INTRODUCTION

In our previous chapter on tools we made note of the traditional setting of humanistic work: the private study and the public library, archive, classroom and the meeting space. In that regard our discussion of tools overlaps with that of space and environments. For in the digital age the desktop computer plays a highly volatile and multipolar role: it is the passive tablet or manuscript upon which we write and keep our records; but it is also a window upon a vast world made accessible by the Internet or recreated through the wide array of digital programs now at the humanist's disposal. In this regard it is therefore far more like a work environment. At which point did the function of the Renaissance scholar's pen, desk, shelf, specimen jars and other accessories cease to function as tools and at which did they become an environment? The example that we presented in Chapter 5 (see Figure 7), illustrates this sense of the individual scholar set within a broad social and intellectual context. When do our other tools become such environments as well? Corbusier had famously declared – and carried out in his architecture – the principle that “the house is a machine for living.” Over the past century the American driver has turned the automobile from a simple tool of travel, a machine on wheels, into a built environment, an extension of the driver's personality, social status, material success and sense of personal space and security. It is the most familiar and highly cherished environment in which Americans still live.

The computer and its associated applications and networks, whether local or global, can also be viewed as both tool and environment. With 3D imaging and virtual realities our tools have also become our environments and vice versa.