Appropriating Technology: Intial DP Probe

The repurposing, integration and appropriation of precedent instruments and technologies are arguably the most primal and fundamental properties of human innovation. These tendencies are so instinctive that we are all guilty of "informally" repurposing even our most mundane belongings to meet our immediate needs on a daily basis. Developing this type of anthropological awareness of the way we all use and rediscover uses for the tools that are readily available to us, goes a long way in helping to understand how a chair can be used as a step stool, or a coat hanger can be turned into an antenna or even how a building that was designed as a Mill can be occupied as a school.

This dissonance between a tool's intended purpose, and its employed use seems almost too customary to be appreciably acknowledged, but the disparity becomes even more striking in considering the potential for more highly sophisticated pieces of technology to be reappropriated in ways that allow them to be useful in completely different types of applications. That is to more generally say that the potential for highly specialized instruments to be repurposed or recycled in any off-hand way is often markedly more limited, than less prescriptive, "lower-tech" devices. While many of our most basic technologies have proven to be both limitless and timeless in there abilities to be reused and improved, the propulsive nature of techno-science today has leveled a modern era of human innovation that is best described as "disruptively" evolutionary. That is, often after a particular device has evolved into its next generation, its predecessor is not only outdated or obsolete, but often unusable in any other capacity as well.

The accompanying images are included in an attempt to illustrate the asymmetric potential for reappropriation latent within both the "high-tech" or "digital" (in this instance old computer parts are used to fashion hand tools) and the analog (in these models, an old hack saw, a metal wheel a milled shelf, magnets and copper wire are assembled to represent a mechanical motor). The analogy is meant to call attention to how the employment of simple, analog devices in completely un-intentioned ways can be used to yield surprisingly sophisticated results, while the use of more specialized equipment is often neither effective in accomplishing analog, mechanical processes, nor other forms of technical application. The illustration goes further to suggest that not only is the capacity for reuse in more specialized equipment increasingly limited, but the materials used to build them are so expertly tailored that the tools' component parts become nearly unusable in any other type of application as well. Understanding the discrepant potential for re-application amongst empirical technologies and techno-science can go a long way in helping to meaningfully locate both new and old technologies in socially and economically appropriate ways, while providing formidable inspiration for appropriate design and construction innovation.