Tools and Sheds

02/26/2003

I guess you might consider the Australian Outback as one of the largest backyards in the world, so it seems only fitting that in Australia you would find The Institute Of Backyard Studies (http://www.ibys.org). In the commentary on their website, our friends Down Under observe that:

The hand, so long an essential part of our development from animal to human, is now being consigned to a secondary role. Human hands, capable of making objects of great utility and beauty, are now used to dial phones or press computer keys in the name of work. Work is, for most people, no longer a source of identity: it’s now a generic process - a task you just do between 9 and 5.

We feel our loss keenly. On weekends, hardware stores fill with people fulfilling a deep urge to do something practical and useful. They take home pieces of wood, materials tools and wreck them in an attempt to recover some sense of accomplishment.

How true! For me, at least, as working with nothing but ephemeral bits and bytes all day long engenders a need to do something that has physical, real-world results, like making sawdust and firewood in the garage. I guess a lot of folks feel the same way, which led the Aussies to the next bit: they’ve produced a coffee-table book that’s a historical-styled survey of Australians and their sheds: from primitive lean-tos to full workshops, potter sheds, gardening sheds, toolsheds, and so on. From the web site:

For many men the shed is a still place, a central point in a world that is whizzing around at an ever-increasing pace, getting madder and madder every year. But your shed can stay just about the same; that 3/8” spanner you put on the corner of the bench last October will still be there next October. The shed is a place for reflection and meditation. Not everyone chooses a church or yoga for deep thought and the pondering of life’s great mysteries.

Nor is the shed necessarily a place for isolation either. It can be a place where men pass on useful knowledge to sons - and even daughters. Bikes are repaired, things taken apart and their innards examined. The spirit of enquiry in shed science lives on.

It’s that same do-it-yourself “spirit of enquiry” that makes working with software so much fun. But software by itself lacks the escapist calm of the workshop or toolshed.

And somehow I don’t think taking the laptop out there would be the same thing…