Windows and Mirrors

Gabriel, my son is four years old. He is an expert playing Wii, Nintendo and other video games. He learns how to read, draw and spell on the computer. He knows how to operate all these machines better I do. He was born in a digital world.
This world was unimaginable thirty years ago or less. Reading Windows and Mirrors, by Bolter and Gromala, where they refer to the exhibition Text Rain was an interesting experience for me. While I was reading and understanding how in 2000 Text Rain was an innovation in the digital era, my son was playing Wii beside me.
Thanks to Text Rain for first time the interaction between the user and the video gave us a complete different lecture of a media form and it was an anticipation of the times to come, such as the video game era.
In the book Windows and Mirrors (p.17) the authors mention that in the early 60´s J.C.R Licklider and Robert Taylor said that: “In few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face”.
Facebook and Twitter show us that Licklider had a visionary thought. The same way the value of the digital art was demonstrated by the pieces exhibited in SIGGRAPH 2000.