Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
It is me who writes, even though I write differently when I use a pen than when I
use a keyboard.
The computer is
not
a tool, but a machine, and more precisely: an automaton.
10
I can make such a claim only against a position concerning tools and machines and
their relation. Both, machines and tools, are instruments that we use in work. They
belong to the means of any production. But in the world of the means of production,
tools and machines belong to different historic levels of development. Tools appear
early, and long before machines. After the machine has arrived, tools are still with
us, and some tools are hard to distinguish from machines. Still, to mix the two—as
is very popular in the computing field where everything is called a “tool”—amounts
to giving up history as an important category for scientific analysis. Here we see
how the ideological character of so many aspects of computing presents itself.
Nietzsche's observation, that the tools of writing influence our thoughts, remains
true. Using the typewriter, he was no longer forced to form each and every letter's
shape. His writing became typing: he moved from the continuous flow of the arm
and hand to the discrete hits of the fingers. We discover the digital fighting the
analog: for more precision and control, but also for standardisation. Similarly, I give
up control over spelling when I use properly equipped software (spell-checker). At
the same time, I gain the option of rapid changes of typography and page layout.
If creation is to generate something that was not there before, then it is me who
is creative. My creation may dwell on a trivial level. The more trivial, the easier it
may be to transfer some of my creative operations onto the computer. It makes a
difference to draw a line by hand from here to roughly there on a sheet of paper,
as compared to issuing the appropriate command sequence, which I know connects
points
A
and
B
. My thought must change. From “roughly here and there” to “pre-
cisely these coordinates”.
My activity changes. From the immediate actor and generator of the line, I trans-
form myself into the mediating specifier of conditions a machine has to obey when
it generates the physical line. My part has become “drawing by brain” instead of
“drawing by hand”. I have removed myself from the immediacy of the material.
I have gained a higher level of semioticity.
My brain helps me to precisely describe how to draw a line between any two
points, whereas before I always drew just one line. It always was a single and par-
ticular line: this line right here. Now it has become: this is how you do it, indepen-
dent of where you start, and where you end. You don't embark on the adventure of
actually and physically drawing one and only one line. You anticipate the drawing
of any line.
I am the creative one, and I remain the creator. However, the stuff of my creation
has changed from material to semiotic, from particular to general, from single case
to all cases. As a consequence, my thinking changes. I use the computer to execute a
program. This is an enormous shift from the embodied action of moving the pencil.
Different skills are needed, different thinking is required and enforced. Those who
10
Cf. Sundin (
1980
).
