Digital Ache

Don't get me wrong - I love computers. I use one almost every day. I'm directly dependent on them for information and communication. At least half of my income comes from creative work facilitated by computer software...

But.

There's something troubling about staring into that screen interface - it's like a glass film in front of some endless tunnel of data. There are times when my attempts to shape my own destiny by interacting with this digital universe seem puny and futile and make the selection of keys or the stroke of the mouse feel like impossible tasks in a demonic puzzle. I can get to the point where I've pulled down too many menu tabs - tried and failed too many times to select the exact pixel - that I have to stop. And it can feel like I'm suffering from some new affliction - an anguish I've come to know as Digital Ache.

Digital Ache breaks down into two categories for me. The first is the ache induced by contemplating the seemingly endless data behind the computer screen. It would be bad enough if was just the things that I'd loaded onto or created on my computer, but then beyond that there's the world-wide web of data and interactivity on the internet. Perhaps that interactivity is the clue - is the ache really just choice fatigue? After all, a computer can only do what it is instructed to do by its user. This data now, is surely just a part of our developed-world landscape - just as are busier streets, bigger supermarkets, more TV channels. At times it can feel like a tussle - a struggle; am I bigger than the computer, or is it bigger than me. Sometimes the struggle to be in control is too much and the temptation is simply to yield to the flow of the machine's artificial intelligence and surf: surf the links; the info; the games. The ache, perhaps, comes from not growing up with this stuff - will my computer-comfy children feel the same way I do? I'm not sure they won't. But either way this ache is the price for a vast range of benefits, I'll just have to lump it.

The second form of digital ache stems from our physical interaction with computers and this one troubles me more because it comes back to an old obsession with skill and its virtuous role in creating a sense of well-being.

Since my first proper computer, an Apple Mac, I've been unhappy with input devices. When I say proper, what I mean is not that Mac's are proper computers and PC's are not, I just mean proper as in - when computers that could do sophisticated graphical tasks became widely available. The main input devices that we all know are the mouse and the keyboard. Using a mouse to draw shapes on a screen is a bit like trying to do life drawing with a brick. So, almost as soon as I acquired that first Mac, I've used a drawing stylus and pad. This is simply a special pen which draws on a sensitised screen shaped pad; where you move the pen on the pad, the pointer or cursor moves correspondingly on the screen. After a little practice it becomes very intuitive. It's not cheap though - a good A4 sized pad and pen will set you back a fair few hundred quid. And you'd think that more of that kind of technology would make the process of working on a computer more intuitive - more seamless - remove this second form of digital ache.

Here's how, I reckon it can't.

First of all though, interface technology has moved on a lot. Most people will have come across an interactive touch-screen somewhere (why did British Tourism Offices become such eager early adopters?) - these enable the user to select from a number of virtual push-buttons on display. Most Railway stations have some kind of touchscreen ticket machine. These screens have reached fantastic levels of sensitivity nowadays, and have begun to make their way into the personal computer market; there's a widely available (and very expensive) table-top screen that allows you to write and draw with a stylus directly onto it - the screen is the tablet. Research institutions have produced table-sized interactive displays which respond to fingertip manipulations and this 'multi-touch' technology has seen widespread application with compact computer products such as the iPhone. The phenomenal success of the Wii computer game console also points towards a rethink of user interfaces.

But here's the rub - although these interfaces are seductive, they cannot overcome digital ache because they are tied to an operating system devised by someone else. However simple that interface there will always be a dislocation. It is never going to respond immediately - you have to learn how to manipulate it. There are parallels to learning a language but a language is a thing in itself - interfaces merely facilitate the use of languages, visual or literary. The computer interface is an extra layer - a complex layer - between what you are thinking and what you want to communicate.

Perhaps this can be best illustrated by going back to the drawing board. There's some obvious differences between drawing on a piece of paper and drawing on a computer screen. Let's look at the hardware. Cartridge paper @ £0.10 per A4 sheet and a good pencil @ £0.65. A mid-range Windows computer @ £600; drawing software (free with a tablet) and drawing stylus and tablet £200.

