Stuff

[hazelk]

Leafing through leftover Sunday papers. There’s an article by Marina Warner about books being a superior medium to computers for learning about the world because of their greater physicality. One part of me wants to side with Rupert Giles and wax lyrical about how books smell, how they feel but objectively I’m not sure how strong a case there is. It’s not as if we plug the computer directly into our brains. There are buttons to press, the constant hum of the fans, the click of the keys, the work of moving a recalcitrant mouse around the mat. Maybe it’s a Proust’s madeleine effect. Having learnt to use computers as an adult they lack the web of associated memories that come with books and feel comparatively abstract and over refined. Like a madeleine for that matter if you weren’t raised on French fancies.

In other news David Thomson has the best vid idea evah. Cross-cutting between the Stewart/Novak storylines in Vertigo and Bell, Book and Candle. All it needs is a completely obvious song. “I Put a Spell On You?” “Falling in Love Again?” Maybe that Black Cat Bone song from the crack den in Wrecked.

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

"They don't let a woman kill you/In the Tower of Song"????

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Excellent even without knowing the tune :-)

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I didn't like Marina's article, it smelt too much like "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be" (I guess it's more like "The children of this generation won't have nostalgia as good as we get"). I think physicality and smells are important components of what become nostalgic memories, but I don't see the relationship between that and being immersed in the world of the text, bluntly.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Computers as we know them today have their own physicality and neither that nor the sensations involved in reading books bear any direct relationship to the text. I just wonder if the current generation, who are growing up with computers, will feel the same way about them as Warner does about books. Probably not enough to get nostalgic/fogeyish about it until there's a threat of them being replaced by yet another technology.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

A few years ago, there was an exhibition at the powerhouse museum in Sydney about the history of computing. A friend and I managed a really convincing imitation of nostalgia looking at computers from the early 80s. I think a major nostalgia trigger is seeing (or hearing, or smelling???) something you haven't for a long time, and that can easily apply to individual models. I wouldn't be surprised if it manifests for operating systems or "look-n-feel"s, they change regularly enough. Oh, and mobile phones.