How does the hardware you use shape who you are?

[Dani]

How do you think the hardware that you use today shapes the kind of person you become in the future? I was never someone glued to my phone until a few years ago. Today I am, for sure. I'm most likely much less present because of it.

[rproffitt]

Until this year I would have written no. But due to the march towards fascism we have put money and time into hardware to help in the cause.

1. Big printer to make fairly large protest banners and signs.
2. 3D printers to churn out Anti-I.C.E. whistles.
3. A second printer with megatank ink to churn out a wide variety of content.

So all this hardware has supercharged the efforts of many in our town to push back the regime.

I bet you didn't expect this.

[Reverend Jim]

I think hardware has made me an angrier person. Technology was supposed to make our lives better but it seems I am suffering (not to minimize actual suffering) death by a thousand cuts. Nothing works well with anything else (in my experience), and many things that do work, work poorly.

[Dani]

But how has that hardware shaped you? You explained how you use hardware, as a tool, to help further a cause you strongly believe in. But those tools haven’t changed your views, your interests, your values, how you choose to spend your time, or changed or shaped you as a person in any meaningful way.

[Dani]

I bet you didn't expect this.

On the contrary, you have become quite predictable in your constant attempt to shoehorn an answer that manages to show off your political views regardless of if it answers the question or is even relevant to the discussion or not.

[Reverend Jim]

I find that with access to so much information I am much more likely to challenge what I read/see than just accept it outright. I also tend to have much more in-depth conversations about things, and some of those conversations (particularly with Dani and Mike P. from Quebec) have made me see things from different perspectives. That's something you only get from honest conversation. Unlike conversations at, for example, parties, conversations online give one a chance to reflect and research before responding.

Hardware hasn't much changed what I do as much as how I do it. I used to read paper books, listen to vinyl music and watch movies in the theatre and on TV. All those things can now be done on my laptop.

[Dani]

I misspoke. How has the technology you used shape who you are? ;)

[Reverend Jim]

I suppose when it comes to that, technology has not fundmentally changed who I am. What is HAS done is allow me to express my creativity. That makes me happier and more fulfilled, but I am fundamentally the same person.

Plus it paid for my house and just about everything else I have. I can't imagine anything else I could have done career-wise that would have allowed me that. I suppose had it not been for computers I would have spent 30+ years in a mind-numbing job that would have left me old and bitter. So in that sense, technology DID change me since I am now neither old nor bitter ;-)

[Dani]

Technology has been far more than just a career for me. I taught myself programming at age 4, and by 5 told my computer illiterate mom that I wanted to have my own programs. (A five year old’s way of saying they wanted to be a computer programmer in the 1980s when they had never heard of it before.) She had no clue what I was talking about, and it was my earliest memory of feeling completely misunderstood. From then on, being a computer nerd dominated my entire sense of being. My friendships. My interests. My hobbies. My dating life. For as long as I can remember.

[Watson6601]

It's amazing how much begins with that initial spark. It's amazing how early encounters with technology can influence so much of who we become. For some people, it's just a tool, but for others, like you, it becomes a part of their identity and how they connect with the world.

[trcooke]

Technology has more and more made me appreciate the value of simplicity and predictability in design.

Too many of today's "problems" are solved with complicated technology when something much simpler would suffice and be better (my definition of better). Not everything needs an iPhone App.

For example, I like to have music in my house and I have a mix of old 30 year old HiFi kit, and new Sonos network streamers.

To play music on my 30 year old HiFi kit, I turn it on, put in a CD, hit play, and I have music.

To play music on my Sonos, I find my phone, find the app, discover the app needs updated, discover the update has changed the UI and I don't know where stuff is anymore, go to play an album, discover the player has dropped off the network, abandon. 20 minutes have passed and all I wanted to do was listen to some music, but instead I'm contemplating violence on the Sonos player.

It doesn't feel like progress.

[Reverend Jim]

I taught myself programming at age 4

I think, at age 4, I could tie my own shoes and wave bye-bye. Imagine what I could have accomplished if we had had computers in 1957.

[Dani]

To play music on my 30 year old HiFi kit, I turn it on, put in a CD, hit play, and I have music.

Or ... Put in the CD. Hit play. Silence. Take out the CD. Blow on it. Put it back in again. Error message. Too bad the error message is 20 characters but the LED display only accomodates 8 characters. Go into the closet. Get out the manual. Try to figure out what ERROR 111 means. Give up browsing the 500 page manual. Spend 10 minutes looking for your eyeglass case. Take out the lint-free cloth you use for your glasses. Take the CD out again. Wipe it down. Put the CD back in. Silence. Finally find ERROR 111 in the manual. The CD is too scratched up. Throw the CD in the garbage. Find your phone. Open the Sonos app.

I think, at age 4, I could tie my own shoes and wave bye-bye.

That's how we're different, you and I. I don't have a memory of learning to tie my own shoes until I was 5 or 6, long after I taught myself programming.

[Reverend Jim]

Put in the CD. Hit play. Silence. Take out the CD. Blow on it...

There is something special about being able to hold the media in your hands. Especially vinyl. I remember how excited I was when I unwrapped Walter/Wendy Carlos' Switched on Bach. It was such a change from the novelty electronic music records that came before (Kaleidoscopic Vibrations, etc.). I knew that music as we knew it had changed. And for the better (unlike disco).

Vinyl may skip and pop but it never refuses to play. Unless the dog gets a hold of it, and that only happened once.

[SCBWV]

Probably never listened to 45s or 33s. Or had to tell the kids not to dance so close to the turntable. Or had to wedge a book of matches in your 8 track. Or had to wait for your favorite song to play on AM or FM WITHOUT the DJ talking too long. That's how we're different, you and I. 😉

[Reverend Jim]

I still have some old RCA and Decca 78s along with a wind-up Victrola style player. I never understood why out of all the sizes (45, 78, 33 1/3), only the 45s had this massive hole that required a stupid plastic insert.

Do you remember being able to stack a bunch of LPs on the turntable? That was our version of a playlist.

[SCBWV]

Oh my! I forgot about that. You could stack them and they would drop when the one playing finished. <Sigh> They have little imagination in today's hardware. What the older times could do with hardware switches and vacuum tubes!

[Dani]

Vinyl may skip and pop but it never refuses to play. Unless the dog gets a hold of it, and that only happened once.

I thought we were talking about CDs? CDs and apps are both digital.

[SCBWV]

They used to (probably still do) sell kits to polish out scratches on CDs. Probably automotive Scratch-X would do as well.

[Reverend Jim]

You could stack them and they would drop

That was our version of a "playlist". Harder to share with your friends though.

[Yoruba45]

Hardware shapes how we interact, create, and learn. It influences our habits, skills, and experiences but does not fundamentally change who we are.