Curt Sampson wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Benjamin Joffe wrote:
>
>> f- "What if I don't want to show my face?" factor. Maybe the only
>> one "truly Japanese", but applicable elsewhere to some extent.
>> Would you accept a call from your boy/girlfriend when waking-up ?
>> What would you do if s.o. calls you in video mode while in toilet ?
>> while dressed casually ? while naked ? while you are not where you
>> are supposed to be ?
>
> I had supposed that this issue was more or less solved with Docomo's
> ability to substitute a cartoon for an actual video image of you.
This reminded me of the great passage on videophones in _Infinite Jest_:
"...within a couple more sales-quarters most consumers were now using
masks so undeniably better-looking on videophones than their real faces
in person, transmitting to one another such horrendously skewed and
enhanced masked images of themselves, that enormous psychosocial stress
began to result, large numbers of phone-users suddenly reluctant to
leave home and interface personally with people who, they feared, were
now habituated to seeing their far-better-looking masked selves on the
phone and would on seeing them in person suffer (so went the callers'
phobia) the same illusion-shattering aesthetic disappointment that,
e.g., certain women who always wear makeup give people the first time
they ever see them without makeup."
-- _Infinite Jest_ 148-9
Ryan
Received on Tue Oct 26 08:57:18 2004