When our ancestors shifted from quadrupedality to bipedality about 3.6 million years ago, bipedality gave them an enormous advantage, freeing the four limbs from locomotion duties so that they could be utilized for a multitude of skilled activities. Since then the once primitive human hands have rapidly developed along with the human brain, and humans have continually created an infinite variety of tools - from primitive stone implements to modern high tech computers used as artificial intelligence These tools have always been created to extend our physical functions which are unable to perfectly carry out all our desires. Creating more advanced technology to develop more perfect tools to compasate our physical limitations has always been the object of man's efforts. This is as true of the development of more advanced nuclear war machines for more extensive killing, as it is of that digital pen that makes it possible to communicate instantaneously with people throughout the world, as well as to realize the visualization of time translated into space. We are now fully aware that the world has become a global village in the virtual space of the internet web; more crowded than ever, united by technology and commerce, yet still fragmented by competing political and religious ideologies and deep-rooted racial problems. Leaving aside the anxiety about whether we humans will make use of our high tech ultimate weapons or choose to rely on the digital pen to resolve our problems, let us consider that people began seeing the computer as a powerful new way of viewing the human mind.

Thinking positively and hoping that as people say, "technology has traditionally aided, rather that hindered, human expression and creativity," we now seem to be enjoying our life surrounded by high tech objects in a digital culture, without speculating onthe ultimate destiny of our search to develop even more advanced technology that possibly embraces hidden negative values. In this rapidly expanding digital culture led by high tech industries, people beginning to ask certain questions such as: does digital technology heighten human imagination, or cause it to decline? Does the new drive out the old? What really is real and how can we test reality? And, who cares about these questions?

Artists, at least , may or may not care. Artists usually discover or invent new means of creative self-expression using both new tools and those already in existence - whichever are suitable and comfortable for their purposes. Artists use a variety of media regardless of whether they are new or not, and regardless of how audiences view artists1 work. In fact works of art in themselves will present the answers, as they have done in the past.

Yet another question arises: Do we as artists really need all the products of the high tech industrial society - products that need ceaseless upgrading? Some may need to accelerate the rate of advancement to competete with others, but in the art world, there is no hierarchy in the process of making art, no matter which method - new or old, high or low - are used. Then, if it is not method that matter, what is the essence of art that moves us. This is a crucial question in this age of high-tech globalization that can potentially homogenize mind and culture. Do we as artists have the opportunity to shape technology and to channel its direction, as Ray Kurzwell suggests ?