Evolution is not a case of cummulative complexity.
Nov 16In front of a black background I try to find the words to spill onto the inter webs. The sounds around me are blocked out by comfortably sitting in ear headphones, who, with their ergonomic cushions form an airtight seal. My head is filled with the sounds of Hans Zimmers soundtrack for the Da Vinci code. A spectral harp rolls like a spring shower over a chorus of unseen voices. My attention is focused on the new words that arise in front of me, all-though the notification of a new incoming email tempts my attention like a digital siren on the shores of diffusion.
I ignore it, an act of will, and type on, valiantly trying to make the very point I’m writing about. Hooked up to the Internets
in our modern lifestyles it is hard to find focus and concentration. It
is hard to keep your focus pointed at one window, one topic, one tasks
as we tread carefully in-between the various rat-holes that emails,
twitter, facebook IM’s or RSS
feeds can take us down. The more we tie into this omnipresent and
endless source of information, the more powerless our actions seem to
become. I zero in to the task at hand, for I would like to speak to you
to about evolutions in Simplicty.
Let me give you the practical example of my pod-casting studio. Over the years it has grown from humble beginnings (a lapel microphone hooked up to my ipod
via a "voice recorder" add on) to what it was a few weeks ago. What
started in simplicity quickly evolved into an ever more
"professional"collection of Microphones, Mixers, boom arms and more.
One replacing the other where one became obsolete and the other "more
advanced" where one setup was more elaborate and complex then the
previous. Soon I had quite a bit of "gear" (or Clutter, you decide)
sitting in my office. An office that started to both sound (and look)
like a recording studio. That was until I got rid of it all.
The logical evolution of my "home recording" installation would have been the addition of a second boom arm, a more powerful
mixer, better microphones and what have you. Yet, 99 percent of my kit
has been posted on a local auction website and was sold within 2 days.
No more Behringer C1 condenser Microphone, No Boom-arm
with a professional windscreen, no Mixer to tweak and tune the sound.
All of that was replaced by one single device, the zoom H2 microphone.
For
those of you who don’t know the device, the Zoom H2 is a digital
recorder , with a good microphone included and is mostly used for
interviews, recording ofperformances and the occasional ‘weapon of choice" for the podcaster.
In a bold move to hot wire
the evolution of my recording studio into something more simple , I
made the bold move of throwing out the ‘old and known’ and getting just
the H2 mike to do everything. I must say : the little device sounds
great and the fact that it is easy to use both in the house and on the
road is a bonus. Where I used to be "location dependant" on the place
where my studio gear was setup, I simplified and mobilised the whole
setup by condensing it into one device. Now I can go sitwhere-ever I want when i want to record something and no longer need to drag Nyana towards the studio when we need to produce something for the podcast.
The
major pitfall with geeks is that they add more and more gear to their
collection and end up needing massive collections of complex stuff in
order to get things done. But sometimes you need to make a bold move
and chuck it ALL out in favor of something different. Remember Apple
saying "NO" to the integration of the floppy drive into their Imac G3 models ? Everybody thought they where mad, yet they where far ahead of their time.
And
so it is with personal technological evolution. It does not mean that
you need to add the newest to the older stuff, sometimes you need to
look one step further and see how technology can further simplify your
life instead of making it even more complex. This means makingchoices, well thought off
choices on what to keep and to let go. But if you analyse your current
situation, your needs and your requirements carefully, and look for atechnological solution to answer
them..it is possible. But never forget the delicate balance of where
you start working for technology instead of having technology … work
for you.
