MX: Language of New Media thoughts

—In "meatspace" we have to work to remember, but in cyberspace we have to work to forget.
-this isn't necessarily profound, but i really like it for some reason. aside from terming reality "meatspace" it talks about the temporality of memory and how that doesn't extend to a computer. so when does a computer really forget? When you destroy them, but that no longer applies. With cloud computing it's no longer the disconnected computer, but rather a network of servers all remembering everything you do. What will the future be like when accounts of history are accurate? Hmmm...i kinda felt like i was going somewhere. Guess not.

—Most of the activity remains invisible to the user.
-wouldn't it be weird if it didn't? what if you saw all the calculations and processes that your computer was performing as you were doing things. Would it be beautiful or obnoxious? I think it has the potential to be beautiful, but would that add anything to the experience? no, probably not. What could it add to the experience. Think of a music visualizer for computer processes.

—A user does many vastly different tasks using the same few tools.
-i want users to do the same tasks using vastly different tools. so navigating the same website with your mouse, your keyboard, your microphone, your camera, your accelerometer...what else is there. By plugging things into your different ports! That would be weird.

—The computer moved from being a production tool to a distribution tool.
-is there another mode here we are forgetting? production, distribution...maybe utilization? but the computer is most certainly is a utilization tool, given the nature of the distribution. hmm...are there others?

—Netomat, and Webstaker are two browsers that purposefully (unlike ie6) display your content as it wants to, and not as you intend it to be displayed.
-this idea is just hilarious to me. i wonder what other things can be uncovered with this kind of thinking. I immediately think of the episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force with the e-helmet. The one that can download any mp3 and convert it to the same ragtime song. I like things that screw stuff up for the user intentionally. But how can that be used for good? How can I take something someone else made and display it in a better, or more efficient or prettier, or whatever way? I guess css allows for the disconnect between form and content, but can it go farther. can it be used for something other than form?

—there is no hierarchy with hyperlinking. one page doesn't have more weight over the other.
-I don't know that i agree with this. i think that the current page tends to have more weight, but it really depends on what you are hyperlinking to. if you are stumbling from link to link within wikipedia then yeah i would agree, but if you use the links at the bottom that show sources, it seems to me that those links would be hierarchically more important.

—time became a flat image or landscape
-?