Just checking out Contemporary Home Computing, a webzine by Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied, with articles and blogs about our favorite appliance, its metaphors, and its place (or willed absence) in the culture at large. The perspective here is low-res and retro (in a good, non-Ludditic way). Sample article: Espenschied's Where did the computer go?, considering the drive to dematerialize hard drives and screens in the home and workplace, bringing us closer to the Platonic ideal of data as pure light and air. Kind of like factory farming, where meat magically appears in stores in shrink-wrapped cubes and the slaughter and biochemistry takes place somewhere else.

- tom moody 2-28-2007 6:24 pm

I find that whole article you mention in a way rather romantic. See www.timokl.de/web-schnippsel/where-did-the-computer-go-dragan-espenschieds-romantic-look-on-com.html
- timokl (guest) 4-01-2007 3:55 pm


Thanks. I agree that romanticizing old gear would be bad. Drx's critique is valuable for pointing out the role of denial (that the computer is a material, energy consuming thing) in the drive to make these devices small, light, and invisible.
- tom moody 4-01-2007 6:21 pm





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