On Holiday: Still, Time to Gripe

Posted on February 22, 2007
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |

We came up to south Donegal for a bit of a break but the drive took six and a half hours so we were….broken, dishevelled, wrecks. Surprise surprise the sun was shining this morning and everything suddenly looked and felt better. It’s one of the miracles of Ireland.

Time for reflecting a little. A couple of readers have upbraided me for being concerned about visitor numbers rather than community, however small.

I’d like to sit on the fence. Numbers are not to be neglected if you write. If you write you are making a claim on other people’s attention and however you want to dress that up, the more people the merrier.

Equally I think the tendency in the tech world to think the significance of technology ends at whether a product functions properly is misguided but I know my view is not a particularly engaging one. I hate it not being engaging and don’t pretend otherwise.

I go a stage further in fact and find myself a little depressed at what I see when I do the rounds of tech sites - smilymedia, techcrunch, CNET etc. There’s a generally amoral attitude towards the machine and that should not be the case.

Finally people like me talking about shoulds and should nots is not very attractive either. The little article I’m writing about how artists respond to digital environments or mixed realities begins and ends with the observation that the amoral nature of digital technology means we are busy stripping meaning from the world of artefacts, particularly digital ones.

Digital technology allows us to abandon respect for traditions and the labours of past art works. It makes it easy to create dazzling new worlds that are not rooted in any school or tradition. I admire these powers but wonder whether the idea that this is now a world without barriers and boundaries applies also the moral sphere.

It becomes a world without moral boundaries - seeing people simulate sex in public spaces in Second Life is but one example. Simulated nuclear bombings is another. Fascination with the ghastly executioneer videos yet another. The world without boundaries.

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