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.