chai

That was a great idea - meeting up with a friend for chai this afternoon. My mind was spinning from reading about the writings of Levinas. Not even the texts of Levinas but an "Introduction to Levinas" was enough to get me wondering if existence itself may have been disappearing out of a slow leak in my skull. It was only when I came face to face with my friend that the sense of disorientation and dizziness passed into a feeling of familiarity and acceptance. I am very interested in following up Levinas' writings on The Face. What about technology? What is it in the face to face encounter with technology, specifically digital technology but really any technology, any object, anything that is conceived as part of this world, that gives knowledge about that object and yet still have a sense of our selves as separate from it? What does Levinas' face tell us about the interface? What is kept separate and how in the human-computer encounter? Is the separateness important and something to savour? How can it be understood? There is a foundational act to this questioning because it raises the issue of whether there is a relationship to discover and whether it can be called such a thing. And yet, I know on a deep level that it is there, formed in myself in my body, dreams and in my every day use. It is so thoroughly embedded that I feel its loss when it is not there, although it can hardly be called gone.