thelonious's New Writeups

Interface Culture (idea)

1999-12-24T09:48:38Z

Name for the age we live in.
Also an excellent book written by Steven Johnson. Subtitled "How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate."

Short excerpt: "As our machines are increasingly jacked- in to global networks of information, it becomes more and more difficult to imagine the dataspace at our fingertips, to picture all that complexity in our mind's eye... Representing all that information is going to require a new visual language, as complex and meaningful as the great metropolitan narratives of the nineteenth-century novel."

Johnson charts the vital role interface design plays in our modern society.

interface (idea)

1999-12-24T09:38:58Z

Peaceful coexistence between human beings and machines requires clear communication. The best systems convey information so elegantly that we hardly think about the power they give us—boundaries dissolve and we become one with our technologies.
The interface allows this. Common interfaces include the remote control, the stereo, and the touch-tone keypad of a telephone. You see these interfaces not only on the products they were designed for, but also on things such as computer software which has no "natural" interface of its own.

A good book about interfaces is Interface Culture by Steven Johnson.

The Control Revolution (idea)

1999-12-24T09:29:33Z

The free flow of information in a post-industrial society is vital for control of the economy and the state. Information, thus control, is most effective when it is rationalized.

Information and Services as Linkages (idea)

1999-12-24T09:27:34Z

All sectors of an economy are enhanced by the information/service sector. The information/service sector is linked to every other sector of the economy, and link those sectors to each other as well.

post-industrialism (idea)

1999-12-24T09:20:39Z

The term post-industrialism was first used by Arthur J. Penty in 1914. Since then many different approaches have been brought to bear upon the nature, meaning and effects of post-industrial society.
"The concept of the post-industrial society deals primarily with changes in the social structure, the way in which the economy is being transformed and the occupational system reworked, and with the new relations between theory and empiricism, particularly science and technology." - Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, A Venture in Social Forecasting

"The US is not shifting from industry to services but from one kind of industrial economy to another." - Cohen & Zysman, "The Myth of a Post-Industrial Economy"

"Society is currently experiencing a revolutionary transformation on a global scale ... a revolution in societal control." - James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution

Although scholars disagree about what "post-industrial"…

The Disease of Images (idea)

1999-12-23T10:11:04Z

term common in describing the evils of television. I came across this term in Jerry Mander's 1976 book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Televison. Refers to the mediation of experience and believability of false images (computer generated, altered, etc.)