I’ve been thinking a lot on interaction, since recently entering a new job and having to evaluate and grade masses of new information quickly.
A processing heuristic that seems to work across scales, that I’ve found useful so far, is:
The metaphors we choose matter. When the lines between symbolic and actual start to blur and no longer become so mutually exclusive, the more powerful the way we frame things becomes.
In Eustance Mandeville Wetenhall Tillyard's tightly written 1959 classic The Elizabethan World Picture, the master scholar lays out three visions of the English Renaissance world, as experienced in the time of Shakespeare, Dee, Donne and Milton.
These visions, in short: the Chain of Being, the distributed-but-mediated correspondences, and the Cosmic Dance. I find the Dance the most useful.
Intrinsically, we know we can just take things we have written down, and if written well and right, they can happen, more or less.
The latest recension of the concept has been made popular by American technologists, using digital and, increasingly, precision engineered physical machinery as ritual tools to bring about the world they want to see.
This world is heavily inflected with Lord of the Rings themes, in particular.
The difference between a tool and a weapon is intent – the mind and soul that employs its commission.
I think of this when I sit at a keyboard, for my dayjob, hammering out and sharpening key lines and messages crafted to take on a life of their own, and delivering them through digital channels.
I try to think about this, every time I sit at a keyboard – the input feeder to these engines of attention and distraction. These are a most beautiful tool and, potentially, a most terrible weapon.