Comments on: On Fragmentation

By: CStanford

CStanford — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:29:41 +0000

I know this is old, but I’ll just add my amen to your irritation with Visa commercials – they make me *want* to pay cash for everything (even if I’m not thinking of the exact same commercials I’ll still agree with you).

By: OtherMichael

OtherMichael — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:30:11 +0000

We’ve been stuck viewing the forest for untold millennia. Now we’ve got zoom lenses and java-based photoshoppery running on the cell-phone in our pockets, and we have the ability to grab those inaccesibles.

Will we “forget” our heritage of the larger forest? of the whole? In some way, no. But then again, writing did indeed doom the memory palace.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:05:48 +0000

“All these digital bits and pieces will someday be joined together with their separated-at-birth others. We just have to wait for somebody to write the code to match the broken pieces of locket together.”

I’m sure it will happen eventually. I guess I’m speaking of the mindset that causes individuals to look at the world this way in the first place. Are we missing the forest for the trees?

By: OtherMichael

OtherMichael — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:09:13 +0000

Back to the fragmentation of images.

Are all of these closeups truly leading to fragmentation? Couldn’t they be leading the other way ’round?

All these digital bits and pieces will someday be joined together with their separated-at-birth others. We just have to wait for somebody to write the code to match the broken pieces of locket together.

Some has already been done: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/09/viewfinder-tool-for.html

A few months back, somebody on BoingBoing was lamenting ridiculously video-policies at movie theatres — basically, camera-phones were banned (or something like that). The response was “those phones take lousy video, anyway! who’d want to watch that!” Someday, those low-quality phone videos (and watch videos and eyeglasses videos, etc) will be conjoined with fragments of trailers, movie-posters, still photos, clips of the actors in other films, google-earth shots of the shooting locations, flickr photos, etc etc etc to recreate the film.

No, it’s not there today. But tomorrow is coming.

What man has rent assunder, let technology bind together.

There is no fragmentation. It’s turtles all the way down.

By: olivander

olivander — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:19:30 +0000

As if that isn't enough, one of the earliest ads in the campaign went so far as to use Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" to reinforce the notion that we are but cogs in a machine.

By: duffymoon

duffymoon — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:11:38 +0000

I’m with you on the Visa commercials. Here you have a magical fairyland where everything is running smoothly; all these happy shopping automatons in briskly-moving lines, speedy consumers. Some dolt comes along and pays with CASH! The nerve!

This type of commercial, I think, is a marked departure from the world-view most commercials up to this point have advocated. It used to be that commercials (and a lot of them still follow this formula) try to sell you a product based on the notion that the product will help you stand out from the crowd (see Apple’s ads for the best examples of this).

Now, Visa turns that on its head and seems to be saying that if you step out of line, you’ll be hated, seen as an annoyance, and civilization will pass you by unless you conform.

By: OtherMichael

OtherMichael — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:35:19 +0000

Even worse — paying by check!

I finally broke down and got an ATM-card last summer (2007) and have been using the debit-card features. I think the only time I write a check is for my rent.

But I remember the cold looks of people behind me in grocery lines when I pulled out the check book.