A favourite artist is an English man called Michael Ayrton, a polymath who wrote novels, painted, sculpted, designed stage sets and appeared on radio. A recurring theme in his work is the myth of Daedalus the inventor who fashioned wings of feather and wax to escape from imprisonment on the Island of Crete where he had been forced by King Minos to build the labyrinth that held the Minotaur. You all know the story about what happened to Icarus his son who got too close to the sun and plummeted into the Aegean Sea. The sculpture on the left is of the Minotaur and can be found in West Yorkshire at Bretton Hall.Why minotaurs and labyrinths and what does this have to do with technology? Well I find the whole concept of the the internet amazing - it is a tremendous example of human ingenuity and how we adapt so quickly to change . From the comfort of my pc at home I am able to find information on Ayrton, the Minotaur, the history of Labyrinths, Greek Mythology, track down pictures of Ayrton's artworks through Flickr all in the space of 30 minutes or so. Only as short as 5 years ago to have accumulated such information would have take hours upon hours of painstaking tracking in books, bibliographies and reference material. Daedalus - the ingenious maker of the labyrinth - would have been amazed. The internet is a modern day labyrinth - it is very easy to find yourself lost for hours as you follow one turn after another.... the trick is to act like Theseus and unwind a skein of thread behind you as you go....... or at least bookmark the pages that you have seen.
Looking forward to where the labyrinth is going to take me next.
