Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!lll-lcc!pyramid!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: norm@ontenv.uucp (Norman S. Soley)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: The Aesthetics of Computers
Message-ID: <1511@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 29 Jan 88 09:52:39 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Organization: Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Toronto
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Approved: taylor@hplabs

I recently attended a course called "Excellence in Thinking and Writing" 
put on by McLuhan & Davies Communications here in Toronto.  The instructor 
was communications theorist Eric McLuhan (son of Marshall McLuhan). 

One of the topics discussed was "Writing with a VDT" in which the same 
feelings you express were explained. In addition to the cultural 
conditioning towards print media there is also a psychological reason. 
McLuhan (the elder) identified through his research the concepts of hot 
and cold media.  Hot media are those media where the light source conveys 
information directly, Television and Computer monitors are the two best 
examples of this.  Cold media are those where the information is picked 
up by reflection after the light has left it's source (sunlight reflecting 
off a printed page is cold media).  It seems that the two types of light 
are processed differently by the brain.  Hot media (VDT's) is processed 
by the left brain, cold by the right.  Hence the preference for working 
with organized, technical material on screen and creative, personal things 
on paper.

McLuhan (the younger) recommended that as a matter of practice any 
creative writing done on a VDT should be edited on paper and the 
corrections typed in afterwards. (so much for the paperless office). 

This was written and edited on VDT (I have no printer here). And I'm 
sure there is at least one spelling error and one gross miscarriage of 
english grammar somewhere in here even though I've read it over very 
carefully several times. 

Norman Soley