Saturday, June 30, 2007

Disillusionment

"This Is a terrible invention, it ruins all the hardwork people had to go through to make our necklaces" - Sinjo Drakes, regarding LinkRez

"As are all my items - these are 100% Hand placed prims - No Prim bot link rez generators used." - Mhaijik Guillaume, posted the same day LinkRez was released

Sometimes, the closed-mindedness of people just drives me to despair. People who seem to lack vision or appreciation of progress. Or, the hard work it takes to make progress.

I wonder if these people in the 1400's would have railed against Gutenberg as well? Granted, it's an imperfect analogy, but, like LinkRez, a printing press is only a tool. For beautiful lettering, it still requires that the movable type be envisioned, crafted, and carved. It still requires that somebody with literary ability create the content of what is printed. It allows ease of production far beyond what could be done by scribes laboriously copying pages by hand. And, like LinkRez, absolute crap can still be produced when the user lacks talent.

When I first announced I was working on LinkRez, one of my first comments started out "First off -- this really is NOT a Necklace Generator," to recognize that a mere tool did not make a user into a creator. Creativity, skill, and artistic vision will always be the most important aspects in content creation, not the possession or use of the tools.

Still, it's hard not to be disillusioned and discouraged by some people.