I was at a get-together of techie sorts a few weeks ago and I overheard some very clever people talking about Facebook. One of them said, “Yeah, I used to use Facebook but then my 10 year old nephew started using it so I don’t bother anymore.”

I kind of thought this was a stupid thing to say. I wondered if he had stopped travelling on the bus when his little sister was old enough to start going into town with her mates on Saturday mornings? Did he stop eating spaghetti when his next-door neighbours’ son started eating it? Did he stop going swimming once the local primary school kids started using the pool?

Good technology should be a great leveller; as open and easy to use to the technically minded and the technophobic. If it isn’t, then it’s not good technology.

Jung talks about the shadow-self, or if you’re into your Star Wars, your dark side. We all have a dark side of course but some people’s seem to be darker than others. In my job I meet a lot of very very clever techie-types and I’ve found that many of them, not all, but many of them, seem to have a darker side than most.

They’re modern day magicians who seem to speak a different language to the rest of us. They usually like to keep their magic to themselves, not wanting to reveal their secrets to mere mortals who simply “wouldn’t understand”. This attitude then is their dark side coming through, their shadow-self.

I wonder what kind of world we’d be living in now if the man who wove the www, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, had had a ‘darker than usual’ dark side, if he’d kept the web to himself or sold it to the highest bidder? Perhaps the internet would have become the domain of the super-wealthy and the super- technical; people who didn’t want to share this new technology with mere mortals.

As Stephen Fry would say, “bah” and “pish” to dark-sided techno-wizardry. Let good technology be the great leveller it should be. And if there’s a techno-snob near you, remind them that we were all ‘given’ the www as a gift, snotty nosed 10 year old nephews and all.

This post first appeared here.

The word ‘expert’ doesn’t come into Jungian therapists’ vocabulary very often. Jung believed in the notion that we are all ‘practitioners’ of our own particular trades. I like the idea of being a ‘practitioner’. It makes me feel uncomfortable when people tell me they’re an ‘expert’ in any given field. It makes me think that they’re either at best, showing off or at worst, telling porkies.

The idea that somebody knows everything there is to know about any given subject really turns me off. How can you possibly know everything about anything? Where’s the fun in knowing everything anyway? And why would anybody want to get up in the morning if there wasn’t anything new to learn?

A year or so ago I started taking Capoeira lessons (part martial art, part dance. Google it – it’s really good). I figured it would be fun to learn a new skill while trying to get a little fitter. Needless to say it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and I’m really not very good at it but I really enjoy it. I also enjoy playing the drums and the guitar in a band (not at the same time though). It’s a lot of fun but we’re not that good. We generally start the songs at the same time but it’s a rare thing to finish them together.

Maybe I should just quite my Capoeira class? After all, I still end up facing to the left when everyone else in the room is facing to the right. And I still feel dizzy and sick after attempting cart-wheel after cart-wheel after cart-wheel across the room while trying to hold the focus of my partner whom I’m supposed to be mirroring? Is it time to throw away the drum sticks and eBay my guitar? Afterall, the days of giving any serious thought to becoming a full-time musician (or a drummer ha-ha) are long gone.

Well the answer is of course not. I am a practitioner of Capoeira. I am a practitioner of the drums and of the guitar. And while I’m about it, I am a practitioner of the graphic arts and of web design – the two things in my life that some people have decided (incredibly, some might say), to pay me money to practice. My advice? Steer clear of the experts and keep practicing.

This post first appeared here.