Musings

Kay and Goldberg envisioned the laptop I’m typing on right now. They envisioned a way for me to store papers, music, pictures/artwork, and much more in a way that can be easily cataloged and found later. I’m amazed again by the forethought of individuals to see into the technological future and predict what the advancements of that time could not yet create. Specific sentences always stop me in reading as well. I was reminded of dial-up internet (remember the dial up sound?) when they stated, “If the ‘medium is the message’ then the message of low-bandwith timesharing is ‘blah,’”(394).  Just a few years ago, dial-up was an amazing advancement to bring internet to the masses. Now, it has become so outdated that anything barring instant connectivity is ‘blah’ (or worse, the curse of the Mary Washington internet!)  The other  quote that caught in my brain was, “It need not be treated as a simulated paper book since this is a new medium with new properties,” (395). This was in reference to reading a book through the computer. We spend a lot of time trying to mimic the processes of the world in computer form. E-books are books. We have buttons designed to flip “pages” (look at any amazon.com page selection from a novel). Maybe we could further our vision if we let related things in the real world and the virtual world be separate. An e-book and a book, for example, give the same information. However, if we can separate them in our minds as different entities, we may find that there is more freedom to manipulate information and design. And now I must stop and wonder if I’m making any sense at all…

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