Technology
We are here
It’s odd that technology’s default backdrop is often nature, as if an apology, a nod to how things were. Windows XP’s “bliss” wallpaper shows a rolling meadow seen through faceless, almost disembodied eyes. Apple, always listless and self-conscious in their designs, offers us, with the iPad, a clear lake at dusk; I wonder if it’s just me, or if “dock” — the term Apple uses for the row of applications at the bottom — in the foreground is a playful pun operating also as a dock on a lake. Or maybe it’s not dusk but dawn, wake up time for the early risers, those people with severe jobs and complicated calendars.
I once pointed to my iPhone in Google maps and said to my wife during a hike “we are right here,” to which a passerby scoffed “no, you are here,” demonstrating with his arms the vicinity of reality (I guess everyone is a Zen master). He probably went home to regale to his wife a story about some dork on his iPhone who could only find his ass were it an app. It’s useless to look at porn on your iPhone: the lovers are too small. If you’ll grant me an aphorism, let it be that.
I’d like to think I could jump into Apple’s lake anytime, dusk or dawn, like a seal meets Thoreau. Let me just block out the image of Jason Voorhess comin’ to get me, which is why I never camp, no matter what Sontag has to say about it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, sigh, youtube and wiki it, respectively, you useless bastard.
Tags: ipad
Yes. This makes me so happy.
Jimmy’s back
like a ninja at your window…
“(I guess everyone is a Zen master)”
hahahahaha! :)
Thanks for this. Just got a Jesus Phone.
Man, Jimmy, your stuff is way too good to be surrounded by all this HTMLGIANT drivel. Can’t you get your own website/blog, so I don’t have to get all mucked up looking for you?
lu, save this link in your browser for HTMLGIANT, then you wont have to look at the ‘drivel’
http://htmlgiant.com/author/jimmy/
Yes. This makes me so happy.
Jimmy’s back
like a ninja at your window…
“(I guess everyone is a Zen master)”
hahahahaha! :)
Thanks for this. Just got a Jesus Phone.
i wish i could put circuit board wallpaper on the sky
Man, Jimmy, your stuff is way too good to be surrounded by all this HTMLGIANT drivel. Can’t you get your own website/blog, so I don’t have to get all mucked up looking for you?
lu, save this link in your browser for HTMLGIANT, then you wont have to look at the ‘drivel’
http://htmlgiant.com/author/jimmy/
i wish i could put circuit board wallpaper on the sky
Clever, funny and sincere. I could relate even with just a laptop.
or the drab interior of an office space replete with cubicles
Clever, funny and sincere. I could relate even with just a laptop.
It’s odd that technology’s default backdrop is often nature, as if an apology, a nod to how things were.
Or rather:
“The world is not a L’Oréal ad. We do not live inside our own advertisements. “Egnaro” was a recognition of the West’s tendency to swan-dive into its own mythology. “Egnaro” is the beautiful world of the corporate ad, in which dolphins swim alongside our car, simultaneously delighting and blessing us, and making us feel “natural” even as we wipe them out as a species. Excuse me, we don’t live in a world like that. We are not going to be able to live in a world like that. The promise that we can live in a world like that is the same lie Isobel Avens tells herself. The real world of Signs of Life, the world of greed and pollution, of genetics used for the worst and feeblest of purposes, is the world that we have saddled ourselves with as a result of wanting to drive with the dolphins.
M John Harrison in a Strange Horizons interview.
It’s odd that technology’s default backdrop is often nature, as if an apology, a nod to how things were.
Or rather:
“The world is not a L’Oréal ad. We do not live inside our own advertisements. “Egnaro” was a recognition of the West’s tendency to swan-dive into its own mythology. “Egnaro” is the beautiful world of the corporate ad, in which dolphins swim alongside our car, simultaneously delighting and blessing us, and making us feel “natural” even as we wipe them out as a species. Excuse me, we don’t live in a world like that. We are not going to be able to live in a world like that. The promise that we can live in a world like that is the same lie Isobel Avens tells herself. The real world of Signs of Life, the world of greed and pollution, of genetics used for the worst and feeblest of purposes, is the world that we have saddled ourselves with as a result of wanting to drive with the dolphins.
M John Harrison in a Strange Horizons interview.