Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Giving birth through conversation

Author:marekj
Posted:8/12/2000; 10:03:44 AM
Topic:I patent breathing. I was here first. Quit breathing.
Msg #:19665 (In response to 19663)
Prev/Next:19664 / 19666

"...allowing the collection of tool sets to be modified seems to be Adobe's claimed contribution."

Contribution, yes. What a beautiful word it is.

let me plug in Doc's words here "...information, which is a noun derived from the verb to form. We use information, literally, to form each other. .... we are asking to be formed by other people. In other words, we are authors of each other. It follows that the best information is the kind that changes us most. If we want to know something ... we demand to be changed. That change is growth. Our identity persists, yet who-we-are becomes larger, because we know more." (Thanks Doc)

We are formed by conversations with other people. We engage in creation and giving birth to our life in conversation and in the case of Adobe's tabbed tool palette it wasn't "them" that invented it. It was invented in a conversation, given birth by brilliant programmers working together to give a new way for people to work with user interfaces. The programmers' work was then packaged and stamped with the Adobe name and locked away in the patent vault, thus killing the conversation for other people. Adobe reserved the right to say who can continue the conversation and how it can give birth to new worlds. The wide open spaces of risky unpredictable abundance was exchanged for controlled safe space of scarcity.

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