"All of life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
The idea of creating a work of art on a computer started out a little unfamiliar and frustrating. Once the blogging system was understood, it became easier. The most noteworthy thing about the process of creating this blog is the fact that I had to use paper to make sense of it all. I taped mini-notes to my computer and had an intricate hand-written organization system that had more to do with how the ideas were organized spatially than the tactile experience of having pen on paper. I also had to print my quotes out and make piles before posting them to a blog. Only once the ideas were spread out in front of me was it a manageable task to organize something like this.
Malcom Gladwell describes this phenomenon perfectly in his 2002 article entitled, "The Social Life of Paper." In this article, Gladwell explains that although computer technology is supposed to be replacing paper, it isn't. He references many fun examples; the air traffic controllers who use a paper method that pre-dates the radar, a study conducted at the IMF on how paper is used among employees, and the study of the piles of paper existing on the desk of the average person who uses one.
Paper has been noted by cognitive psychologists as being helpful for us for performing certain tasks. I found this to be completely true in my process. According to Sellen and Harper, authors of "The Myth of the Paperless Office," paper is useful for three main reasons:
1. It is tangible
2. It is spatially flexible
3. It is tailorable
If my common place blog was a house, the technology was the land the house was built upon and the paper the tools for creating the floorplan. It may be that is is never possible to fully detach from organic ways of interacting with the movement of ideas into form.
Michelle
*Note: Many of the quotes I selected didn't make it into the "web," as the process took longer than expected!
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