Techophilia and Social Progress

I had a great conversation yesterday with a potential partner that really sparked some thinking about “home” – what is it and what does it mean? A habitat, dwelling, home base, house, family, a country, nation or province. It’s a place with roots, where someone flourishes, a residence, a home where you feel comfortable.

Home is almost a mythical notion – the idea of a place from which you emerge into the world. A childlike notion where you are safe and free from desire. Secure and comfortable. But what if its where you are scared… like homeless, nationless, lost or alone? How do you find a home if you never have had one?

And what about my world – the digital world? We have “home” pages where things begin. The start – the fixed place from where all things web begin. A mount point for disk drives, a corner of the screen, a button to move the cursor to the start of the line…

The notion of home is such a rich metaphor and a deep vein of discovery. Stay tuned!

The industry in Vancouver has really changed. Originally, gaming was a small part of a small industry. Primarily, the focus was on getting larger institutions up and running on the web. Websites were expensive, clunky and with very limited functionality. Even visiting a board room with a presentation was a chore. I remember having to have VanCity IT department assign me an IP to use while making a presentation as IPs were at one time only assigned manually. And today the features of a free website tool like Word Press can outdo much of what was once considered state of the art.

But yet with all of this technology growing up around us here in Vancouver, we still struggle with how to define it. On a daily basis the difficulty in defining just what it is we do is a problem. For many years, I just simply said “I work with computers” as people understand what that means. But it is as ridiculous as saying my father, who is an engineer, “works with pencils and a protractor”. Firstly because he works with computers too, but really because defining an industry based on its tools is an odd way to describe it. How will we grow up?

The new media industry is still very young and people see it as a young industry. It is “cool” and “hip” when we think of gaming or design. These are great attributes, but people don’t attribute the corresponding attributes of professional graining, a deep depth of talent, or the immense financial opportunities. The fact is that new media is preceived as a niche industry in BC, yet it already is a multi-billion dollar industry with thousands of companies in Canada. And these companies represent an incredible talent pool of trained, talented and innovative creative professionals. We are only seeing the beginning of tapping into this resource and I personally am very excited to be living here in Vancouver at this point in time.

Since 1972, my folks have owned a cabin on the Sunhine Coast, about 4 miles up the Sechelt Inlet. We’ve had boat and a small trail access since about then as well. Originally, the place was a small cedar shack with a small dock and water came from a small water tower at the top of the property. We slowly built it up with a propane stove and fridge and eventually got more regular water from the regional district. Then about 15 years ago we got power and wham that was a change. My mom ended up renovating it so now it is really a summer place. For many years, I had a local dial-up account that got a fairly respectable 49kbps and so I wasn’t out of touch as much as slightly behind the times. People would call and leave me messages, “why haven’t you responded to my email” as I am usually so prompt. Downloading graphic files I regularly review were planned events now. “Tonight I will download email A and email B – total of 15MBs, so that should take close to 3 hours. If I start after dinner I should be done by bedtime!” And of course that meant no using of the phone, but in reality, with cell coverage so great here now, I use my cell.

All this to say it is with mixed feelings that I tell you that I am writing you from there on my highspeed cable connection. I guess the benefit is that now I’m connected and I have missed it in the short time up here without it (as it was installed last week), but now I am connected. The mixed feelings are because I feel that it shouldn’t be something that I *have* to have nor should it be as important as it is. But it is and of course, being in the industry have an excuse, but somehow it feels wrong. Any thoughts?