Ersatz engagement IS numbing — from sports on television (except, perhaps, with a crowd of fans who share your passion) to pre-cooked meals.
The entire purpose of a true liberal arts education is to awaken us to the pleasures of understanding and appreciating that which takes time to accustom one’s self to: fine art; good writing; [...]
Gina Trapani’s post on Flashbake led me to Cory Doctorow’s discussion:
Every 15 minutes, Flashbake looks at any files that you ask it to check (I have it looking at all my fiction-in-progress, my todo list, my file of useful bits of information, and the completed electronic versions of my recent books), and records any changes [...]
I’ve long been quoting Johnson’s Tool for Thought essay on his use of DevonThink as a research database. I’ve just come across a post he made to BoingBoing updating the approach he outlined earlier. After collecting all his snippets of text and quotes, he drags relevant ones into chapter folders, creating a first round of [...]
Tagged research, techne, writing processRead this post on if:book today re: using Heidegger to contest Birkerts’ arguments against the Kindle. Not too interested in that argument, but Heidegger’s terms here resonate somewhat with me. The idea of “readiness-to-hand” and the way all tools exist in a network/environment connects with Gibson’s idea of affordances. Here’s Piepenbring’s gloss on Heidegger:
In his [...]
Basics – Bending Your Computer’s Keyboard to Your Needs – NYTimes.com.
Article mentions even the weird Maltron, which typically doesn’t get mainstream attention.
Interesting way to frame the impetus behind moving in these ways. Useful for upcoming C&W talk on ergonomics and typing pain.
Tagged wrist pain, yogaLast Norman quote of the day: here Norman argues that designers should focus more on adding signifiers to their objects, rather than affordances, which may or may not be easily perceived or used. Signifiers, on the other hand, are obvious, and make use obvious.
People need some way of understanding the product or service, some sign [...]
More Norman:
Simplicity is not the goal. We do not wish to give up the power and flexibility of our technologies. The garage door opener may be simple, but it hardly does anything. If my cellphone only had one button it certainly would be simple, but, umm, all I could do would be to turn it [...]
Don Norman on “socializing our interactions with technology” (what sounds to me like a very Latour-ian phrasing):
The next peeve on the machines’ list, just after their dislike of people, is paper handling. They just can’t move paper about reliably and efficiently, especially things like tickets that their owners have touched. People don’t have any trouble [...]