What is a Developer?

What is a Developer?

To develop a photo is to take raw film, an object that is difficult to enjoy directly, and extract it to a viewable image. To develop is to transform data into something useful.

I was always interested in the science of technology. I think of that as development. There isn’t another good word for it that I know.

It’s not science itself that I care about. My mission is not purely to discover the fundamental workings of the world, to expand our knowledge.

I’m also not a pure technologist either. That is to say, I’m not so interested in the tools or gadgets that become the means-to-an-end such as publishing, transportation, or analysis.

The efforts in my life have been spent trying to walk the line between science and technology. An intersection between knowledge and practical application, between the abstract and the tangible, between potential and deliverable, between discovery and engineering.

Science is a curious animal, it’s an animal that attempts to be transparent as much as it is transformative. Science creates discoveries by capturing a process of transformation from inputs to outputs. Science is completely incapable of limiting the way in which the discoveries it brings humanity are used.

Technology is a different animal altogether. Technology seems to exist in two worlds — an abstract ephemeral world — and occasionally — it takes shape into a material existence with a purpose. It seems that from that ephemeral space and unlimited number of copies can take form in the material world. When it does materialize technology usually takes a clunky and opaque external appearance but takes a unique shape based on time, place, circumstance and even cultural influence.

Where do you spend your efforts between science and technology? And where does living, art, and humanity find it’s place?