I am among those who believe that we are fortunate to live in a time in which we have access to more information than ever before. But it is not technology itself that has produced the benefits that we enjoy, it is the collective efforts of millions of individuals who have dedicated their energies to use it to document and disseminate their ideas, their knowledge, and the things that excite them. By bringing their creativity to systems built of machines and code, Web designers, artists, writers, videographers, and editors of all stripes are collaborating on a colossal effort to broadcast the sum of our knowledge, recording it in ways that are not quite like anything that has come before. Such an undertaking is possible because of the magnitude of this collective effort itself. We give to the Web, it gives itself back to us, and we take what we find there back to our daily lives.
The Web is like a dynamic city, offering fortuitous surprises to those who take the time to stroll down its side streets, absorbing lessons where one would least expect to find them. I have lived and/or worked in New York City for many years and am convinced that every one of its inhabitants has his or her own, private City built upon a chance confluence of routine haunts, imagination, and memories. The Web is also like this and, like life itself, takes the shape of the ways in which each of us navigates through it. It grows through our impulse to record what seems worth recording, and in response to what individuals perceive as valuable in the traces others have left. It is a map of the world we inhabit, an encyclopedia of daily experience, with all of the strengths and weaknesses that such devices imply.
The ease with which one is able to speak back to the Web today seems to insist that each of us with the luxury to do so stake a claim in it and share our own thoughts and observations. Yes, the Web performs the same banal functions of advertising and commerce that other media have in the past. And a medium with such a low threshold for joining in poses the additional problem of the noise and clutter it accepts. The promise that Howard Rheingold identified in his book The Virtual Community appears to live on, however, as the Web continues to evolve, offering opportunities to contribute, to find a voice, and to connect with others in unique and meaningful ways.
Processed is an attempt to devote time to acts of observation, contemplation, and reciprocation, and to communicate back to the Web and its populace some perspectives on things that seem worth paying attention to. My own interests range across realms including science, the visual arts, literature, music and sound, architecture, design, and culture. Like others who have realized ways in which technology can shape the way we live, I hope that this forum will provide me an opportunity to formulate thoughts in ways that I might not otherwise. By sharing these ideas I also hope others might respond and teach me things I would not have known without going online.
Please stay tuned, and stay in touch.
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