In a post on touchscreens, Edward Tufte pleads for us to to spend less time having a 2-d experience of our 3-d world. Thus, as interesting as it may be to learn something about how PowerPoint kills astronauts, we shouldn’t forget there are richer things to do:
Plant a plant, walk the dogs, read a real book, go to the opera. Or hammer glowing hot metal in a blacksmith shop.
One of my favourite radio programs on the weekend is CBC’s Spark, which covers emerging trends in new media but rarely shies away from exploring the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of our technological choices.
Edward Tufte’s post on touchscreens reminds me of this episode in particular where Nora and her guest, Mark Paterson, ponder how our latest gadgetery has rendered other media obsolete–whether, for example, “texting has obliterated the teenage love letter,” or whether the immateriality of MP3s and downloaded movies has removed us from the intimate tactile sensations of, in this case, actually flipping through a CD collection or sliding a VHS cassette into a VCR. However, rather than lament the demise of all things physical, weighty and tactile, the show posits — in true McLuhanesque fashion — that the ubiquitousness of established ‘newer media’ has the effect of prompting a nostalgic return (or revenge) of the old.
This might explain the trendiness of the Moleskine, which advertises itself, oddly enough, as “a symbol of latter-day nomadism, and [is] intimately tied to the digital world.” It might also explain why I enjoy tapping away on my manual typewriter on the weekends