my digital is too analog.

look at the things you use today. your phones, computers, the softwares on the computers, the things those softwares do, the internet, blogs, social media everything digital. now think of a time before these, the time before you had any of your digital realities. think of how people used analog things to do what you do with your digital. the watches, the word processors, the drawing tools. even the things you use the internet for. like communication, publishing, photo sharing, ideation, collaboration, everything that you do today, was being done then. slowly, none the less, but surely. now you have blogs, then you had news letters, now you have websites for designers, then you had bulky portfolios, now you have a mobile phone, then you had telephones, the text messaging of today, is the direct lineage of the telegram. and i can go on. but what am i rambling about here?

what i really mean to say is... we havent changed anything. we made the digital do analog things are satisfied with them. architects use autocad for 2d drawings, and are happy with it, only a few push things to their full potential. how many architectural firms think of computers and digital techniques as more than tools that replaced the drawing board? we call them design drawing. not designing. Word replaced the word processor or the typewriter. books written on the type are like books written on a computer, no change there. just the convenience of a select few. i am not one of those shun your computer, nature is the right way to go preaching hippie. i love my macbook. more than the people around me, but its just a sad realization that since the time someone invented the printing press, we havent moved much, and since the time of the telephone we have moved even lesser.
the mouse simulates a pen, the screen supposed to be paper, digital watches with needles, mp3 players that look like cassette tape players, bluetooth headsets made to look like Bakelite phones. we even had mobile phones with jog dialers,
all new technology at some point simulates and if we are lucky just about replaces old technology.

now forget what you know. think of something that has never been done before. like the multi touch track pad in the macbooks, and the new apple mouse since the beginning of the mouse/trackpad usage, no one thought of more than two fingers and 3 buttons. or google wave, first time ever, we got a system that is built on the internet, not on the postal service! social networking broke the mould to some extent, orkut, facebook, linkedin all these did move out of the general already existing since adam and eve.

now lets look at what work we do. day in and day out. time and time again, do we do the same things that people have been doing since for ever? or are we doing something new? is your digital too analog?

food for thought. and action. :)

(i know i got preachy on this one... but i was sick of the autocad interface when this one came about :) too bad you got the wrong end of this stick)