You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Technology’ tag.
The Firefox extension called “Weave” has an emblem that at first glance is three braided strands. Upon further inspection the three strands turn out to be one continuous segment. Just as with the images that authors bring to the reader, the image can be thought of as three distinct phases (the idea, the words, the visual they create in the reader’s head) but is really just one idea in multiple forms. Although Faulkner may disagree and say that indeed the three realities are separate, this logo is closer to the meaning that Macnab gives to three, that is of a counterpoint between contrasts.
The purpose of “Weave” is to allow multiple html readers to sync preferences such as bookmarks, history, passwords, etc. The service then solves a conflict between multiple browsers and truly works as three should. All web browsers aim to accomplish the same thing (render html as understandable images/texts) but have different architectures which causes unnecessary conflict between fundamental functions such as tracking bookmarks and passwords. Weave would not exist without the conflict and is a product of that strife.
Faulkner’s ideas are distinct from the readers’ ideas and this creates a conflict that begs for amelioration. The multiple sensory images (smell, kinesthetic, etc.) that Faulkner employs spring up to fill that tension and create a connection between author and reader. Again, this process works in design, literature, and as we see through Weave, technology.
Whirlpool, the maker of fridges and other home appliances, uses a spiral that floats about the ‘W’ of its name in its logo. On the surface this whirlpool is representative of the ‘whirlpool’ of water created in such devices as washing machines so as to remind the customer what the company produces. This particular spiral is actually two clockwise spirals that meet in the center.
Appliances have not seen a whole lot of innovation over the past years. In particular, major household appliances that are seen as necessary seem to have hit a threshold. The spiral and its implicit ties to five and regeneration invite the viewer to imagine the company growing with the times and regenerating its past success. To avoid the cold negative connotations of a technology company the spiral also brings an organic feel to the company.
As a technology company the spiral can represent quick growth during technological advancement and also a more sober, conservative growth during tough economic times (such as these). While technology is firmly based in science, to many the function of these technologies is ‘magical’ and the whirlpool with its five guided spiral is representative of that mysticism.
Whirlpool's Logo
Layered Compilation. Hayles characterizes elit as being layered while Calvino speaks of the persistence of literature as a system that conditions other systems. Birds exemplifies both of these ideas in that it is the layering of media on top of one another (which is in turn code, which is in turn 1’s and 0’s) and it is also exhibits a self conditioning feedback loop.
Rather than the flatness of regular literature which is 2 dimensional at best (the actual text and the meaning behind it [arguably vast as it may be]) elit may be multi-dimensional.
To Infinity and Beyond
Birds. Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs by Maria Mencia is a game of sorts where the user enables any combination of 13 different ‘bird songs’ which then create a bird on the backdrop. The bird sings a song and loops until the user disables it.
The birds themselves are formed using words, the words are the phonemic representation of the sound they make, and the sound itself is reconstructed by human singers. In this way there are a multitude of dimensions to each bird. The first dimension comes from the sound the bird makes, which is then turned into a word, which subsequently forms the body of the bird forming a complete circle. The animations and sounds are toggled completely by the user, so a feedback loop is created where the user enables a sound. That sound may become cacophonous if more sounds are added until the user shuts down some sounds. The loop is complete when the user re-enables sounds.
The interaction of the user with the site is impossible outside the realm of eliterature, as are the animations. The work itself would be lifeless without the animation and the sound.
All Aflutter
Platform Virtualizations. When one operating system just isn’t enough, turn to platform virtualization. A computer’s architecture (currently the most common is Intel’s x86) is meant to handle only 1 operating system at a time, but after installing a thin client a user can install another operating system to share the physical resources of the machine. This allows one operating system to ‘host’ a ‘guest’ operating system. As a metaphor virtualization allows for an infinite number of elements within elements to exist. This is analogous to how a work of literature can be fleshed out in almost infinite detail. The recursive nature of a platform run in a platform run in a platform (etc.) is layered but within the context of the machine it is being run on. More interestingly, virtualization allows different operating systems to be run concurrently on one machine.
Chemical Landscapes. Chemical Landscapes by Edward Falco (photograms by Mary Pinto, designed by Will Stauffer-Norris) is a work of electronic literature that begins with a ‘photogram’ that then leads the onlooker into a series of texts. These texts appear in a raw unadulterated form and a reflective lighter form. In this way the original page (simply a photogram) is an image that begets description. The photograms themselves are inspired by landscapes; they are the picture representation of a different image. The name of the work describes the process by which the work is created, but is also a description that leads to the image (a flashlight was used in a darkroom to expose certain parts of the work creating ‘chemical landscapes).
