Don Ihde famous quotes

I remember reading about a court case where a man tried to stab a judge with a pencil. There are Google pages full of similar instances around the world. It's obvious that the pencil lends itself to precisely that kind of use. It's not as lacking in dominance as you might think. I have an article on the fallacy of the designer intent because a lot of designers think they can design uses into technology. You can't do that. I use the pen, I make the mark, but the pen is also using me. The pen could be said to be allowing these kinds of marks. I can't do just anything with the pen.
-- Don Ihde

#Reading #Technology #Men

I can't experience my brain because I'm inside of it. If you're imaging your brain, you can also find scary things. As one ages, your brain shrinks. And how much it shrinks, and where it shrinks, relates to conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia.
-- Don Ihde

#Scary #Brain #Age

I never went into aesthetics. Aesthetics is what philosophers have to say about art, and a lot of them take an analytics position and raise the question, "What is an art object?" As soon as you fall into that trap, an artist is going to come along and say, "That isn't art - it's something else." That's a hopeless gig.
-- Don Ihde

#Art #Fall #Philosopher

What specialists try to do is get at least three imaging processes that are totally different from each other. Then you can run these through a computer program and make a composite image. In one scenario you suspect a brain tumor, so you image the brain tumor with PET scans, MRIs, and CT scans and create a 3D model. The doctor opens up the skull to excise the cancer, but they can't see anything. Do you cut out what's supposed to be in that spot or not? The current story is yes, you believe the images over what you see with your eyes.
-- Don Ihde

#Running #Cancer #Believe

I argue that science would be much richer if it were multisensory. The problem with instrumentation is that instruments, unlike our senses, can be monosensory. Since the discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum - which is really the discovery that all energy coming from something has a wave form - in theory we could image anything along that spectrum. In fact, we don't, because only certain parts of the spectrum have been instrumentalized. But the new thing is computerization. You can take all the data, the measurement of the frequencies, and transform it into an image.
-- Don Ihde

#Energy #Arguing #Problem

Definitions get you into that time trap, and I'm very much more process-focused. Take Lucy, for example. Lucy is famous largely because she has almost a total skeleton. The more sophisticated we get with instruments, the more we can find out. Through CT scans of her skeleton, they now think she died falling out of a tree because of the way her bones are broken. If nineteenth and twentieth century technologies can retroactively transform our bodiment, what then do the technologies we now use do?
-- Don Ihde

#Fall #Technology #Thinking

A lot of the medical imagery has to do with my own biography. I had open heart surgery, I had knee replacements, I had a hiatal hernia, etc. Every time you go for surgery, you get a whole spectrum of imaging. Of course, I've been doing research in imaging technology across the board for close to twenty years. When you think about it, medical imaging is actually quite new. The first major medical image was the x-ray in 1895. That was the first time you got imaging of anything that's in the bodily interior.
-- Don Ihde

#Heart #Technology #Thinking

You have a long history of changes in diagnosis, from no touching to touching, to assessing acoustics and visuals. But visual is a problem, because if you're a living being you can't see beyond the surface of the skin. Now you don't have that problem. Laparoscopic surgery, inserting a camera into the body, is sometimes called "Nintendo surgery" - the best training for laparoscopic surgeries has actually been video games.
-- Don Ihde

#Long #Touching #Training

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room - proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.

As a general rule, I abstain from reading reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.

My mom's a psychologist, and I think that has influenced me on a personal level. Plus, I'm just generally interested in visualization and humanity, social activity and technology, and what happens in aggregate.

The business models in enterprise have changed pretty dramatically. A huge problem with enterprise software traditionally has been usually you sell to the customer and then they adopt the technology. The great thing about 'freemium' and the new way enterprise software is being sold is you get to try it first and then buy it.

Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.

I cannot understand how any man or woman can believe in the Lord's coming and not be a missionary, or at least committed to the work of missions with every power of his being.

God wants us to speak to men so that they will feel it, so that they will never forget it. God means every Christian to be effective, to make a difference in the actual records and results of Christian work. God put each of us here to be a power. There is not one of us but is an essential wheel of the machinery and can accomplish all that God calls us to.

Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.