Tools and creations

Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.” - Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making us Stupid, www.theatlantic.com


After writing yesterdays blog I noticed my writing changes when I'm using my phone rather than my computer. It's funny, because anyone who writes using different devices sees change in style depending on the tool. The outcome of our work is so closely entwined to the with the way we create it, that I often wonder how much of it is actually effected.

I read the above paragraphs in an article by Nicholas Carr titled "Is Google Making us Stupid" in my English class in my last year of CEGEP. It was one of the most interesting articles I'd ever read and made many good points on both sides of the modern day cybernetic laziness discussion. I'll say no more, and I suggest you all read it.

When I write with my phone rather than a keyboard I find my thoughts fleeting. I cannot stay on one topic at a time and my sentences become extremely concise. What would be whole sections of text become single paragraphs, and what would be paragraphs become sentences. Whether this is down to the ADD of smart phones or the environments I'm in when I use them I don't know, but the pure form of my style is skewed.

I've always used keyboards to write. So I'm very used to that style. But what is the true form of my style? I have no idea. If writing on a smart phone while I'm on the train makes me write so differently, then how much does a keyboard change how I express myself? Also, does this apply to other things?

Lets see

Photography - I take more meaningful pictures with a DSLR than a cellphone.
Settlers of Catan - Depending which version of the game I'm playing, I'll play differently.

Flawless transition

Catan - JDM Media

So Eric, Cameron and I all love playing a board game called Settlers of Catan. It's a game where you need to make your civilization better than everyone else's. If you like having spare time and not losing chunks of your day, do not try it. You will instantly be hooked.

We've gotten to the point playing that we make important decisions based on the outcome of a game. I won my room in the house because of Catan, and slowly I believe we are depending on Catan for major life decisions. We should probably stop, but it is so God damn addictive.

We're also starting to make our own rules up, and I fear this is not for the best. It's starting with stuff like trade routes giving players advantages and exploration becoming a part of the game. I'm worried we might end up applying rules that involve real life commitments, like earning victory points through loans or the farming of real wheat to build game board cities. It seems like an unrealistic concern, but I'm sure that's what they said about Hitler after the Beer Hall Putsch. Look where that got us.

Now that I think about it, after Hitler was arrested he wrote Mein Kampf. I wonder how it different it would have been if, instead of pen and paper, he'd used his HTC smartphone.

- James