Myriad malfunctioning metaphors
NOT only is the world of computing riddled with icons and images representing obsolete kit – such as that which encourages us to save a file to a barely existent floppy disc (25 June) – many of them are broken. Robert Cailliau writes that “the clock widget on my computer screen has a second hand that vibrates slightly after each tick, mimicking a defect of cheap mechanical clocks.”
Some, like the noises made by digital cameras (30 July), mimic features that thousands of engineer-hours of effort had eliminated in the real world. “The screenshot application makes a shutter…
