Viswanathan K's Thoughts

“Why do phones ring?” That is how Ellis Hamburger’s foreword to Golden Krishna’s Best Interface is No Interface starts! To draw our attention, obviously: “They sounded like alarms, shrill electrical burps and gurgles that duly represented the urgency.” That was when the phone was invented. With the advent of the cell phone, and now the smartphone, the sound of a phone ringing is annoying, even disruptive. “Why couldn’t someone just text to see if I’m available instead of calling and interrupting what I’m doing?”   Hamburger points out the solution of one app, Snapchat. You try chatting with someone on Snapchat, and only if they respond will the app allow you to call. While not perfect (there are many scenarios where this isn’t approach isn’t OK), it certainly is an improvement in many cases.   But, as Hamburger says, not all old interfaces are wrong or bad. Sometimes, the new interface can indeed be an improvement: “The ‘Hey, want to chat?’ text replaces th...

In a world where the TV screen isn’t the only screen in town, where the tablet, the smartphone and even the good old PC/laptop screen vie for attention, you could expect the TV show industry to do something to hold on to their viewers. So what did they do? Well, they’ve accepted the reality that the “two-screen experience” (or even more screens) is here to stay. TV shows in the West even ask you to “log on to the show's website and participate in real-time chats and interactive razzle-dazzle”, as this article by Thomas Doherty says. The term for this “decorative wraparound material”? Paratext. The longer definition? “The paratext is the satellite debris orbiting and radiating out from the core text: what the post-­telecast chatfest Talking Dead is to The Walking Dead, what Madonna-vs.-Lady Gaga mashups are to the original music videos, what Wolverine action figures are to the X-Men franchise—what all the buzzing swarms of trailers, teasers, bloopers, tweets, swag, webisode...