Sensuous electronics [Reflections]

The entrepreneur had finished talking about the software and processing algorithms for a new camera he was marketing, and as he came down from the stage he left the camera on the podium-perhaps forgotten, but perhaps suggesting that it wasn\´t expensive enough to worry about. · I was contemplating those processing algorithms when a woman who had been sitting behind me pushed by, heading up the aisle. As she passed by, I heard her urgently muttering to herself, "I have to touch it." · It seemed a curious urge. All the magic was in the software and algorithms; the hardware was simply a lens, a sensor, and a few chips. Yet I understood exactly what she was saying. I felt the same way myself. · Why, I asked myself, did I have this need to touch? I started to think about the look and feel of electronic gadgets instead of their functionality. Meanwhile, another speaker was showing a small intelligent thermostat that promised to learn your heating habits and usage. She said it had been designed to be "pretty and fun." Indeed, it had a certain unadorned beauty, simply a circular face with a small touch screen. It seemed the hardware equivalent of the Google home page-minimal and clean. When I remarked on this, someone told me that the insides of the thermostat were equally beautiful. Looking again up at the stage, I was surprised to recognize the truth of this observation. The uncovered circuit board inside resembled a work of art, having the clean geometric lines of a Mondrian painting, compressed to a minimal size and with no appearance of clutter. It exuded a powerful latent functionality.