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From: James Souttar <ancient@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 11:25:00 +0100
Excellent post, scott...
For those who don't believe that they are influenced by computers,
and those who (like me) are beginning to wonder whether we are
influenced more than we realize, I'd strongly recomment Stephen
Talbot's 'The Future Does Not Compute' (Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly &
Associates, Inc, 1995).
One of Talbot's points that struck me most is his suggestion that
just as the way we see the world is being increasingly influenced by
the technology we use, so technology mirrors (often unrecognized)
preoccupations of our societies. Hence the reduction of the world to
an abstract, computational simulacrum was a tendency already
prevalent long before the development of computers.
I have a real problem with the idea that architects may be creating
buildings based on virtual simulations. This seems like yet another
reduction of experience, in this case eliminating other sensory
perceptions in favour of the purely visual. How can a digital
'walkthrough' emulate the experience of inhabiting a space - with its
subtle microclimate and air currents, its acoustics, the tactility of
its materials (such as the hardness or softness underfoot), the
intricate proxemics of the other people who use it? And yet I can't
help feeling that the momentum of technology is such that this will
become almost an inevitability. What then will become of the active
imagination, informed by authentic experience and tacit knowledge,
which *can* model these things?
James