Subject: [Tweeters] Phone apps
Date: Sep 11 18:00:38 2011
From: Marc Hoffman - tweeters at dartfrogmedia.com


With all due respect to Burt (and I do recognize
his contribution to birding and to this group), I
second the opinion that it's not the tools, it's how you use them.

That said, if I see someone out on a nature trail
smoking cigarettes and listening to loud music or
being loud and boisterous, I do get judgmental:
What ignoramuses --how can they possibly be
appreciating nature!? And of course I get annoyed
as well: I came out here to breathe fresh air and
listen to the sounds of nature -- what right do they have to rob me of that?"

Also, I know that electronic devices are
seductive and addictive -- I don't condone blind devotion to them.

But whether you're tuned in or tuned out does not
correlate to the use of tools.

I am sometimes (not often) criticized for looking
at birds through the lens of a camera. For me,
it's a very personal and powerful way of tuning
into birds, and has resulted in my becoming much
more connected and aware of their nature. I will
spend hours looking at one bird, falling into a
rhythm and sensitivity toward it that gets tested
by ability to snap the shutter at exactly the
right moment. When the connection sets in, the
photograph is entirely secondary, yet the photo
becomes a way of recapturing the sensation later.
It's not about trophies, or about not being in
the moment; it's about immersion in the experience.

One could criticize the use of binoculars, field
guides, notepads, even hooking up with a human
guide -- after all, don't all those things
potentially distract one from nature? Why not
forget about species names altogether, forget
about phyla and families -- they're just
constructions of the cerebral mind, and
constitute a filter that diminishes spontaneous
experience. And while we're at it, let's stick to
wild places without trails, so we really, really
get to experience nature directly. (Hmm, this is
fun, but I'd better stop before I go totally off the deep end of absurdity.)

I don't think we can expect pure experience
except for perhaps very brief, rare moments in
our lives. So it becomes a relative, not
absolute, issue of how to quiet our own personal
chatter and open up to nature. Lucky for us
nature is so extraordinarily beautiful that it commands our attention.

Marc Hoffman
Kirkland, WA





At 04:16 PM 9/11/2011, Guttman,Burt wrote:
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> boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01CC70D9.689F37DD"
>
>Yesterday I went up to Edmunds, for their
>birding festival, and did my one-hour
>presentation on getting started in birding, as
>I?ve done at their festival for a few years now,
>and also at a few other festivals and other
>occasions. I begin by talking about the
>delights of birding, butterflying, botanizing,
>and so on that we all share in various
>ways. Then I explain one of the primary reasons
>I feel it?s important to talk to people about
>all this and why I wrote my little workbook
>about how to learn birding and enjoy doing
>it: because I see people in our society trying
>more and more to live in an artificial little
>electronic world, glued to computers and the
>internet and the little phone gadgets that are
>being programmed to do more and more. And I
>say, quite directly, that when I see people
>walking through a beautiful forest or a wildlife
>preserve, carrying their little electronic
>gadgets, typing on them, listening to them,
>being absorbed in that electronic world instead
>of the wonderful, beautiful world all around
>them, then I say to myself that we have become a
>truly sick society?I will go so far as to say a truly insane society.
>
><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
>
>So now I see my fellow Tweets asking about
>birding apps. And I can well understand the
>advantages of having essentially all the
>material in a book programmed into the little
>gadget, which is easier to carry and use, and
>which can play bird calls, as the book cannot
>do. I understand that. But now I see people
>asking whether there are apps that will do
>more?for instance, an app that will listen to
>the bird call and identify it. Someone writes
>about an app that will look at the leaves of a
>plant and identify it. Maybe there are apps
>that will look at a photo of the bird and
>identify it. And now, my friends, I say we have
>crossed a line and are in danger of making
>birding and butterflying and botanizing into
>insane activities, into non-human
>activities. For if you are asking for the
>gadget to do these things, you are asking the
>gadget to replace the human mind and the human
>heart. It is one thing to use a source of
>information to help you process the world with
>your own eyes and ears and your own human
>intelligence?to help you learn about the natural
>world and enjoy it. But when you ask the
>electronic gadget to do what humans should be
>doing?well, why not let the little gadget live
>your entire life for you? Maybe we can make
>gadgets that will select our food and drink and
>feed them to us and enjoy them for us. The
>Friends App will select your friends for you and
>keep sending them messages telling all about
>what you?re doing and thinking. The Music App
>will select music for you and listen to it and
>tell you that you?re really enjoying
>it. Wow!! We?ll never have to actually live
>our lives any
>more. Everything?everything!!?will be done for us electronically.
>
>
>
>You wanna live in that world?
>
>Burt Guttman
>The Evergreen State College
>Olympia, WA 98505 <mailto:guttmanb at evergreen.edu>guttmanb at evergreen.edu
>Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503
>
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