Sunday, February 01, 2009
the blackle pop
I recently discovered Blackle. It's funny that something that makes so much sense takes so long to come around. It also starts you thinking, about a lot of things you don't normally think about, which I suppose is one of its purposes.
And now that I start to talk about it, I find more and more people that know of it. A co-worker's 12 year-old daughter's school has adopted it school wide as the search engine of choice.
What makes me think there's something to the Blackle approach is what I call 'The Blackle Pop'. Whenever I click my bookmark to Blackle, my monitor (old style CRT) makes an audible pop as all the pixels turn off. There's got to be something to that.
Why is it that our computer monitors mimic the written page, that is, white background with black text? White is the natural state for paper. It's not the natural state for a computer screen.
Is it perhaps that it is easier to read black on white, not white on black? If so, how do we know this? Research? And if so why? I suppose we do have an over 2000 year history of reading black on white, is this why? And if so, does that mean we carry this tradition into the electronic world, where the background is not naturally white.
Perhaps black is the new white (see below).
new regime(s) ??
Now that Bush fiasco is over, Obama is like a breath of fresh air. It's as if the light has been turned on, after being in a darkened room for so long.
The immediate change to the concept of thought being used to solve problems, rather than porkbelly and idealogue, is startling in its contrast to the previous, but it also invokes the forlorn thought, now that we've seen an alternative, of 'why did it take so long'.
The Obama administration also puts the Harper administration in deep contrast. Before, Harper looked good compared to Bush, but now we see him as a small-minded idealogue, not ready (or perhaps not willing or able) to take the big view, stuck in his sad little partisan ways.
