Materiality

I read an insightful, if somewhat intentionally abtuse, article by Paul Duguid today. The discussion was about putting the future of books and book technology in a "social-material and historical context," but I think one of the most eloquent passages dealt instead with a discussion of doors:

"Or take, as another example, the matter of the door. Since the twenties, one way people have known they were watching a film about 'the future' (and not merely about people who reveled in Spandex avant la lettre) was the inevitable presence of sliding doors. The supersession of the simple hinge by automated sliding technology long ago became a visual synecdoche for the triumph of the future. Yet while the sliding door still appears on the futurological screen, the millenia-old manual hinge endures all around us (even on our laptop computers and cell phones). One reason it survives, I suggest, is that despite its technological simplicity, time has given the hinge a rich social complexity that those who forsee its imminent demise fail to appreciate. Hinged doors, after all, are not just to be passed through; they communicate polysemiously. We can, for instance, expressively throw them open or slam them shut, hold them or let them swing, leave them ajar and hide behind them, satisfyingly kick, punch, or shoulder them, triumphantly barge them open or defiantly prop them shut."

"Material Matters." Future of the Book.