Assorted thoughts from Minicon
This weekend some friends and I went to Minicon, in Minnesota. It's a sci-fi/fantasy convention with lots of interesting writers--and interesting non-writers, of course. Despite the lack of food and my being sick for a lot of the weekend, we had a really good time.
On the plane up to Minnesota I was listening to the little tones they have that mean things to the crew but are completely meaningless and pretty unobtrusive to everyone else. It seems like it's fairly recently that people really started getting into alternative interfaces that aren't just text on a screen, e.g. that clock with images around the outside from live video feeds from other places that we saw in 120 (or possibly 102c?) last year. But I realized that this is an alternative interface too--it conveys information via a sequence of tones that is clear for those in the know but inscrutable to anyone else. It's fairly limited in what it can convey, and for all I know it may only be one way, though it doesn't necessarily have to be. But for what it's used for it works very well, conveying the necessary information without being irritating to everyone else--and it's been around for quite some time. I just thought that was kind of interesting.
A second event that occured at Minicon is related to something Professor Hollan said in class today. Some background may be required first: Harlan Ellison, author of "I have no mouth but I must scream," among other things, was the special guest author for this year's conference. In addition to his works, he's well known as being very outspoken and opinionated, to the point of being a jerk, really. So Saturday evening we're standing around, and Amanda and Zack are on the phone calling people about dinner plans. Harlan comes up and yells at Amanda for being on the phone every time he sees her, takes Zack's phone from him and hangs it up, then rants at us about how much he hates cell phones for several minutes. His main objection seems to be that he feels like he's surrounded by crazy people walking around talking to themselves, and they should all be locked up. (At this point Zack responded that if they were all locked up together they'd have no need for phones anymore.)
Now I don't much care that everyone looks like they're talking to themselves, though I admit it can be disconcerting when you can't see the phone and someone seems to be looking straight at you and saying something, then when you respond they give you a look like you're the crazy person. But there are plenty of other reasons to hate cell phones, not the least of which being the interruptions they cause. For instance, restaurants and movie theatres, especially when the person with the phone insists on talking abnormally loudly. Or of course, my personal pet peeve is when I'm with someone and we're having a nice conversation, then they're phone rings and they're on the phone for the next 15 minutes, leaving me twiddling my thumbs. If I had a penny for every person I've seen using a cell phone to be rude....
This actually reminds me of an article I read about the Amish and technology a while back. It seems that the Amish are not unilaterally opposed to all technology, and indeed will allow things in, provided that it does not harm the coherence of the whole community. When asked about installing phones in homes, rather than out in a booth in the meadow, one man told the reporter, "What would that lead to? We don't want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a telephone. It's not just how you use the technology that concerns us. We're also concerned about what kind of person you become when you use it." An interesting mindset, for sure.
On the plane up to Minnesota I was listening to the little tones they have that mean things to the crew but are completely meaningless and pretty unobtrusive to everyone else. It seems like it's fairly recently that people really started getting into alternative interfaces that aren't just text on a screen, e.g. that clock with images around the outside from live video feeds from other places that we saw in 120 (or possibly 102c?) last year. But I realized that this is an alternative interface too--it conveys information via a sequence of tones that is clear for those in the know but inscrutable to anyone else. It's fairly limited in what it can convey, and for all I know it may only be one way, though it doesn't necessarily have to be. But for what it's used for it works very well, conveying the necessary information without being irritating to everyone else--and it's been around for quite some time. I just thought that was kind of interesting.
A second event that occured at Minicon is related to something Professor Hollan said in class today. Some background may be required first: Harlan Ellison, author of "I have no mouth but I must scream," among other things, was the special guest author for this year's conference. In addition to his works, he's well known as being very outspoken and opinionated, to the point of being a jerk, really. So Saturday evening we're standing around, and Amanda and Zack are on the phone calling people about dinner plans. Harlan comes up and yells at Amanda for being on the phone every time he sees her, takes Zack's phone from him and hangs it up, then rants at us about how much he hates cell phones for several minutes. His main objection seems to be that he feels like he's surrounded by crazy people walking around talking to themselves, and they should all be locked up. (At this point Zack responded that if they were all locked up together they'd have no need for phones anymore.)
Now I don't much care that everyone looks like they're talking to themselves, though I admit it can be disconcerting when you can't see the phone and someone seems to be looking straight at you and saying something, then when you respond they give you a look like you're the crazy person. But there are plenty of other reasons to hate cell phones, not the least of which being the interruptions they cause. For instance, restaurants and movie theatres, especially when the person with the phone insists on talking abnormally loudly. Or of course, my personal pet peeve is when I'm with someone and we're having a nice conversation, then they're phone rings and they're on the phone for the next 15 minutes, leaving me twiddling my thumbs. If I had a penny for every person I've seen using a cell phone to be rude....
This actually reminds me of an article I read about the Amish and technology a while back. It seems that the Amish are not unilaterally opposed to all technology, and indeed will allow things in, provided that it does not harm the coherence of the whole community. When asked about installing phones in homes, rather than out in a booth in the meadow, one man told the reporter, "What would that lead to? We don't want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a telephone. It's not just how you use the technology that concerns us. We're also concerned about what kind of person you become when you use it." An interesting mindset, for sure.
posted by Pam Griffith at 11:32 PM
3 Comments:
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I'm curious about the "little tones" you mention -- could you provide any more information (a link, maybe)?
Also, did Harlan say anything that wasn't filled with vitriol?
I can't seem to find a link, I'm probably not using the right technical terms. But I'm talking about the sequences of high and low tones played when the plane is about to take off, after it has levelled out, before it lands, or when someone pushes a flight attendant button, etc.
Harlan did mention that he really liked some comedian I hadn't heard of, but other than that...no, I don't think so. (To be fair, I didn't go to many of the events he spoke at; he may have been nicer in those)
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