BrnDmp

5 Things I cannot live without

Hans de Zwart and I write a monthly series titled: Parallax. We both agree on a title for the post and on some other arbitrary restrictions to induce our creative process. For this post we agreed to write about things we cannot live without. The restriction is that the things should have a hierarchical relationship where the lowest level of hierarchy is the microprocessor and the highest level is The Internet. Each thing should be described in 100 words. You can read Hans’ post with the same title here.

I choose this particular format because I wanted to think about what was really important to me given two obviously ubiquitous dominant technologies. Polarising them as the ends of a spectrum forces you think about (1.) the nature of the spectrum and (2.) possible hierarchies or gradients within that spectrum. I decided to start at ‘Internet’ and then see how that would trickle down to ‘microprocessor’. For each item I reflected on why I think it is important. The ‘cannot live without‘ from the title is highly overrated (i.e. for me) and is only there to satisfy search engines.

1. The Internet

The Internet for me equals connectivity and exchange. Connectivity and the open exchange of data and ideas allows and enables innovation at an hitherto unseen speed. Moreover, it democratizes the means of production by putting (access to) generative tools in the hands of everyone willing to create or share products and ideas. I realise there’s a cultural bias here as not everyone in the world has an equal opportunity to access the internet. Let’s be positive and assume that will only be a matter of time.

2. The Commandline Interface: CLI

This was the hardest item to pick and at first sight it might seem like the stranger in the midst of these 5. But choosing one particular, ‘most important‘, tool to access the internet left me hopelessly undecided. The closest would be the web browser, in particular Chromium, but the problem with a browser is that it does not have any direct link to my local computing device. That’s why I choose for the cli, for me the glue of any OS and the bridge between the Internet and you(r computer’s files, databases, programs, tools, whatever).

3. Linux

I use Linux as a placeholder for FOSS. Together with open standards, FOSS is such a powerful combo that it’s a mystery to me why governments don’t invest more money in it or develop more legislation around it. Of course, for me Linux is also synonym to all my favourite (cli) tools like vi, grep, bash, wget, rsync, R, find, sed, awk, php, apache, python, [endless list of tools I myself never even heard about]. It’s your workstation and server in one. It can do everything you want. If you can’t do it, you probably don’t want it.

4. My Laptop

A laptop is still my computing device of choice. For me, being mobile is a number 1 requirement. Of course there’s a boom in mobile devices nowadays (smartphones, tablets, netbooks) but I still feel these all fill in a niche whereas my laptop is really more like a Swiss army tool of productivity: I can create and edit documents, images, audio, video, browse the web and do programming. There was a hard fight with the netbook for this position. Still, the powerfull processor and the slightly bigger screen give me that extra edge that makes me opt for a laptop.

5. The Microprocessor

The microprocessor is the driving engine of most of the technological developments of the last 30-40 years. Together with it’s older brother, the microchip, it’s becoming to dominate actually everything. Think about the rise of the internet of things, Sensor Webs or just your bank’s debit card. The microprocessor is already at the stage of just being there. I think The Internet will also reach that status some day soon.

Looking at points 1 through 5, the eerie feeling comes over me that it seems to be a gradient of less and less choice. You can choose to live and function normally in society without the Internet for example. But I doubt if you could live in a Western society without microprocessors or microchips. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, as long as the choice within those levels stays open and free.