wallpaper animals

In a recent post, Donald Clark has laid into Raspberry Pi (see http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Raspberry+Pi). He claims that the mission to get kids programming with the Pi is ill-conceived pedagogically, aesthetically, organisationally and commercially. On these points of course, he may be right. But then again, despite the amateurish website and production delays, there's still quite a buzz around the Pi. Maybe it's nostalgia... but maybe it's because it's CHEAP.

Does the cost matter? In short, I think it does. A lot. The reasons have to do with what we think a computer is in the first place, and in particular in how we have grown up thinking about computers and how manufacturers have affected our thinking.

The nostalgia around the Pi is related to how we think about computers today, and certainly I feel a tinge of nostalgia when looking at the Pi. I was a proud owner of a ZX Spectrum at age 13 in 1982. I vividly remember my dad ordering it over the phone (and having to extend the credit limit on his "Access card" in order to do it - it was a serious moment!), and how I then waited... and waited... and waited for the thing to arrive. Weeks went by. No news. A couple of apology letters. But eventually it did arrive. And, I remember the smell on opening the box, and the excitement of plugging it in.

But what I was subject to at that early age was the impact of (albeit amateurish) commercialism in combination with technology. For me, Sinclair was just magic. Everything they did was magic... and although it was cheap enough to be affordable, it wasn't that cheap. The devices had to be treated with respect... (I managed to blow mine up 3 times, although I don't think it was my fault - I'm sure Manic Miner had something to do with it!).

But the technology+commercialism continued as I migrated first to the Commodore 64, then to Apple and finally to Microsoft. Each time, the technology was expensive, the devices treasured (although much abused!)

Donald Clark is right to stick his Pi in a draw if he doesn't like it. Because it doesn't really matter what he does with it. But that's the point. The not-caring and creative application go hand-in-hand. Personally, I agree with Clark that emphasis on Scratch and programming is unlikely to work. So a disappointed kid thinks "what the hell" and swaps his Pi for a Transformer. It doesn't matter. But this is a computer that doesn't matter - and that's new.

Not mattering becomes interesting when the Pi is freed of the necessity to be tethered to screens and power sockets. 4 AA batteries will do the job, and when the magic of portability for £20 becomes a reality and interesting things start to happen. I reckon the spy bug will be a popular application - after all, it would take some batteries and a cheap microphone or webcam in one of those USB sockets, and away you go (but careful you don't get arrested!). On a similar theme, environmental monitoring would also become very easy and very cheap.

But how about throwing in wireless network connectivity, and then things start to get even more fun. (This, incidentally, is why I've been so impressed with the JeeNode, which at £15 is the same price but is wireless-ready, although only a micro-controller). The integration of physical control with online engagement is something that is only just starting to be explored through the use of mobile apps, but iPads are expensive. Throw a few Pis around (or should that be Pies?), don't worry about them... some of them will work.

But beyond the idea of disposable technology, these kind of examples demonstrate what computers increasingly are to us. My ZX Spectrum was a data-processing machine. I was excited about data processing because that's what all the computers I saw on the TV did (I always remember the giant computer tapes in the 6 Million Dollar Man). My programs for the ZX Spectrum were about data processing (in a very simple way).

Today, the emphasis on user interaction, and the impact of game-like interfaces presents us with a different paradigm for thinking about computers. They are state-machines (of course, they always were state machines, but it wasn't visually apparent). We click a button, the state of the machine changes, giving us new options. In social software, we click a button, and the state of other peoples' machines changes, and the state of the other peoples' minds changes (didn't that feel like a remarkable thing?!). Today, computers are tools for manipulating the informational constraints that we all live with: we are all affected by the knowledge we each have of the world, and the computer allows us to continually modify our knowledge and make decisions accordingly.

iPads are very expensive state machines. Raspberry Pi is a very cheap state machine. With either software or hardware, both can do the same job of manipulating informational constraints. But, apart from its disposability, I think the Pi has other advantages over the iPads, phones and tablets. That is because it allows for hardware innovation as well as software. Now, I said that computers manipulate informational constraints. But we all still live with material constraints too - not just because we get tired or hungry, but because there's something shiny that we haven't seen before, or some peculiar event that occurs when we do something with an "ordinary" object. With a tablet and a screen, we would expect something unusual to happen (although nothing particularly remarkable apart from the screen changing!). But a sensor on a Pi triggering a robot somewhere? It is in this way that both the material and the informational aspects of technology can be exploited.

This is why I think Clark is wrong. The material aspect of technology has been tightly controlled by manufacturers since the beginning of computing. The Pi is the beginning of the end of that control. And with the flexibility to manipulate these complex state machines, and play with their physical form, the focus needs to be on looking forwards rather than back. Computers have given us an environment of too much information, which we are barely able to control, and which buffets us around in a whirlwind of Facebook posts, emails and tweets. The problem we have is we don't know what it all means; we don't know what matters; we cannot decide on what sort of a world we want to live in.

Maybe Raspberry Pi isn't the knight in shining armour, but I do think it is the beginning of something new. Just as the possibility was presented for us to do cool things with our ZX Spectrums in 1982, we now have a possibility for coming to terms with the information-rich world of the 21st century by care-free experimentation with the technologies which are largely to blame for the deep economic and social problems we now have.

It's not uncommon in the arts to find artists condemning critics. Here's Dr Johnson, for example

 "Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic."

But Goethe got it just right..

"The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing."

Critics are usually borne of universities. Artists rarely are - and this has started me thinking about my own practice in writing papers, doing this blog, writing software, but failing artistically (on the whole) to express myself. It is my own failure which interests me most. Of that failure I can only be a critic... yet I would always rather be an artist.

There is something about passion here. Passion is a virtue for the artist, yet a failing for the critic. For the critic, the cold, analytical, rational tearing-apart, rendering ridiculous, dismissing (or sometimes valuing) of something is the principal modus operandi. If a critic isn't analytical, they aren't any good as a critic. An artist on the other hand, may be encouraged to be rational by critics and academics (and praised for being so), but if their work is devoid of passion, few good critics will find room to praise it. Critics seek a bridge between the cold world  of analysis and the warmth of passion, over which they might hope one day to pass. But raw passion many can't abide - where the style overflows with feeling and may be seen to lack structure or coherence (in their view). Such is the academic view of much 'outsider' art, or the music of some of my favourite composers (particularly Delius).

Recently, I blogged about the difference between improvising and composing (see http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.de/2012/05/improvising-and-composing.html). I argued that the difference between the two was a difference in the approach to meaning: that improvising was an active search for something meaningful, whilst composing was a process of constructing a frame for something meaningful. This led me to think about why I find it relatively easy to write papers and improvise music, whilst I find it difficult to compose music, and fairly difficult to write larger things like my PhD.

I want to add something to this argument. I have composed in the past, and I managed to finish my PhD - but only when I unlocked a passionate involvement with what I was doing. It was only when my feelings in the process of doing this became rather 'unsafe' that it was possible to see the project through. Yet, the passionate side of creative action is frightening: with the passion goes vulnerability and something that borders insanity. Yet, and I think this is the main point, it is absolutely essential if anything of real beauty is to be achieved (not that my PhD had much beauty in it!). Whilst passion is locked away, all that will come out will be sterile.

This, I now think, is a principle: that the richest use of any life is to do something beautiful. This can only happen with the unlocking of passion, but the unlocking of passion presents the greatest dangers too. Some degree of temperance, even of some degree of criticism, is necessary if the world is not to fall into chaos. But we are in great danger of over-doing temperance in the form of 'expedient living'. That way lies a creative failure not only in not creating beauty, but in failing to appreciate it.