- The Web democratized media for the technologically adept. Web 2.0 is democratizing it for everyone else. But what happens when the regime notices?
A couple of new devices chip away at the wall between cyber- and meatspace:
- Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created a pair of goggles that recognizes and stores references to objects that you look at.
- Meanwhile, researchers at Carnegie Mellon have created an electromagnetic device that allows you to feel virtual objects.
A few links on the “soft luddite” front:
- Readers report an emotional attachment to physical books. I wonder if this is simply a matter of familiarity, as the article implies. I doubt it. I suspect that the cultural mythos surrounding the book is adding a quasi-moral dimension here. Could you really bring yourself to abandon the good, true, trusty book, emblem of the learned and vehicle of the Word?
- BuzzFeed gently mocks the technology-fasting that seems to be all the rage lately, while providing several links to examples of the phenomenon.
3 comments:
How about readers giving up the Book? Holy scriptures tend to be the most emotionally significant book, and my guess is (and the researchers may have dropped the ball on this one) that those are the books the people are referring to.
I know at least in the US there are some people who equate the bible with God. The book represents the physical manifestation of God - God's ability to affect the world in this day of the absence of impossible miracles - and sending the bible into cyberspace permanently would be like severing the link between physical and intangible.
Can you imagine a service where the priest/rabbi/imam ask you to scroll down in your Kindle to page 87 and read the third verse? How about singing along to that hymn on you iPod? That seems terribly isolational and a far cry from the warm and fuzzy image that religions normally try to cultivate.
Amen, brother.
Post a Comment