Spinning writes
New media brings the awareness of the thoughts in layers. Teaches us to tie them all together into a symbolic whole. The music for the dancing serves as background just as easily for ponder, and for all the movies constantly running on the monitor, on the mind.
Her post is interesting for the connection she makes between new media and mind. Simply, both mind and network are complex arrays or systems. When we remember, we “make a link” between two things. Thus database is a metaphor (not simile) for a certain function of mind. Of course, memory and database function in vastly different ways. The network and the brain are another connection in this way. Don’t we want to create metaphors that help to concretize or visualize complex systems? Don’t these lead to better questions?
A famility photograph isn’t a memory, though; it’s a “key,” a machine for unlocking. Nor is it “the famility.” Indeed the photograph makes “still” what is in motion always: family. This notion is what caught my ear at the last fantastic Narrative meeting that turned into a nice show and discussion of Fred Nelson’s blackandwhites. John Timmons asked the question: is “this” what Fred was seeing? Interesting, the photograph as mental image.