The Ultimate Habilis

I’ve blogged a few times about my habilis habits. A habilis (like homo habilis) is a tool-user. The originals lived some million years ago give or take a flaked-stone tool and were the earliest known hominid to make tools. A tool is either a subtractive or additive process. If you are making a flaked-stone projectile point, perhaps you reduce raw material to a workable state. Tools can also be an additive process. May be that a projectile point is both actually since you add some kind of delivery agent to it. But that’s what we basically do I think to this day with the tools we choose to use or not. Some tools we adopt to make something easier and when we learn it perhaps we move on or keep it or adopt a new tool. I have a hypothesis that tools exhibit their maker’s beliefs in many distinct areas. If we can identify a certain structure to what is called flaked-stone morphology perhaps we could even identify a specific tool maker.

Now lets hop in my archeological and anthropological time machine and jog to the present. I’m at a customer site over in Plano, Texas which has given me a brand new appreication of “man the tool user”. The customer site is a larger entity which does some interesting things around tubes and transistors and even calculators. I’m in learning mode so I sit quietly and watch the master tool users exhibit. I ask a question or two about a specific tool and how to reduce it or add to it. These guys are interesting and encapsulate my judgements on computers as a whole. They use the right tool for the job. If the tool requires open source technologies, they roll out Linux solutions or place open source tools on Windows systems. This is completely possible and I do it myself. If they need Solaris they use it. Windows too. Many people maintain multiple desktops that they VNC or RDP to. Both of these tools are enablers. They enable you to reach out to other systems, make use of them. But lets not forget the ultimate enabler. Secure Shell has to be the grand daddy of enablers. With SSH you can rule. You can adopt, change, move, copy, delete, merge, split. Its cousins SCP and SFTP make it a three sided coin.

Now I have met the ultimate habilis enablers. They reach and encompass all the tools and they embody my beliefs that I’ve blogged a few times. Its all about the tools, Luke. You must use the tools. Computers and OS’es are no different. Linux, Sun, Windows, and their tools all make a composite whole. I told a Microsoft guy I am working with today that view and he vigorously agreed.

So in the end, I am sitting in the cave entrance painting my blog. Recording the rush of antelope and the sunrises and strange bursts of color. I am traversing a desert scape and knowing where the best plants lie. I am the enabler; the ultimate enabler and my canvas is the world. I can use tools that make me better and I can adopt and adapt. Is that not the mark of successful beings? Evolution has a way of separating wheat from chaff.

I get the feeling from these days in Texas that we must all become habilis and not ever have the view that just because its “this not that” its better or others that choose something else is worse. The paint I choose makes me more productive these days.

What do you choose to be more productive? As a side note, I would be seriously remiss if I did not mention that the fox came out with its latest yesterday or today. Way to go Mozilla team. You guys do good stuff and you have my thanks.