HyperTextHero: Perhaps Without Realizing It, You’ve Aligned Yourself With a Particular Way of Thinking and Acting

Linked List / May 2013

Perhaps Without Realizing It, You’ve Aligned Yourself With a Particular Way of Thinking and Acting ➶

In keeping with my commitment to use tools that reflect my own values, I’ve begun to use Django and Mezzanine for web development. Django provides the framework, Mezzanine provides the application. Integrated together, these tools offer a web development methodology that is open creative, efficient, and enjoyable.

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You’ve made a commitment (a small commitment, in time only) to Python, a programming language that enshrines ideals such as “beautiful is better than ugly” and “now is better than never.” You’ve also adopted the methodology of virtual environments, which emphasizes self-contained, secure, portable systems. Perhaps without realizing it, you’ve aligned yourself with a particular way of thinking and acting. This is what we all do with technologies, and usually without recognizing what we have done: we make commitments in thought and action to the tools we use. And, in turn, those tools influence us. We should be cautious about this. We should recognize the reciprocal relationships we have with technology. We are not just employing the tools; the tools also shape us, in ways that we cannot predict and sometimes cannot control. And this, in essence, is why I prefer tools that encourage openness, creativity, collaboration, individual expression, and purposeful play: because I continually seek to embody these values, and the tools of technology reinforce my commitment to them.