Transhuman fail
Oct. 17th, 2008 02:48 pmH+ is a new transhumanist zine. It's distributed as a PDF, with the front and back pages as single A4 and the inner pages as linear-sequenced A3. That means that you can't just print it out, or hit "booklet mode", or view it in a reader without having to pan around like an arse. The stench of a Graphic Designer wanting to make it look All Professional is all over it, to the point where I haven't even read it yet (the cover shot of a data contact lens was what hooked me).
I mean, come on, guys. This is a file format that doesn't so much hark back to paper as kowtow to it, polishing paper's boots with the grease of its nose. And the conscious choices that you human-units have made have gone right back to the coffee-table. Yon girly on the cover, with her Google contact lens, she can't read her mag! You've bound the semantic content to the aesthetic content and baby, that's so 1.0 that it's barely even online.
Epic fail.
Zines are funny. They ought to be dead, but the appeal of a bit of deadtree rolled up in your pocket as you mooch around is undeniable, and PDF is the de facto distribution format for paper. But every zine I've ever seen is either straight single-page sequential. You let the reader decide what to do with it.
I've zine a horse fly, I've zine an house fly, but I been done zine bout everythin' when I see transhumanists fly.
I mean, come on, guys. This is a file format that doesn't so much hark back to paper as kowtow to it, polishing paper's boots with the grease of its nose. And the conscious choices that you human-units have made have gone right back to the coffee-table. Yon girly on the cover, with her Google contact lens, she can't read her mag! You've bound the semantic content to the aesthetic content and baby, that's so 1.0 that it's barely even online.
Epic fail.
Zines are funny. They ought to be dead, but the appeal of a bit of deadtree rolled up in your pocket as you mooch around is undeniable, and PDF is the de facto distribution format for paper. But every zine I've ever seen is either straight single-page sequential. You let the reader decide what to do with it.
I've zine a horse fly, I've zine an house fly, but I been done zine bout everythin' when I see transhumanists fly.