The entire work is hosted online, rather than locally on the user’s computer. As the user clicks on a portion of the home screen image a new page is delivered over the web. Each link then is symbolic in that if the material were removed from the site the link would be empty. Furthermore the links themselves summon up new pages and so lead from an image to a description in the way Calvino describes moving from an image to its description.
Time Machine. No, not the book by H.G. Wells, the automatic backup process deployed on the Mac OS X Leopard operating system. Time Machine is a versatile little program that backs up your entire computer whenever you plug in an external drive designated for use with Time Machine. The application creates a carbon copy of the user’s entire hard drive copying each file, folder, preference list, hidden setting, etc. (which by proxy means that every 1 and 0 is copied as well).
Thus a Hard Drive (HD) with 99 Gb used of 160 Gb will create an initial copy on the external HD of 99 Gb. Now comes the magic. Suppose the user creates 2 files before the next back up, and suppose those files are 1Gb files each. That means that 2 Gb have been added to the total used space on the HD (101 Gb for those keeping track). Instead of copying over the entire HD onto the backup drive, Time Machine simply adds the 2 new files to the backup but also makes a fresh copy of all of the rest of the files. ‘What?!’ you may be screaming, but worry not, thanks to the wonders of multi-hard linking your external hard drive only contains 101 Gb of data. Hard linked files are not like soft (symbolic) linked files in that deleting the original file will not result in loosing that file. Whereas a soft linked file is basically a roadmap for the file, a hard linked file is a ghost like clone of the file. If there were two hard links to a file and the user deleted the first file, the hard link would still be the file (whereas deleting the file would render a soft link useless). Hard links are like the many heads of the mythical Hydra. Each head is the Hydra, but cutting one off does not fell the beast.
Confusing as all of this is it does actually tie in to Calvino in a somewhat circuitous way. Hard links are the objective truth of which Calvino speaks. They are the universal truth because each link is in reality the file. Symbolic (soft) links are the subjective truth; they rely on a file to have any validity and once that file is removed they loose meaning. Hard links are, in a sense, true no matter what; they are objectively true. Soft links are, in a sense, true dependent on the state of the file; they are subjectively true.
Dot Matrix. A dot matrix printer is fed directions from a print server or computer and then composes an image (whether pictorial, graphical, or textual) line by line. This feat is accomplished by the print head laying dots down on a single line and then moving up to the next line similar to how an old school typewriter writes one line at a time. The dots then create the image which is perceived as a single whole but is really created from hundreds or possibly thousands of precisely laid dots.
Much like a crystal which creates a final form from intricate inner workings that layer upon one another, so too does a dot matrix printer create a refined image from a collection of plotted points aligned.
A close up
Frame Rates. Undoubtedly over the last few years you have watched a computer animated film. Perhaps it was a Disney-Pixar Movie (or just Pixar, if it was long enough ago). There is a great possibility that the movie Toy Story has passed through your life. You saw how fluidly the motion was, but were you aware that you were staring at still frames? Did you know that the motion you perceived was created by entirely static images?
‘Whoa Now!’ you gasp, ‘How can that be?’ Simply put it is the illusion of motion. A screen will never move, but simply project whatever image it is fed, and so a static page like the one this text is on appears stationary, but when things are sped up, things become interesting.
A digital movie is really a massive amount of frames quickly shown one after another. The human eye can sense up to 70 different shifts in those picture per second, but beyond that and the mind eye connection begins to falter. Toy Story for example runs at 24 frames per second, that is 24 different pictures are displayed within a second to give the illusion of speed. Cartoons are often only 15 frames per second which is barely above the 12 fps that humans can perceive as laggy. Video games generally run around 30 fps.
Thus frame rates are an analogy for Calvino’s memo on quickness as they create motion through a process that is too fast for the human eye to catch using still images.
Striking Resemblance
Sonic the Hedgehog. Calvino’s use of quickness speaks of how the manifestations of quickness used to be horses but has evolved to cars and trains and other means of transportation. I found that in my life quickness always manifests itself as a spiky haired blue hedgehog named Sonic. Sonic is the hero of the self titled Sega Genesis series of games. Sonic exemplifies both lethargy and speed as real life hedgehogs move methodically (perhaps not so much as the infamous sloth) but in his adventures he has come to possess super-human (super-hedgehog?) speed; Sonic can run faster than the speed of sound!
Recent Comments