It’s a long day, and a tiring one, but I am greatly encouraged by these simple thoughts:
We’re empowered. I know I am; let’s see about you:
Your desktop computer has a word processor with which you are empowered to create documents as complex and beautiful as a book hand-crafted by a whole shop-full of professional typographers of the Good Old Days.
Your desktop computer has a spreadsheet with which you are empowered to create detailed numerical analyses and financial summaries as convincing and comprehensive as those produced by a department full of professional accountants or analysts in the Good Old Days.
Your desktop computer has a development package with which you are empowered to create code capable of any computation, of any complexity, and with which any interface can be crafted to do anything a keyboard, mouse and screen can offer. Dammit, people, all possible software is right there, at your fingertips.
Yup. Empowered. So get cracking! You have no excuse to produce shoddy Times Roman documents filled with rambling and useless content, nor broken and bug-filled spreadsheets with the capacity to kill the people who trust your intelligence, nor sit passively by and sit and use the bland mass-produced software that’s given to you, when all along you could’ve Invented It Here instead.
Screw the editors, who merely Oppress! You! with their highfalutin demands for legibility and conciseness. Screw the slackers who think you “need” to be “professional” or “thoughtful” or “trained” in how to use something as simple as a spreadsheet! Bah. Everybody knows how to use spreadsheets. And coding. Well, coding… that’s still hard. Call the code monkeys in. We pay people to do that stuff.
At least for now.
But those other two things, dammit, they’re not hard at all. We know that, because we have tools right here. Powerful tools. Therefore, we can do that stuff for ourselves.
And what we do is the right thing to have done.
[later]
Hey, check it out! I have Visual Studio and IIS installed right here. I can do anything!
Somehow the day has gotten longer, and the world less safe.
[later yet]
Q: What’s do you get when you break up a Smart Mob into an organization made up of individuals?
I like what you’re saying, but I have to take issue with your imploration that we the readers have no excuse not to go out and Do Something Awesome. I’d say that there’s definitely a lot of power at all of our fingertips, application-wise. But that’s just not the limiting factor any more. There are still issues of inspiration, commitment, time, and even know-how — you and I have the knowledge and aesthetics to unlock the wonderful world of sans serifs, but plenty of people who can operate MS Word (or even OpenOffice) don’t. For the most part, these people still get by, because form and function are separate things.
Also, some things just aren’t rational or efficient. I *could* make a better/prettier app/site/doc, but sometimes it’s just me who’s going to use it. Sometimes the effort it would take just can’t be justified, y’know? It’s never access to software that’s my problem — often it’s just brute inertia.
I think you’re reading too much into it. I’m really just venting about how deeply frustrated I am by a class I’m in.
But then again, I think my point is this: A hundred thousand copies of a very powerful tool cannot create more good work than one hundred copies of a less powerful tool, plus some skill.
“I can’t give you a brain, but I can give you a diploma”.
The Wizard (or was it Bill Gates? I can never remember).