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June 23, 2005
When do academics just scare you?
Transliteracies Conference 2005: Research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading(Conference / UCSB Roundtables 2005) is happening this June. Go look at their web site. All the big names are there.
Now, tell me what is wrong with the site design that impairs reading online. Note that there is no participation of people who design hardware, do research on perception and reading from a cog-sci level, there are no HCI people. Well, perhaps they're hidden in among the names I know.
Now, I could be wrong, but this seems like more of the same old thang: "We'll worry about what goes on at the surface level with scant thought about any of the deeper issues." This is why Humanities profs call me to help fix their email problem, mac users who cannot ever learn that PC specific virus did not delete their files, who refuse to 'play' with the technology to learn about its capacities, limitations and affordances; who never get around to asking the right questions of technology and thus have an unsatisfactory superficial response. Sigh.
It reminds me of the Ted Hughes poem "How Water Began to Play".
Water wanted to live
It went to the sun it came weeping back
Water wanted to live
It went to the tress they burned it came weeping back
They rotted it came weeping back
Water wanted to live
It went to the flowers they crumpled it came weeping
back
It wanted to live
It went to the womb it met blood
It came weeping back
It went to the womb it met knife
It came weeping back
It went to the womb it met maggot and rottenness
It came weeping back it wanted to dieIt went to time it went through the stone door
It came weeping back
It went searching through all space for nothingness
It came weeping back it wanted to dieTill it had no weeping left
It lay at the bottom of all things
Utterly worn out utterly clear
from Crow 1970
Posted by jason at June 23, 2005 07:24 AM