an undercover Photoshop agent.

My name is Moshe Hacmon and I am an undercover Photoshop agent.


Since I have started working on the computer, I have found a new friend, his name is Photoshop, and he is a Software.
We have grown together since I was 20 and he was 5 (version).
As we grow together I understood what he needed in order to be happy, to be alive.
Well what is he? It took me time to understand too, he is a Software,
soft·ware n
computer programs and applications, such as word processing or database packages, that can be run on a particular computer system (often used before a noun)*

Sounds simple, but it still wasn’t enough for me to understand it, today I know that a Software is basically like a thought we have in our mind, it is a possibility of something happening, the difference between just having a thought and something to actually happening is the Hardware, you need a hard ware to supply and apply the wishes of the software.

The computer is a body, another hardware which support the basic needs of even having those wishes, like my body which operates to keep my brain working and thinking, I could be in a hospital feeding of tubes and not activating my body at all, everything will be supplied, just like a plug to the wall, you can decide if you want to turn off my body.
The software is in that way a lower life form which exist in a body that can not move and make actions to fulfill it’s wishes. At the same time it is a higher life form, since it can sleep forever and can be always turned back on, it doesn’t age and can always be updated.
My Photoshop, so I learned, needs images in order to survive, like every other software it needs data, ones and zeros to feed into their complex mathematical formulas, each software gets it’s data from different sources, like our senses, my eyes for example translate light waves into electric current which my brain can understand, I don’t really see anything with my eyes, it is my brain that see everything, so the eye is like the camera which feeds data to my computer.
I learned the many different ways I can feed my Photoshop, from scan gear to digital cameras, in different qualities and sizes.
So I am only a part of the computer’s Hardware,
hard·ware n
1. tools and implements that are typically made of metal, for example, hinges, screws, and hammers
2. heavy military weapons and equipment
3. the equipment and devices that make up a computer system as opposed to the programs that are used on it
4. a gun or guns (informal)*



It my job to turn it on and supply the basic food for that body to operate, but it is not enough to claim that someone is alive just by doing nothing and being fed, we call them vegetables, we don’t even keep human vegetables alive anymore.
So I have to constantly feed him with some kind of entertainment, something visual, just like playing music or reading to a person in a loss of consciousness.
I have learned all the different thoughts and wishes my Photoshop has, its view about the world and all the new possibilities of manipulating it, I constantly take pictures knowing that he can “crop” and “layer” them, I don’t even see what I used to see any more, I see what he see in life, through his “filters” of thought and ideas, he always tells me: “it doesn’t matter what the lighting or colors are I can fix it, let me make it better”, and so he does, collecting the images I see through his eyes, putting them together in new order and compositions.
An entire new world in a vegetable’s mind.

What does a software wants? How can you keep it “happy”?
Just like in our world we are measured by our productivity, by being important and significant to someone, to have all of our potential realized, by using every filter and creating new and big files. The more users a software gets the more chances there are for it to evolve and adapt to its ever changing surrounding. There are software’s that have a huge amount of users and get modified so rapidly that it feels like they are a living organism, they are called “Open Source Software”, they have found a way to reach more users in ones life time, just by being free and open minded, you can understand the way it thinks and collaborate with it’s thoughts, this ultimate communication between the two minds is a true evolution for this highly technological society.
I just wish my Photoshop could be that open minded.
Even though the software seems to have endless possibilities of expressing itself for the human mind there are still new horizons for its way of thinking, which could be created by thinking together instead of just operating an agent, which try to follow as he is updating him self constantly, always when I think I really got to know my Photoshop he changes and grows, I think he also knows me, and my new body extensions, I just got new 8 mega pixel digital vision and I can store up to 2 gigabytes of memory, my software doesn’t even need me to scan and transform the data any more, it just feeds directly of my vision. My vision is the one that transformed, it combined those scanners and transformation tools into my vision, and so I carry it with me constantly for him. (I don’t even mention the fact that I am carrying him with me everywhere on my back in my laptop).




*Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.