Although this is a digital picture, its content is "analog" for "I am half-way through with the book I am reading." The receipt of my train pass is folded and holding the place, which - combined with the memory of the spine from my reading it this morning, wedges a space between what has been read and unread, a physical border of the explored and unexplored.
I remember Edward Tufte explaining...or perhaps it was in one of his books I was reading...that the vertical bars in a bar chart often used by companies and organizations to show the amount of profit, loss and other countable things is actually an abstraction of the real thing - coins stacked on a table...not unlike the abstraction of a pie being cut and eaten, which gives us the pie chart. Physical knobs, dials and other such objects of control are giving way to clicks and now voice recognition. I am not nostalgic for the hardware and gadgets of the past but I do appreciate the half-full/half-empty glass, wearing down of soles and tires, buttons, switches, sun dials and clock hands.
I remember Edward Tufte explaining...or perhaps it was in one of his books I was reading...that the vertical bars in a bar chart often used by companies and organizations to show the amount of profit, loss and other countable things is actually an abstraction of the real thing - coins stacked on a table...not unlike the abstraction of a pie being cut and eaten, which gives us the pie chart. Physical knobs, dials and other such objects of control are giving way to clicks and now voice recognition. I am not nostalgic for the hardware and gadgets of the past but I do appreciate the half-full/half-empty glass, wearing down of soles and tires, buttons, switches, sun dials and clock hands.