People Who Live in Glass Houses

My UC San Diego colleague from the Department of Engineering Joe Goddard once taught a course on glass, rubber, and steel in the Culture, Art, and Technology program that I now direct, so it is interesting to see how glass as a material intimately tied to technological advantages considers to shape the cultural imagination and the aesthetic ideologies of consumers.

In this clip called "A Day Made of Class" from Corning we see an ideal professional family with children in private school go through a day of transportation, consumerism, and social interaction in a world of heads-up displays and urban screens.

If Vannevar Bush imagined the Memex as a kind of desk-computer, it is interesting to see that the coffee table and the large, plate glass window -- the icons of mid-century modernism -- are imagined to be the computational furnishings of the future.

It is interesting that the company has not disallowed responses, which now include over 4,000 comments that include witticisms and jibes like "A Day Made of Greasy Fingerprints" and "The World is my iPad." What I find surprising is that most viewers don't point out how obviously the technologies shown are merely the product of digital visual effects.

Thanks to my wonderful former student from my UC Irvine digital rhetoric class, Heather Pedrami, for the link.