Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Is multi-touch gesture poetic language or prose?


Is multi-touch gesture poetic language or prose? Maybe, it is wrong to ask this question, but I want to consider about it. When the computer came into our world, "metaphor" played an important role: the desktop metaphor. The desktop metaphor arranged the images on the display and the mouse in the order of our body sense. Now we used to use them, then the multi-touch gesture is coming into the world. Is the multi-touch gesture some metaphors for something. The metaphor connects two things which are normally separated. Moreover, it is baed on our body sense according to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. If the mouse as a physical object gives us the feeling of "grabbing" for the images on the display in the desktop metaphor, what does the multi-touch gesture bring into the relationship between the human and the computer. I think that multi-touch gesture makes one-to-one relationship between us and the logical machine, which is like a prosaic sense or a sense of grammar/dictionary. However, my friend pointed out that the multi-touch gesture is like a poetic language. And I felt that his idea is also interesting so I have to re-consider about the multi-touch gesture.

iPhone introduced the PINCH:

With the iPhone multi-touch, zooming in and out of a picture never been easier. Steve Jobs introduces what he called a “pinch”. Bring your thumb and index fingers closer together or move them further apart to scale images.  Have a look at Steve Jobs presenting the feature, the audience is amazed by this.        
http://www.iphonefreak.com/2007/01/iphone_and_stev.html
 This thumb and index fingers action had made nothing to zoom the image or the physical object before the iPhone. Now, we think that our two fingers action have been able to zoom the image on the display from ancient time. This is the problem; Pinch is new action for us but we used to do it. Does iPhone just connect our thumb and index fingers action to zoom the image? Does the human have a sense for this finger action make zoom the image or the object? If there is only artificial connection our fingers action and zoom, this is one-to-one relationship like the dictionary. If we have natural sense for the link between fingers action and zoom, the Apple design and engineer team feel this sense and give it shape. Anyway, this it time that the digital device makes our action rule, therefore we must consider about these new action and its meaning in the long human history. I think that a new language based on our body, the image, and the digital device is arising now. I use "Language" as metaphor. We has changed the our own language in order to adjust our recognition for the environment. In digital age, I think that this change occurs at our body level very calmly.

I think that multi-touch gesture reduces our three-dimensional action to two-dimensional one. In order to reduce that, our body sense for the three-dimensional world have to be discarded. And, Pinch action for zooming the image shows this switchover. Pinch action need just two points of contacts in three-dimentional fingers action in order to zoom the image in the display. Even though we see and feel our own finger action which is three-dimentinal, iPhone need just two points of contact in the its surface. We live in three-dimantional world, so we always feel that our action for iPhone is the three-dimentinal one but the reduction happens there. However, we can not notice this reduction and feel "natural" for Pinch action. Pinch action is the artificial but we feel and make it "natural". The relationship is that "natural : artificial = poetic : prosaic"

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