account and password overload

I think I've finally hit the wall. This week I failed to log into two of my online bank accounts and had to reset them, and I kept entering the wrong password into the "old" blogger, so it forced me to upgrade to the "new" blogger, which took 20 frustrating minutes of trying to figure out what it was asking for. I think I've exceeded the "standard" seven pieces of information we can hold in our heads, and need to move to fingerprint or iris identification to log in to my many accounts.

Anyway, I went through the painful upgrade process just so I could post a quote from Robert Bringhurst, one of my favorite writers on type design, in which he compares type on a screen vs. type in print:

"The screen mimics the sky, not the earth. It bombards the eye with light instead of waiting to repay the gift of vision. It is not simultaneously restful and lively, like a field full of flowers, or the face of a thinking human being, or a well-made typographic page. And we read the screen the way we read the sky: in quick sweeps, guessing at the weather from the changing shapes of clouds, or like astronomers, in magnified small bits, examining details. We look to it for clues and revelations more than wisdom. The makes it an attractive place for advertising and dogmatizing, but not so good a place for thoughtful text."

My other tidbit of the week is this YouTube video called Introducing the Book, which makes perfect sense in the context of "conventions" we've been talking about this quarter, and last quarter's discussion of technology adoption. (I actually think they should have dispensed with the laugh track: it insults the poor monk, who has no idea that books need to be read left to right. Humorous to us, but really, how would he know? Future netizens will laugh just as much at us.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRjVeRbhtRU