Kevin Kelly, author of the forthcoming book What Technology Wants, has an article in praise of screens in this issue of Smthsonian.com. Here’s a snippet:
Screens provoke action instead of persuasion. Propaganda is less effective in a world of screens, because while misinformation travels fast, corrections do, too. On a screen it is often easier to correct a falsehood than to tell one in the first place; Wikipedia works so well because it removes an error in a single click. In books we find a revealed truth; on the screen we assemble our own truth from pieces. On networked screens everything is linked to everything else. The status of a new creation is determined not by the rating given to it by critics but by the degree to which it is linked to the rest of the world. A person, artifact or fact does not “exist” until it is linked.
Much more at the site. Thanks to Juan Vera for the link.
