Stolen Words: Of Techno-Aesthetic Arousal and Love at First Sight
For self-confessed techno-fetishist and music slut awildflowersoul:
Who could resist the appeal of a yummy blueberry, grape, lime, tangerine or strawberry digital device? The fruity flavor in itself is irresistible, but when such cuteness is coupled with a titillating translucence, a candy-sweet digital striptease, the result is a lethal seduction machine. We see this recipe for seduction at play everywhere today, especially in Japanese culture, where the alchemical blend of cuteness and seduction has spawned a billion-dollar market for kiddy-porn anime and pink key-chain cell phones. This craze finds its way into our home offices.
What is the point of all this transparency? You might as well ask the equally perplexing question, What is the point of bringing back chinos and Capri pants? Both would elicit the same answer: fashion has dictated these questionable visual cults. But you don't have to be a fashion critic to understand that such trends do not self-generate haphazardly, nor are they arrived at in a transparently innocent way.
Admittedly, the first time I saw the new iMac, I relished the thought that I was one layer closer to the circuits that channel my ideas. I was one layer closer to understanding the mechanics of the digital mediator of my thoughts. I had achieved a greater level of control over the enigmatic network of copper and silicon behind the screen. This, of course, is a fatal error. I had fallen prey to the greatest danger of this hardware trend: feigned transparency.
If you look closely into the translucent shell of an iMac, what do you see, really? A few circuits leading into a metallic box with air vents. In effect, all you can see beneath the translucent, plastic veil of the monitor is the real casing of the monitor. The colorful shell of an iMac should be considered as an additional layer between the operator and the computer, the human and the machine.
It is an illusion, a lie, a fashion effect designed to simulate the lifting of a veil. We should not confuse this effect with that achieved by the transparent cases of antique music boxes and pocket watches --- these were created for instruction, not for fashion; they gave a full view of ticking gears and cogs in full motion, not an obscured view of immobile, inscrutable copper and silicon.
The transparent hardware case instills us with a false confidence by transforming daunting technologies into familiar fashion. With this confidence in place, the user is free to forget about what the circuits and chips are actually doing beneath the polished, graphical user interface. To summarize, the more aesthetically pleasing our hardware becomes --- pleasing by means of transparency, that is --- the more ignorant we become about what is actually making it tick.
--- excerpt from You Can't Always Get What You Want: Transparency And Deception On The Computer Fashion Scene, by Marcel O'Gorman
Who could resist the appeal of a yummy blueberry, grape, lime, tangerine or strawberry digital device? The fruity flavor in itself is irresistible, but when such cuteness is coupled with a titillating translucence, a candy-sweet digital striptease, the result is a lethal seduction machine. We see this recipe for seduction at play everywhere today, especially in Japanese culture, where the alchemical blend of cuteness and seduction has spawned a billion-dollar market for kiddy-porn anime and pink key-chain cell phones. This craze finds its way into our home offices.
What is the point of all this transparency? You might as well ask the equally perplexing question, What is the point of bringing back chinos and Capri pants? Both would elicit the same answer: fashion has dictated these questionable visual cults. But you don't have to be a fashion critic to understand that such trends do not self-generate haphazardly, nor are they arrived at in a transparently innocent way.
Admittedly, the first time I saw the new iMac, I relished the thought that I was one layer closer to the circuits that channel my ideas. I was one layer closer to understanding the mechanics of the digital mediator of my thoughts. I had achieved a greater level of control over the enigmatic network of copper and silicon behind the screen. This, of course, is a fatal error. I had fallen prey to the greatest danger of this hardware trend: feigned transparency.
If you look closely into the translucent shell of an iMac, what do you see, really? A few circuits leading into a metallic box with air vents. In effect, all you can see beneath the translucent, plastic veil of the monitor is the real casing of the monitor. The colorful shell of an iMac should be considered as an additional layer between the operator and the computer, the human and the machine.
It is an illusion, a lie, a fashion effect designed to simulate the lifting of a veil. We should not confuse this effect with that achieved by the transparent cases of antique music boxes and pocket watches --- these were created for instruction, not for fashion; they gave a full view of ticking gears and cogs in full motion, not an obscured view of immobile, inscrutable copper and silicon.
The transparent hardware case instills us with a false confidence by transforming daunting technologies into familiar fashion. With this confidence in place, the user is free to forget about what the circuits and chips are actually doing beneath the polished, graphical user interface. To summarize, the more aesthetically pleasing our hardware becomes --- pleasing by means of transparency, that is --- the more ignorant we become about what is actually making it tick.
--- excerpt from You Can't Always Get What You Want: Transparency And Deception On The Computer Fashion Scene, by Marcel O'Gorman