by Marty Coleman | Jul 2, 2010 | Henry David Thoreau, Technology - 2010 |
Day #5 of Technology Week at The Napkin Dad Daily
A tool is something that helps you achieve a goal. When you become obsessed with the tool for it’s own sake you are no longer working on a goal, but are now serving that tool. It doesn’t matter if it is the car you drive, the computer you work on, or the body you live in. If you are exclusively focused on the maintenance of those things then you are living a stunted life. Never lose sight of what you are doing with these tools, why you have them in the first place.
Are you using them or are you simply an agent to maintain them?
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Men have become tools of their tools.” – Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, American writer, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, surveyor, historian & philosopher
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 1, 2010 | Anonymous, Technology - 2010 |
Day #4 of Tech week here at The Napkin Dad Daily
On the other hand a computer is, ironically enough, a good reminder to take your time, smell the smoking electronics and enjoy life. If you are freaking out about how long everything takes on your computer you either have a slow computer (who doesn’t at one time or another) or you have unreal expectations.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“Never let a computer know you are in a hurry.” – Anonymous
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 30, 2010 | Technology - 2010, Walter Lippman |
Day #3 of Technology Week at The Napkin Dad Daily. By the way, I am up for an award. Check at the end of the blog today for details.
But YOU can still plant flowers if that same steamroller feels like it is running over you!
Machines can perhaps create a desire in you to achieve something. You see a new iPad and think ‘Wow, just imagine what I could do if I had that’. That is desire.
But initiative is something else. It is desire in action. It is doing something with your desire. An iPad, or any other technology, will never be able to give you the initiative. You have to have it, or build it, or borrow it, or fake it, but however you get it, it must, in the end, come from within you.
But if you do find it, in whatever way, then a steamroller is no match for you. Of course, it’s best to avoid known steamrollers (read negative people and situations) but that is not always possible. How you deal with the steamrollers of your life, both intentional from negative people and unintentional from the Universe itself, will be the deciding factor in how far your initiative will travel with you.
The light is green.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.” – Walter Lippman, 1889-1974, American writer, political commentator & journalist.
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 29, 2010 | Joseph Campbell, Technology - 2010 |
And for the most part the corporate world isn’t much different. It isn’t spelled out as exactly as it is in computer code, but it’s severity can also be just as strong.
To survive you have to adapt to that world, understand it’s boundaries and rules and play along even when there is an absurdist logic working within the company just as you have to do with a computer and other technology. For the most part, technology or a company will not bow to your individuality, you must bow to it.
That is why I was never all that great in a corporate world or in getting along with that Old Testament dude!
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“A computer is like the old testament God, lots of rules and no mercy.” – Joseph Campbell, 1904-1987, American writer, lecturer and mythologist. I saw Joseph Campbell lecture on James Joyce’s Ulysses back in 1982. I knew nothing about the book but he kept me, and the rest of the audience, enthralled for 2 hours. Now THAT is a good lecturer!
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 28, 2010 | Max Frisch, Technology - 2010 |
My late father-in-law, Dwight Johnson, who I have mentioned a number of times, was a photography buff. He was always taking photos of the family and of stuff. It was to the point where I sometimes felt he wasn’t really experiencing the event or scene, just recording it for future sharing or memories.
Now I am a photographer and have Flickr and Facebook and Twitter and a digital camera and an iPhone. Next thing you know I am seeing things the same way. I am wanting to both experience and record the event and I want to share it.
But I always make a point to experience it first, I want to know what it is I am recording. Last night for example we had incredible thunderstorms coming in from the west at sunset. I had to get out in the backyard and take the pics right then or it was over. I experienced the wind, the humidity, the wildly flying birds being blown about. I experienced the clouds taking shape, the light moving around the edges, the rising mountains and deep crevices of the clouds and the flashes of lightning. In some ways I feel like I experienced it even more intensely because I had my camera in hand. I was anticipating, waiting, watching, feeling changes happen.
But I know it is a different type of experience than simply looking at something. But overall I feel blessed being able to share the visual world I experience with others so I am not sure I would change a thing.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Technology: the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.” – Max Frisch, 1911,1991, Swiss architect, playwright and novelist
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by Marty Coleman | Oct 30, 2009 | Stewart Brand, Technology - 2010 |
Ok, so to all my friends of a certain age, meaning about my age, I have something to say to you…
GET WITH THE PROGRAM!
ahhh…that felt good.
As we speak my cat is exploring in the mesh of cables accompanying my old scanner, printer and computer that is in the back of my office…she is with the program.
Where was I? Oh yea, I do NOT want to hear you brag about your incompetence when it comes to technology! What is the point in having pride about not knowing something, not being able to handle something? Be quiet, do some study and figure it out.
I would write more but I have to go to the Apple store today to get my computer diagnosed because I only figured out yesterday that I can do that. I thought it would cost a bundle, but it’s free. Of course the new part (likely a graphics card) will cost a bundle but that’s the way that is.
I write this fragmented tirade because I spent the better part of yesterday being rolled over by not one steamroller, but four steamrollers, all with different answers. I wrote stuff down, judged who I thought actually knew what the hell they were talking about (1.5 out of the first 3) then was persistent as a woodpecker with the fourth until I finally got something figured out.
Technology isn’t easy, but the consequence of not dealing with it is that you become OLD! You may not feel old, but before you know it you will be one of those people who say ‘These kids today….back when I was a kid we chopped wood for the fire, slew the bears in the woods’…yada yada yada.
Don’t be that person, ok?
Thanks,
gotta go.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Once new technology rolls over you, if you aren’t part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.” – Stewart Brand, 1938-not dead yet, American, Author of the Whole Earth Catalog
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