This GUI interface is intriguing, but I can’t see how it can possibly replace the tactile feel and natural sensory interface of touching, arranging and shuffling piles of paper. That so much energy has gone into developing a project which reproduces this sensation instead of encapsulating it is irksome and perhaps counterintuitive. It is mimesis, rather than transmutation. And while there are positive things which can be said about recreating human environments and experiences in a computer (e.g., it may permit us to understand instinctive impulses from a binary perspective, which could in turn shift paradigms), why don’t software developers and engineers understand that certain human nuances might be better studied or effected through basic human contact?
This reminds me of a game I often play with friends with Blackberries. When out in the real world, if the friend has a Blackberry and I have a cell phone, I then name a piece of information to extract. It could be a general piece of knowledge (Who popularized the Second Law of Thermodynamics?). It could be something as simple as finding out when the next showing of a movie starts. Each person must then ferret out a piece of information: the friend through Google, me through natural telephone conduits. Certain pieces of information are better extracted through the phone (such as when a restaurant is open). Other pieces of information, such as objective facts and data, are better extracted through the Google connection.
What the results here suggest is that, as dazzling as the Internet and technological conduits can be, there are still basic human impulses and communication patterns which can never be entirely reproduced or advanced through machines. (At least not yet.) Of course, where human contact ends and technological contact begins is a subjective question entirely up to the individual. But technology is a tool: an adjunct to the human experience, not a substitute.
(via The Old Hag)
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (