1 of 2 posts filed under magic
“With the Internet we are creating a new extension of ourselves in much the same way as Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein pieced together his creation. Only this creation is not an anthropomorphic being that moves through accretive portions of space in time. It is instead, an emergent electronic beast of such proportions that we can only imagine its qualities, its dimensions.”
— John Brockman (via Wildcat2030)
1 of 2 posts filed under magic
“We need our abstractions, our black boxes. Black boxes are great and enabling when they work. But when something goes wrong, the walls of our abstractions need to go transparent as fast as possible.”
— Joyent - Magical Block Store: When Abstractions Fail Us (via paperbits)
1 of 2 posts filed under magic
“Successful products are precisely those that do not attempt to move user experiences significantly, even if the underlying technology has shifted radically. In fact the whole point of user experience design is to manufacture the necessary normalcy for a product to succeed and get integrated into the Field. In this sense user experience design is reductive with respect to technological potential.”
1 of 2 posts filed under magic
“Those who cannot perceive the network cannot act effectively within it, and are powerless. The job, then, is to make such things visible.”
1 of 2 posts filed under magic
“Applying the “super-anthropomorphism” ethics of magic to software, I see it calling for [Brenda] Laurel’s split between the invisible computer, on one hand, and the robust, visible character on the other. This fulfills the same requirement of honesty: the magician is not supernatural; the character he plays is. The computer is not capable of human intelligence and warmth; the character we create is. People will not end up feeling deceived and used when they discover, as they must ultimately, that the computer is nothing but a very fast idiot.”
— Bruce Tognazzini - Principles, Techniques, and Ethics of Stage Magic and Their Application to Human interface Design (1993)
1 of 2 posts filed under magic
“Science fiction didn’t see the mobile phone coming. It certainly didn’t see the glowing glass windows many of us carry now, where we make amazing things happen by pointing at it with our fingers like goddamn wizards.”
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“As we move away from interaction via screens and into physical space, we have the potential to make the world significantly more magical. We can make the everyday into the any day, especially if we focus on communication and understanding.”
— Zach Lieberman of Openframeworks responding to the question “how will technology become more humanised in the next decade”, in Wired’s March 2012 issue. (via tim)
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The Object Permanence series by Marco Pinter explores our perception of the existence of objects over time, which is fundamental to how we experience the world and our place in it. By exploiting the perceptual effect of object permanence through the use of graphics, computers and robotically-controlled sculpture, the viewer perceives objects over time which do not in fact exist. The “virtual” objects in the works behave as physical objects, thus impacting the gallery’s and viewer’s corporeal space. The work cycles between states of chaos and order, where the component sculptural systems are alternatively perturbed and at peace.
(Source: wired.co.uk)
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“There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of The Street.”
1 of 2 posts filed under magic
Teleporter is an interaction design sketch by Peter Bennett. It explores how a teleportation illusion could be used to enhance digital communication.
