I was reading about Winky Dink and You recently. (in the splendid Paperweight newspaper). It was a 1950s TV show where you got a special plastic sheet to put on the TV screen - which you could then draw on and interact with the cartoons on the TV. Brilliant. A genius idea.
But it feels deeply transgressive doesn't it? The price and delicacy of screens means we've learned to treat them with enormous reverence and care. We polish them. Keep them in cases. Don't draw on them.
I wonder if this reverence was what led to some of the horrified reactions when I painted my macbook with blackboard paint.
But that's going to have to change isn't it? We're going to be carrying them around, pawing and dabbing them with our fingers too much to keep treating them that delicately. I bit that means we'll get new aesthetics for screens and their boxes. More tolerant of damage and dirt. (Less pretending to be Deiter Rams and more pretending to be Ray Mears.) And if it doesn't happen with the glowing rectangles it'll definitely happen when we get E Ink everywhere. I'm looking forward to that. Scuffed and patinaed screens.
I remember wondering the same about cars - whether the industry would develop a less shiny aesthetic. And it's starting to happen. There are a couple of cars round us with an aftermarket matte black finish. They look brilliant, sinister and subtle. It's a high-end, expensive thing at the moment, but I bet it migrates through the modding scene and into the mainstream.
