Do mobile phones dream of networked sheep?
I'm not a morning person, and in that gradual stage between sleep and awake my mind messes with me. Monday morning I was particularly unexcited to wake up, so I reached over to the passenger side pillow and mashed the keys of my phone to see what time it was. The display of my phone took an unusual amount of time to wake up...in fact, it just didn't. The display lit up soft black, the keys backlit, but the UI graphics wouldn't appear. I found myself whispering to my phone "come on, it's time to get up", but it just lied there. Like me, not quite sleeping, not quite awake. I gave up, and we both went back to sleep.That morning, when I got in to work, my colleague just happened to slip me this passage from Design Noir:
"When objects dream...
Electronics are not only 'smart', they 'dream' - in the sense that they leak radiation into the space and objects surrounding them, including our bodies. Despite the images of control and efficiency conveyed through a beige visual language of intelligibility and smartness, electronic objects, it might be imagined, are irrational - or at least they allow their thoughts to wander. Thinking of them in dreaminess rather than smartness opens them up to more interesting interpretations."
Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects, Dunne & Raby, p.8
I think the universe is messing with me too.
Labels: design, electronics, mobile phones
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