We have this medium: it is free, it is flexible, it is far reaching. It is relatively new.
We should play with it. We should make things that are broken, we should break things that works. And then fix them. And then develop them. Then throw them in the bin, and go play with something else. Then build something out of broken parts and see what happens. Duct tape and superglue.
Soon, I will have finished my bachelor in digital media production. At this point, in the last semester, I am working on information architecture, information design, interaction design. Important stuff, absolutely. Very interesting. But after these three years, I feel restless and unfulfilled. Yes, you need to know the rules to be able to break them intelligently, but I was hoping for more play. More silliness in the name of education.
Myself and two guys are at the moment working on our bachelor thesis. The amount of project-controlling tools are distracting. There is a forest of tools and requirements, supposedly helpful, to get us to where we want to go. But the process of administrating these tools, setting them up, using them regularly, recording time sheets, short term goals, long term goals, documentation, deadlines, tracking documents, personal diaries, group diary, exchanging ideas, recording ideas, classifying ideas, meta, meta, meta…
This is supposedly the world of sensible engineers and how they work. But it is not. Out there in the real world, things work in mysterious, accidental and random ways. Sometimes dictated by company history and culture, sometimes dictated by what would be the most efficient here and now. Sometimes it is dictated by one wacky individual.
The world – and the internet – is full of information. Pin-point information and accuracy. Minuscule details.
Maybe this is because computers works on 0 and 1; count, for each, or, this, and, else, if. Precision. Computers are not canvasses; there are no buckets of paint, no waking up to files stored randomly, no organic parts, no decay, no stacks of papers falling down, requiring re-sorting and re-thinking. Computers are stupid. They do as they are told. It is difficult to see with new eyes; especially if your brain is trained in programming. This, and, or, else, if.
Maybe we should stop taking it so seriously. We don’t really need all this accuracy, all this information that tells me exactly, precisely some tiny detail, that I do not have the knowledge or wisdom to put into context. Fragments that do not make up a whole, tiny pieces of information, numbers, simplistic headlines.
We should make web pages with less information. Content, yes. Intelligently, certainly.
Transient, changeable, nomadic. Spanning aeons, making up connections. Compare, discard, ditch. Deliberate misalignment. Play. Arse around.
I have grown to care less and less for the technology as such, and I yearn more for what would push my imagination, make my brain hurt from thinking. Design is where science and art break even. Of course it hurts.
