Blog #8

Today I’m asked to provide an answer to the question of; what examples I've seen personally of people tinkering, or known as the “right to tinker”? This is a difficult question to answer, people are able to only do what the technology allows them, in the Digital Technology and Culture major. This major is more specific to the Graphic designers, Web Designers, and creative people of technology. I think the real question we should be asking is; what are the limitations of technology on the creativeness of one designer?

To answer my question I would be tempted to point out that for all DTC majors, Web Design is a large portion of what we do. We design things for web pages or to be seen in a digital medium. The problem with Web Design is that no matter what you do the code is always a limitation, a hindrance, and doesn't provide people the freedom to tinker. In a way they can tinker with the code but because of the limitations they are only able to tinker with what is available on hand to try to create something more, out of the limited script they have. However this is still considered tinkering because people are finding easier ways to do things through code every day -- or finding a new waysto do something that makes it better or easier -- only because code is constantly evolving to the user base.

Then you have graphic designers who also have limitations creatively because their technology is limited. There are only so many graphic programs that designers can use these days, and much of the time people to stick to the same programs. Adobe Photoshop in itself was a limitation to graphic designers all over (the price and the recent changes and makings of the adobe cloud) making it more affordable and less of a limitation to many graphic designers that were freelance. But that being said the program itself is limiting to the designers that do work in it only because you can only do so much with Photoshop. Photoshop has its limits and they are clearly defined. But there are still ways that people in the DTC major can tinker with it to create some masterpieces.

This is a major problem with those that are creatively inclined to do work on the computer: itself being limited, just as artists on any other medium are limited. However I feel that artists on other mediums aren't limited as those that are using a computer. On paper there are always ways to create something new, or there are always new mediums that people create to make art on. But in the end I don’t think that the problem or the issue is the constraint applied to people from the “right to tinker” but I feel more like the limitations come from the medium people choose to use.