Natural Tech

The lower levels of St. Valentines Peak, NW Tasmania

For the last week I’ve been wrangling a new music production system on a new laptop, with a new interface. It’s been about 14 years since my first computer-based recording set-up was fired up (yes, still a luddite) and here I am with the latest version of the same platform. Of course, the people that design this stuff have to do something for their keep and naturally, lots of things have been "changed”. I think some of it is for the better, but I’m still finding that out. Or not. I think the new version is doing a number of things automatically… things that I used to have to do as a decision to be made. I’m wondering what would happen if AI got involved. Perhaps it HAS. A soil scientist friend of mine told me years ago that we know less about the way humus - the organic component of soil - interacts with plant life, and in turn, interacts with us, than what we do about the cosmos. I can believe it. It’s looking in and looking out, but to  degree that simply keeps on stretching the boundaries. What most of us are doing is somewhere in the middle, including my tech-wrangling. Nothing so extreme. It sure hasn’t much to do with creativity, no matter how hard the sell is by music tech companies. Everybody wrangles tech. It’s part of life. I’m back home now but I miss where I’ve just been. The natural world cannot be argued with nor compromised. It's something that will continue to inform us, whether we like it or not. The photo above  takes me to thoughts of networks, wiring, communications and synapses. But that’s humus at work. Thanks for that thought, Mr Rob Banks.