Living and Working with Technoloy

Thinking about the love/hate relationship we have with technology - especially the kind that we interact with on a daily basis (TV, computer, cellphone, palm, alarm clock, teflon frying pan, saran wrap), and recalling the first time I ever used a computer, around 1990. I managed to be a perfectly happy Luddite up to then, avoiding most things overtly technological at home and at work. Among my peers there was a certain fear mixed with anticipation regarding computers and how they would change not only the work flow, but the home-flow as well. In my work as a film editor, my work space consited of a bench with film rewinds on each end, a six plate flat-bed editing machine (steinbeck - a close up of the rollers is shown above), and a 4x4x4 wooden trim bin lined with canvas. In this room without windows I would toil away cutting and splicing celluloid film frames with an Italian, guillotine splicer. It was comforting to know that if the illumination, halogen bulb blew or a drive belt broke (these were about the only things that could go wrong with this German engineered equipment), you could easily replace them yourself and get on with your work. It was very labour intensive work; winding and rewinding film, loading reels of film onto the flat bed, pulling trims from the reels and hanging them in the trim bin. Today, the manipulation of picture and sound is done completely with computers, in a digital world, the software that enables this process available to anyone who cares to use it(even the cost isn't that prohibitive anymore). Of course not everyone who has access to technology can actually use it - not everyone who owns a computer can edit for movies and TV , just as not everyone who owns a camera can make movies or anyone who owns a pen be a writer. I've embraced technology although there will always be a technological gap between what I know and what I have to learn. But this game of catch-up keeps it interesting. I still toil away in windowless rooms, but now I have the soft glow of three 30 inch LCD monitors, the quiet hum of a Mac G5 connected to a tera bite of storage space and the warm, fuzzy feeling that if anythings goes wrong with this equipment - I can't fix it!!!

Michael