It takes a sensitive eye to look past the pale plastic casings of computers and see beauty in design, but for Yale computer science professor David Gelernter beauty should be at the forefront of technological design. In Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology, the author offers a far-ranging polemic, a two-pronged argument why aesthetics are essential to first-class hardware/software design, and his take on why that notion has never won widespread support.
Readers in search of a coolly reasoned study of aesthetics and technology will be disappointed; Gelernter assumes the informal tone of a talk-radio host baiting his audience to respond to his unprovable claims. His argument as to why Apple computers represent beautiful technology is convoluted and inconsistent, used in one chapter to show how the public appreciates beautiful technology, then cited in another to suggest the opposite - and Gelernter never comprehensively defines beauty. One self-aggrandizing chapter implies that the author's own Lifestreams software is a splendid example of beauty in action.
And yet, this is an exceedingly valuable book, cannily posing questions about aesthetics and technology that need asking. Gelernter's best stab at a definition of beauty, shared with the Bauhaus design school of the 1930s, suggests that any beautiful design is characterized by simplicity and power. The author really shines when applying these notions to software, artfully praising a simple program like Quicksort and lambasting the bells-and-whistles excesses of some Microsoft software.
Look past Gelernter's dogmatic tone and scattershot, argumentative rhetoric and you'll discover a frustrated utopian trying to reconcile the computer world with the world of fine art. His voice is needed.
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