Re: <nettime> Fwd: Diaspora* means a brighter future for all of us.

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@yahoo.com>]

There is another dimension to this:

Cute 'user friendly', 'idiot compatible' & 'low friction' interfaces
trigger lower level emotional responses and reflexive actions. This is why
they exist. Consequently, the discourse on such interfaces tends to become
infantile, benign and domesticated. Think Capital printed in colorful
fluorescent script font, with kitten pictures and Scratch and sniff on each
page. You can't, right?

The nature of discourse has already changed. New Speak is with us. For
example, look at the chat at livestream.com/globalrevolution - it mostly
consists of baby-talk: AWESOME! LOVE IT! GO! The infantile baby-talk is
good for impulsive buying of stuff, but of little use for anything else. 

The cuteness of interfaces is far from being neutral. Insisting on it is
like retaining pacifiers in adulthood. It's hard to talk with that thing in
your mouth.

> For me there are more fundamental issues at stake than 'which platform
> will win' -- dot.com or dot.net or whatever. Core is the deep problematic
> divide of giving life-time attention to screens and not to the human most
> proximal to you. (Especially given the decay of civil society as one can
> witness day-to-day in the developed world).


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