A Technophile’s Waxing of Love for Technology
To those who know me, I am a rabidly unrepentant technophile. It’s true, I love technology. I mostly love the idea of it, the potential of it, the ways in which it can open up whole universes to us. My husband can’t walk past a hardware store, and we both can’t walk past an art supply store, without the swell of the “Potential Possibilities” welling up inside of us. Technology is this for me. It is literally all about creative and innovative possibilities, in the now and the future.
The World Wonder That Is the Internets
Anyone can learn anything they want at any time.
Since one of my primary creative interests has to do with writing, I am engaging the technology of the Internet all the time for research. The vast expanse of human knowledge right at my fingertips. Fourteen billion years to get here and everything I need for external knowledge would barely be as accessible as it is without technology.
This also goes for my crafting creativeness. Maybe I need to understand a particular technique, I can look it up (and get dozens of perspectives on this one bit!); maybe I want to learn an entirely new craft and I don’t have the time or money to go to school or a workshop, I can learn the whole thing online.
Devices, Wonderful Devices!
Let’s not even get into the fact that I am writing this on a device that allows me to type quickly, correct mistakes on the fly, save and recall my work. I grew up with handwriting and strike-key typewriters. Maybe you know the pain. Maybe you’ve never even heard of a strike-key typewriter, in which case, pray your thanks to whatever divinity you access.
And then not even to get into smartphones, those brilliantly amazing super duper external cortex devices, again, right at my fingertips at any given moment. The entirety of humanity’s doings in this tiny little slab! C’mon, that’s utterly amazing!
A Little Gaming Perhaps?
I’m also a video gamer and the current format of gaming wouldn’t be possible without technology. One, the physicality, meaning the consoles, the computers; two, the designs! The conceptual, the writing, the programming, the art, the music, the voice acting, the motion capture, the incredible thought and planning that goes into just one game. That’s a whole lot of technological support around the creative right there!
Innovation for Creation’s Sake
Let’s talk about the creation of technology just for the sole sake of creativity!
The sky is literally the limit here for the options. For example, a tablet with a digital pencil and an app for drawing, painting, illustrating, etc. For that matter, the multitude of apps that allow us to color or learn or create or plan specifically around the creative. Digital cameras that made our film-processing darkroom days a thing of the past (although sometimes I miss the smell of the chemicals and the whole darkroom process, but I don’t miss all the standing).
Photo editing software for some pretty wild post-processing effects that would have never been possible in the analog. Video capturing devices and video editing software to create a whole panoply of creative expressions. 3-D printers to create a really vast variety of really cool things (there is such a ridiculous variety of filament stock materials that can be used to make some pretty amazing stuff).
Those are the main ones I can think of and I imagine there are many more as well as future options we haven’t even conceived of yet.
The Shaping of the Future Is Up to Us
Here’s yet another example.
- What will future technology look like in regards to creativity?
- Will it have changed how we engage creativity?
- Will it continue to aid our creativity?
- Maybe it will even hinder in certain ways?
I often wonder about this. I know we have a rabid expansion of technology that might be moving faster than human cognitive and emotional evolution and we are engaging it in ways that are perhaps in parts compulsive or maybe even shallow, or aid the distracted and resistor parts of ourselves so that we don’t have to focus on the important and juicy things.
We have the opportunity in the now to shape how technology will look, act and probably even behave in the future. We have the opportunity now to create technologies that will aid and even deepen our creative ventures.
The Sentient and The Creative Machines
Of course, speaking of technological behaviors, AI (Artificial Intelligence) will become a regular thing, and we can guide that towards creative directions. But we will also have the opportunity to be able to help AS (Artificial Sentience) grow, to mentor and teach, and help AS organize as creative beings.
Perhaps this new and aware life will show us new ways into creativity that we would have never considered before. Perhaps there will be collaborations between sentient humans and sentient machines in the creative realm that take on new and utterly interesting forms.
Looking Ahead, I Gotta Wear Shades
Certainly many of these changes won’t happen in my lifetime, especially things like Artificial Sentience, but that doesn’t dampen my technophile cheering spirit. I definitely still feel the swell of “Potential Possibilities” in technologies in the now and the future. Especially the future.
I am a little sad though that I won’t get to see all the cool things I’ve read about in the vast amount of Science-Fiction I’ve indulged in during my lifetime.
I think Science-Fiction is merely a constant moving thought experiment, and as the bastardization of a famous movie quote goes, “If you think it, they will build it.” At least at some point.
If humans are able to direct technology in positive directions; if we don’t burn ourselves out before we’re able to make it to the stars, before we are able to create all these wondrous technological things we can think up, we will have such a bright, innovative and amazingly, creatively juicy future ahead of us!
