Imitations in Words

Watching Museum Diaries early this morning on TVO and I noticed a word they used when talking about fakes and forgeries, pastiche. It is interesting how fakes have become their own genre. Antique fakes can be as interesting and historical as the real artifacts. Also, there is still the danger of being wrong and deciding an item is fake when it is not. Some artifacts are just created differently from the standard at the time. People could be innovative hundreds and thousands of years ago too. So, a different colour, style, etc, is not a sure sign of a forgery or fake. 

Wikipedia - A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates.

A Punch Censor?

I remember Batman from the 1970's. To hide the fights or make them less serious looking, graphics were used to illustrate punches, hits and smashes. While camouflaging the fights the punch censors also made them funny, so I'd guess they worked. Too bad that plan changed. I'd still rather see the censors, they had character. 

How would you use a punch censor? Assuming you would, of course. 

Cybertwee: Feminine Technology

From a post on The Guardian:

Imagine, though, what the tech landscape might look like if soft hues and girly aesthetics were championed, rather than ridiculed? That’s exactly what three young artists – Gabriella Hilleman, 27, Violet Forest 26, and May Waver, 23 – decided to do a few years ago, when, mostly on a lark, they convened the first International Cybertwee Conference and Roundtable.

...Ultimately, Hilleman, Waver and Forest hope that Cybertwee can be not only simply an aesthetic movement, but that it can restore skills and participation in tech to girly girls who might normally be alienated from the space.

Visit the Cybertwee site.

One point in the article mentions pink being used to show things as fake and/ or sexual. I wish there had been more about that issue as it seems to be the bigger problem with having feminity or girlishness in technology/ the digital world. Pink has become fluffy or slutty. When did you last see something pink that wasn't supposed to be seen as one or the other? Pink has become a stereotype. 

I like the ultimate goal behind cybertwee, getting more people involved in technology. It is such a new area, still evolving. It needs input from a variety of people with different experiences and points of view. 

Words from Wordables

One of my favourite things are rainy nights. I like everything dark and shiny with a mix of coloured lights (if you're in town). 

These two words came up from Wordables in my Facebook feed, posted by a friend. I visited the site to find more. 

Cyber Communication History Book

Starting from the email and its stylistic facets, chat, in which we focus also on the art of composing spartan shapes and colors in the standard IRC, the author probes the spontaneous, irreverent and relentless personal communication that found between restrictions techniques and tricks of its own random mode. In the following chapters we analyze the digital greetings (greetings, condolences), then moved to a short and intense history of ASCII Art and its roots in RTTY Art, the art of the teletype, with the additional restriction of ASCII to 5 bits (ie only upper case).

The author of this book, Brenda Danet, is now deceased. There are no chances to find her online and ask her about her book. I would have liked to know if she ever tried ASCII or other text art herself.

In 20 years I think there will be a small flood of books about Internet and communications, the history. About there in time will be the 50 year mark for the Internet becoming a part of popular media. The Internet is older than that, but few people knew much about it until ISP's started cropping up and making it fairly easy for anyone with a computer to connect online. 

The Internet (beyond the computer itself) has changed communication forever. But, as I see typewriters become obsolete, I wonder what will be next. I would not be surprised if the computer itself eventually went into the obsolete pile. But, I do wonder about screen size. From big screen TVs to the tiniest mobile devices... screen sizes don't get taken into account very often in communication. I don't count making websites mobile-friendly because that's a necessity due to the miniscule size. Do people really prefer a tiny screen? I can't imagine so - I don't! 

It doesn't seem mobile is going anywhere though. How will reading everything from tiny screens change communications, more than it has so far? Will people start wearing magnifying glasses? If so, will that just give manufacturers a reason to make things even smaller? Over generations, if this keeps up, will our eyeballs or eye sight adapt to reading this way? 

Note: The quoted text above comes from a review of Brenda Danet's book, on Neural.

There is no I in Hello

Why is "Hi" the short form for "Hello"?

This is what got me thinking this morning.

It's a small thing, but if you think about it, there is no "i" in Hello. Logically the short form would be "Ho" or "lo".