The shape of things to come

Having a number of assignments due at the present time I’ve been visiting RMIT uni on a regular and prolonged basis. Hours on end on a saturday Morning, Sunday afternoon, all day Fridays seem to be the norm of late, but i like having the computer room all to myself. Anyway i bumped into a friend on Friday and realised that I didnt even bring a pen and paper to uni… it made me start to wonder to what extent I’m a part of the digital animal. I mean to not even bring a pen to uni anymore.. is this heard of? What struck me most was the person with whom I was networking [contemporary term for 'making friends with?"...] withalso didnt have a piece of paper nor a pen. I’ll have you know I’m including tram tickets in this as well. The idea of this quite amused me, made me reflect on the shape of things to come.

And then i started my assignment in a computer room with Mac’s all turned on and silently beckoning me to make them useful. So I decided to use three computers at once. It seemed logical at the time. Using one computer just seemed reductive and paltry, surely I was above that – no? So three computers on, around me, me on a swivel chair wheeling between them all; each focusing on a different assignment – or when the shape of my project changed – a different part of the one assignment. So this was it – I felt not so much the Emperor on his throne controlling the pieces of information I was receiving but more an Avatar fielding the explosion of information and trying to scrutinize and make sense of that which was coming through. I’d lost my God-like powers. I was no longer in control – was I? Well of course i was in control in the sense of the one typing the questions and pressing the links, sifting through the input and teasing out what i wanted according to relevance. But I didn’t feel like I was the one in control. I felt like I was more a guide, directing the flow of information, a conduit… is this the shape of things to come? I didn’t even have a pen to write any of these thoughts down.