"In the course of a day, players move in and out of the active game space. As they do so, some experience their lives as a cycling through between the real world, RL, and a series of virtual worlds....this kind of cycling through MUDs and RL is made possible by the existence of those boxed-off areas on the screen, commonly called windows. Windows provide a way for a computer to place you in several contexts at the same time. As a user, you are attentive to only one of the windows on your screen at any given moment, but in a sense you are a presence in all of them at all times.

...

The simulated desktop that the Macintosh presented came to be far more than a user friendly gimmick for marketing computers to the inexperienced. it introduced a way of thinking that put a premium on surface manipulation and working in ignorance of the underlying mechanism....In relationships with people we often have to get things done without necessarily understanding what is going on within the other person; similarly, with the Macintosh we learned to negotiate rather than analyze.

If my transparent Apple II modeled a modernist tecnological aesthetic, the Macintosh was consistent with a postmodern one. Postmodern theorists have suggested that the search for depth and mechanism is futile, and that it is more realistic to explore the world of shifting surfaces than to embark on a search for origins and structure. Culturally, the Macintosh has served as a carrier object for such ideas."

Brainstorms Tomorrow Mind to Mind