That's quite a difference.

But let's assume you've got the materials. Take the pencil and paper - there is a direct tactile feedback. The physical contact has immediate cause and effect with a simple range of variables (paper texture; pencil softness; hand movement and pressure) which you are directly connected to. This responsiveness allows for a massive range of individual expression. Add one further tool - an eraser - and corrections and changes are easily incorporated. All you need to add now is human curiosity; give a pencil to a child and immediately they start to explore and assess - the weight of the pencil - the pressure from the fingers - the grain of the paper. Within minutes that feedback loop will produce all kinds of marvelous output. These things are profoundly simple interactions - indeed it's not hard to make the connection that that curiosity around mark-making is at the source of all visual communication - alphabets included.

Present someone with a computer and the learning curve is somewhat different.

Computers are, after all, just fantastically sophisticated calculators. The mass-market computer age was really heralded by Sir Clive Sinclair's digital pocket calculators; computers with very simple functionality. However, his Sinclair Spectrum computers showed that arithmetical tasks could be compounded by stringing together a code of instructions and that the dots of a screen could be controlled by these code programmes to create simple moving images. Those early machines spawned a generation of code geeks (not me, I have to add) because to use them required some programming skill and effort (definitely not me). The leap from then - the 1970's - to now, is astonishing. Computer power is so vast comparatively - it has doubled every three years - that the screen is now a highly sophisticated graphical interface with the programming skills once required by the end-user displaced by colossally complicated operating systems which present the computer as a useful domestic or business appliance, accessible to anyone through the graphical veneer of interactive screen pages. But this facade is still just a series of arithmetic calculations interactively manipulating tiny coloured dots on a screen according to the users input. The sorts of graphics rich pages or windows we take for granted on domestic computers is the end point of mountains of code and calculations and software programming. I still find it slightly miraculous, what a computer can do with say, word processing let alone video editing.

But this is also the problem - because, even though we no longer need to learn how to input computer code, we still have to learn the formalities and grammar of the operating system and use a remarkably limited set of input tools. The data that the computer is manipulating has to be parked, retrieved, stored, actioned - all in specific sequences. Although this process seems transparent to the experienced user, its density is revealed when you are forced to switch operating system - how many Mac users struggle with Windows, or vice versa? Has anyone used a Unix based system or Linux and had to adjust. It can be painful and frustrating. The computer shackles us by these limitations - like writing in a straight jacket.

Nearly.

So here's my problem. Digital technology is marvelous. I still get a little rush of excitement when I hear that boot-up chime and the whirr of the computer fan. The first moments of interactivity are fresh and I'm ahead of the machine. But then the constrictions begin. The interactive process will not do what you want or expect - there are too many drop down menu options - the screen is a constant homogeneous film, never changing with the light in a room - your body is locked by proximity to the keyboard, mouse or tablet - you are tasked with actions and prompted to respond by the operating system, or stung by its 'error' messages in your desire to make progress. All of which become achingly repetitive.

Of course, I'm being glib. Any manual skill or tool requires a learning curve - but few manual skills are bound by the restrictions of an operating system. Usually, when we handle manual tools, we are the operating system with our own built-in limitations of skill or perception.

Our fantasy is that computers are our servants - like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the disembodied voice of the spaceship's computer in Star Trek - that do our bidding by responding to our spoken requests. But our reality is that we are locked in a drudgery with our servants: locked into their system; their hardware design.

It will ever be thus.

And so, I think, will Digital Ache.

GJ
SEP.09

Illustrations from top: Bad hair PC family; Ghostgoblins computer game; Graphics Tablet; Microsoft's Surface multi-touch technology; Sinclair Spectrum ZX computer; Astronaut taking notes from the HAL 2000 spaceship computer, from 2001: A Space Odyssey.