Windows Vista July 17, 2006
Here I am, sitting in front of Windows Vista Beta 2 for the first time. She's an interesting toy at this point. Lots of visual polish, decent/good performance, and a myriad of features that I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of. I'm relatively pleased with how different Vista is from XP... I was expecting XP with a different skin, but that's not the case at all. You can tell that a lot of thought has gone into refactoring the UI, protecting the user from the Internet, etc. There have been a few frustrations, but overall I'm impressed.
Communication July 13, 2006
I had a bit of an epiphany the other day about communication -- that while much is communicated with the literal word, much much more is communicated non-verbally, symbolically, etc. Not that this is a new idea: I recall reading in my psychology textbook that much of communication is non-verbal, but there's a difference in reading a fact versus having the "aha" moment of actually seeing the truth of something for yourself. An example: When someone asks "How are you?", your response "Good, how are you?" communicates most by how you say it and by how you hold your body -- the literal text is often just a placeholder.
Aside from body language, our behavior in general communicates to those around us -- it communicates who we are, what is important to us, etc. From the standpoint of our relationships, our behavior hints to others how important they are to us, our oppinions about them, etc.
I find this realm of thought fascinating. I think much could be learned by understanding some of the things we are perhaps communicating unconciously today. What do these things tell us about ourselves?
Taking these ideas one step further, it is interesting to try looking at everything as a kind of communication. How about our houses? Do they communicate? Well, don't we all try to set up our surroundings to echo beauty and order? A home communicates things about its owners. Or how about nature. Does it communicate? Sure, to many people it reflects the magesty of its creator; a way for God to communicate to us about himself.
Thinking some more about Christian theology, a fascinating picture comes to mind: God breathing love into creation and longing for society / the world to echo back "LOVE!" by how we treat one another on a local and global scale; that echo being a profound communication from mankind back to God.
