrespective of how we feel about it. That life can go on despite us screaming “I cannot bear it anymore” is one of the strongest and most positive features of life. I love it because this gives us a big chance. Very early in my life, when I once fainted – classic adolescent event – and hit my head on the pavement splitting open one of my eyebrows, the doctor who stitched me up laughed and said: Good lesson to teach you that your vegetative systems keep you perfectly alive while you are in deep sleep. OK, no time to crumble, but perhaps the unique chance to do something which you have up to now always avoid to do: To look after your digital equipment and learn a bit how it works. If you have not understood yet, how fortunate we are nowadays to have such an advanced digital structure surrounding us and being able with the help of the internet to stay in touch with each other and offer and organize help, or be helped ourselves, start appreciating it fully. We are dealing here with the most positive side of technology and the more we understand its workings the more we can use it to the best not only for ourselves but everybody as well. (Having said that does not mean, FaceBook is not the biggest Trojan Horse ever build and cunningly offered as a gift to mankind.) We did not have anything close to the internet in Calanish and I can tell you this gives me the shivers with hindsight. I will not go into details. All I want to say here: If you feel like crumbling remind yourself how privileged and lucky we actually are having a computer at home or a mobile phone in our pocket. If you feel bored in isolation or if you do not know what to do or if a side of you starts screaming: “I cannot stand it anymore”, just kick yourself into some clear-minded thinking state and decide to do what – as I said above – you have avoided doing for many months and years: To finally become computer savvy and allow yourself to be enamoured by the beauty of your devices and all the incredible intelligence which has created them. All you have to do is to google or consult YouTube for tutorials for whatever you want to learn and you might discover that doing that is far from being boring, without human value, not artistic or creative. Over the years I have discovered a fascinating dialectic between a deeper understanding of technology and how to work with it and how this can result in a most intriguing influence on one’s creativity. Modern technology provides us with means which allow us to do things from the little room where you have placed your desktop computer which only 20 years ago still needed a range of different specialists, companies and a lot of money. Just discover and learn to appreciate your digital helpmates.