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commonplace

omar.website · 1,004 words · saved by 1 readers

"a videogame is an excuse to use the computer. to use a computer is to gain additional sense organs, which also causes the ones you already have to work in a different way. a mouse pointer becomes an extension of your hand, and the eyes adjust to follow it - the cursor does some of the work in making the screen intelligible that the eyes were previously doing, leading to a shift in procedures of visual knowledge. this isn’t unique to computers - there’s the famous saying that if you have a hammer you start to look at things as if they were nails. a stick may not be terrifically different as an extension of an arm, and a mouse or lightpen may not be terrifically different as an extension of the finger, but slight diversions and losses or redirections of sensitivity modify the ways we use them, which in turn affects the picture of the world they send back. there’s a kind of low-level appeal to expanding your perceptions in this way and it’s fun to consider what else could count as a sens

commonplace latency "Let me tell you a little story. There was once a young man who dreamed of reducing the world to pure logic. Because he was a very clever young man, he actually managed to do it. And when he'd finished his work, he stood back and admired it. It was beautiful. A world purged of imperfection and indeterminacy. Countless acres of gleaming ice stretching to the horizon. So the clever young man looked around the world he had created, and decided to explore it. He took one step forward and fell flat on his back. You see, he had forgotten about friction. The ice was smooth and lev

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