I thought, this morning in my bed, at all I had read about the iPad on various
forums French and foreign. It appears as a kind of unease, frustration. « Ah!
Is that all? », « This already exists », « This is a big iPod Touch », etc.
Yet, while basically in agreement with these thoughts, I can not bring myself
reduce the subject to an assemblage of technologies already known and some
already mastered. In this « thing » I sense something new, I do not know what,
I wonder as Gilles Deleuze : « Where is the newness? ». What makes the bicycle
a new objet (tool?)? The wheel? No, that existed for a very long time. The
saddle? Legacy of the cavalry. The handlebars? The pedals? There is 2 French
words for this object: « bicyclette » and « vélo ». The first one addresses the
object of a technical (technological?) point of view : is a two-wheeler. The
second « vélo » (from « vélocipède ») : go fast with his feet. The « bicyclette
» is a technological breakthrough, the result of assembling of technical
elements already existing anf already proven as the wheel and the saddle. The «
vélo » is a machine (yet the same) that alters our relationship to the
territory, which allows us to increase our power (puissance : Nietzschean
sense). When the « bicyclette » is an « invention » of more aver the history of
mankind, the « vélo » os one of the most amazing inventions of mankind.
In the computer world, Apple did not invent the computer, not even the
micro-computer while the company was a pioneer in the field. Apple did not
invent the technology icons/mouse, nor does the multitouch, but Apple has
revolutionized the computer (and not only the micro-computer), inventing some
technology but above all by creating new uses in assembling new technologies
and linking closely to each other. Macintosh was not the first microcomputer «
graphics/mouse », iPod was not the first digital Walkman, iPhone was not the
first mobile phone. But, all these devices have radically changed the use to
which it had previously. By changing scale, from the iPod Touch to iPad, Apple
does, apparently, not a new machine (the same but greater), but create a new
use. By removing certain elements : the mouse, the cursor, the distance between
the hand and the brain is shortened ; increasing the size of a small fun object
(a Walkman after all) our power is increased. The alliance between the hand and
the brain is enhanced. The alliance between the hand and the brain is not what
characterizes human in the animal
kingdom?_______________________________________________
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