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digital mirrors

My favorite quote from the Microsoft Social Computing Symposium appeared in the backchannel on the last day:

Scott Golder: “We build digital mirrors. And when you see a digital mirror, what do you do? Fix your hair, and straighten your tie.”

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 10:53 pm and is filed under digitalness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “digital mirrors”

  1. Kevin Marks Says:
    May 11th, 2006 at 1:23 am

    This reminds me of Wilde’s preface to Dorian Gray

    The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

    The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. [...]

    Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

    All art is quite useless.

    More on this from me and Weinberger

  2. Jeff Cooper Says:
    May 11th, 2006 at 1:22 pm

    I thought that Ballmer’s quote that “There’s no innovation that we’ve seen come out of at least Linux,” was quite… uh… stirring.

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