Carl Jung, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome & Nelson Goodman’s Language of Art
A philosophical inquiry into the abstract language of shapes and forms and how they impact us by using Microsoft Edge & Google Chrome as case studies.
Internet Explorer is dead, long live Microsoft Edge!
Why as an ardent Google Chrome user, I subconsciously feel vulnerable to switching to Microsoft Edge.
Microsoft is engaging in an aggressive modernization overhaul of its entire divisions. Microsoft was founded in 1975 and in the technology sector, only those that adapt survive. Think of Nokia, in an age of androids and iPhones.
But this article isn’t a business analysis of Microsoft’s modernization tactics — this isn’t the Wallstreet Journal, this is The Adastrian — a gonzo philosophy publication.
So, this essay is a philosophical inquiry into the role abstract forms & shapes play in our subconscious minds.
I am using the new logo for Microsoft Edge & Google Chrome’s logo as a case study.
Personally I use android and chrome for all my cyber needs. I am an android guy, just like my father before me, and his father before him. Growing up we weren’t even allowed to marry into iOS/iPhone families…they just don’t believe in the same things that we did…
That said, I woke up today, reading a CNET article about the launch of this new Microsoft product. And even as an ardent Google Chrome user, I suspected that given enough time, I would be indifferent to using Microsoft Edge.
This was astonishing to me because I hadn’t read much about its specs in detail. Moreover, I would still be averse to using Safari or Firefox.
So what exactly is this intangible voodoo that a logo exerts?
The philosopher Nelson Goodman provides a theory for symbols, forms, and shapes as abstract languages of art.
Goodman studied at Harvard University, ran an art gallery in Boston while completing his doctorate, and was a professor at Harvard from 1968.
In an extremely high-level summary of his theory:
Linguistic communication is simply one manifestation of attempting to communicate an idea. Not just to communicate a word, but an idea that is communicated via a series of words.
You think of something that you want to communicate (mosaic picture), to communicate it, you try to recreate it by stringing together words (pieces of the mosaic). To ultimately communicate the mental mosaic picture to others.
Nelson Goodman believes, that pictorial communication if done correctly and mastered as a language for communicating ideas, might be more powerful and lucid than linguistic symbols (linguistic symbols being words).
Why?
Well, I personally believe, that it’s because of what Carl Jung calls the language of archetypes — forms and abstractions that are seemingly non-sensical and fruitless to interpret by our conscious neocortex. Yet somehow, influence our conscious decision-making and inclinations to choose X over Y.
The language of “free will”.
Look at the shape & forms of the following. Try to deconstruct the abstract intangible message that Microsoft Edge is attempting to subconsciously communicate — try to distill the idea from the vapor of the unconscious.
Microsoft Edge tells me subconsciously that if you’re a Google Chrome user, then you’ll be happy using edge. In fact, due to its 3D form, it’s probably more dimensionally advanced than Google Chrome.
So, in the future when internet browsing using Virtual Reality (VR) goggles becomes the mainstream, I probably would gravitate to Microsoft Edge — subconsciously though— so I wouldn’t be able to explain why.
(but I just did. Thanks, Gonzo philosophy!)
This is nothing short of corporate warfare in the realm of archetypes (Carl Jung would be proud).
Too bad Google can’t sue for infringement in the realm of abstractions. Not yet that is…
This is Gonzo Philosophy. It provides the mental framework to analyze at a very existentially intangible abstraction level. This is one case study.
What do you think?
