The creative potential contained here in the palms of each hand is immense. The new ipad and the common stone may seem to be random unrelated objects that have absolutely nothing in common and yet if you really start to think about it a peculiar parallel starts to emerge. The computer and the rock both can, and have been used to, process and store information, inspire, calculate, control, direct, predict, build upon and channel all the fundamental elements of human culture as well as focus and transform all our creative impulses. The element they both have in common is silicon. Silicon (Si) is a nonmetallic chemical element occurring in several forms and found always in combination. It is more abundant in nature than any other element except oxygen, with which it combines to form silica: used in the manufacture of transistors, computer circuitry , solar cells, rectifiers, and silicones.
The basic ingredient found in most rocks is the very same stuff that makes up our computerized world. The rock and the computer represent two extremes which mysteriously converge in their fundamental role as the basic building blocks of civilization. The rock is the raw computer. It is the source of creativity which has enabled us to order our universe and structure all human knowledge and transform human potential. From the rock caves of early man we have emerged as creatures dependent on stone to house us, hold our livestock, defend us from danger, contain our deities, store our knowledge, house our dead, memorialize the past, celebrate our art and show off our technology. The computer is the latest stage of a simple process of our finding expression and establishing meaning and purpose through stone. The pyramids and standing stones, the museums and libraries the cathedrals and monuments all are architectural circuitry in a vast transforming megalithic megabyte process.
To build a stone wall, (and to 'think with one's hands') is merely to introduce a structural pattern to local randomly generated material using the most elementary manual switching devices.
