An Archaeology of the Window Metaphor

-From Renaissance art to Augmented RealityThroughout the twentieth century the metaphor of the window has become a leading cultural metaphor to describe the mediating role of visual media such as paintings, cinema and television. The use of the metaphor evolved to a point where the window became a metaphor for the screen and the screen has become an actual substitute for the window (Friedberg 2006, 12). From Renaissance paintings to cinema and cyberspace, the screen has always been perceived as a mediator between spaces. In her book The Virtual Window Anne Friedberg, a historian and theorist of modern media culture, provides us with a beautiful description of this mediating role saying the window is an opening: it opens, it closes; it separates the spaces of here and there, inside and outside, in front of and behind (1). Keeping Friedbergs description in mind, this paper builds upon the definition of the screen as proposed by Professor of Visual Arts Lev Manovich in his 1995 article An archaeology of the Computer Screen. In this article Manovich defines the screen as a flat rectangular surface positioned at some distance from the eyes. This rectangular surface lets the user experience the illusion of navigating through virtual spaces or being physically present somewhere else, therefore being a virtual window into a other world (Manovich 1995, 12). Alongside with this definition of the screen we can distinct two (spatial) characteristics. (1) A screen acts as a window into another world; (2) the viewer of a screen must be positioned in front of a screen to use it and therefore lacks mobility. This makes the viewer immobile since most screens arent easy to move around. Manovich also refers to this as the imprisonment of the body of the viewer (7). Todays connected mobile devices challenge years long traditions of the screen. Mobile connections are everywhere. As 1

Smith et al. clearly show the basic fundament for this ubiquitousness of mobile connections is the convergence of four different technologies: wireless connections, positioning systems, mobile media and graphic interfaces (Smith et al, 2005). This convergence of technologies leads to a spatial convergence. The physical space and the digital space are merged in one environment created by the mobility of users connected via mobile devices (Souza e Silva 2006, 263). One of the new technologies on the rise that thrives upon this convergence of technologies is Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality can be seen as an enriched form of the physical reality in which the user interacts with digital information through mobile technology. What is striking in discourse on augmented reality is that more then 500 years after Albertis window, the metaphor of the window is still one of the leading cultural metaphors to describe the mediating role of this technologyi. This can be traced in popular media discourse. In an article on an application (app) called Bionic eye, an app which locates points of interests in urban environments, the Wired Magazine website describes the usage as: As you scan the electronic window across the cityscape the app updates in real time and shows you where things are. Move the iPhone down to a horizontal position and the jiggling signs turn into a list (Sorrel, 2009). In another article on the Wired Magazine website on smartphones and the Internet of things we can see the metaphor pop up again: Computers, mobile phones, tablets and e-readers do something that no car, garment or toaster can do (at least so far): they tell us things we never knew (...) As the frame of a smart device keeps getting smaller, the window gets larger and clearer (Sterling, 2011). Other popular media also build their descriptions upon the leading cultural metaphor. ReadWriteWeb, a popular website on technology, describes augmented reality as an "enchanted window that turns contextual information hidden all

around us inside out (Kirckpatrick, 2009). To conclude this brief insight in popular discourse I call upon an article on the website of ArsTechnica where they describe the possibilities of a smartphone and a camera: And with the special device, the iPhone, which has a camera and everything on it, all of a sudden we have a window, a portal, into that part of the world. Its tying your favourite locations around the city to something that is totally fantastical and imagined and kind of making every step of our life a bit more interesting, a bit more fun" (Webster, 2011). In this archaeology of the window metaphor I will trace back this dominant cultural metaphor of the window to the beginning of the fifteenth century and I will show how it reappears over and over again in media discourse history. I will explore the metaphor of the window in academic and popular discourse alongside different screen types and investigate how the metaphor is used to describe the mediating role of the screen between spaces. In this historical approach three types of screens will help distinguish the use of the metaphor in a specific media context. First the classical screen is explored and then the early years of the dynamic screen and finally the screen of the computer. My goal is to place the metaphor within a wider social and cultural frame of reference. In this archaeology I will apply the methodological approach of Erkki Huhtamo in order to trace down the formula of the window metaphor that is reappearing in media discourse. I will investigate how this metaphor can be seen as a pre-fabricated mould for experience (Huhtamo 1996, 302). The screens of connected mobile devices enclose more mobility then ever before and seem to challenge known spatial characteristics of the screen and the window metaphor. The metaphor however still stands as strong as it always did in discourse on screen-based apparatuses. The metaphor of the window can be traced back to the visual culture of the modernist period. One could even argue that the

viewing regime of a window can also be found in Platos allegory of the cave. Here the positioning of the spectator and Platos notion of two different spaces show resemblances to what has been described as specific (spatial) characteristics of a screen. Since I am focussing on the actual screen as a rectangular surface, my archaeology starts in the early fifteenth century. Let us first start with describing how the screen in this cultural timeframe can be defined. Paintings were the flat and rectangular surfaces at that time. Paintings exist in our normal space but embed the existence of another virtual space, another threedimensional world enclosed by a frame and situated inside our normal space. The two spaces somehow coexist. Like Manovich did I will refer to this screen as the classical screen (Manovich 1995, 2). The metaphor of the window first pops up in Leon Battista Albertis treatise on painting and perspective, De Pictura. The painter, architect and Renaissance man instructed painters to regard the rectangular frame of the painting as an open window (aperta finestra). His goal was to frame the geometric world, arranging all elements on the flat-framed plane of representation (Krysmanski 2001, 129-130). Alberti thought of a picture as a (vertical) plane that was visible within a cone of vision centred on the eye of the viewer. It is in his notion of the plane where we can trace the window metaphor. The part of the cone that is between the viewers position and the picture plane represents the distance between the painting and the spectator. The part of the cone that extends between the picture plane and the spectator represents the space depicted in the image. This can be perceived as the space that is visible through the window. Albertis schema seeks to connect two kinds of space: that from which the image is viewed and the space which is viewed within the image (Lister et. al. 2008, 116). So Albertis window was not really a window to the world, it was more like a windowed elsewhere, a virtual space that exists on the virtual plane of representation (Friedberg 2006, 243).

This pictorial perspective can be perceived as a technology for constructing the space within an image and for managing the relationship of a spectator in physical space to the virtual space of the image. Regarding new media it was Rob Shields, a sociology professor whose research focuses on space and culture, that argued that this perspective as used in imaging since the Renaissance is a technology for producing the virtual or an other world (Shields 2003, 42). In the sixteenth century Albertis window and its frame were starting to disappear, however the idea of a window did not. We can see it pop up again as a metaphor for an opening to architectural space in the Baroque period. An example of this is found in the Church of Saint Ignazio in Rome. Here painter Andre Pozzo created a window experience on the ceiling of the church with his image of heaven where bodies are ascending in perspective (Kemp 1990, 137-139). This Baroque painting, as did many others, invites the spectator to enter a virtual space due to a combination of architectural arrangements and painted illusions. This space is navigable as it changes with the movements of the spectator (Shields 2003, 7). Leaving the architectural age of virtual spaces, we enter the age of pre-photographic devices. The most popular optical apparatus in this period was camera obscura, which literally means "dark chamber" (Manovich 1995, 8). This device lets rays of light from an object or a scene pass through a small aperture. The rays then crossed and emerged on the other side of the device to form an image on a screen. It was necessary that the device be placed in a chamber where there was less light then around the object (Kemp 1990, 200). Again we see the mediating role of an apparatus acting as a window to a virtual space (that of the created image). At the beginning of the nineteenth century we find another method of creating a virtual world. The windows and virtual spaces created by visual art were leaving the churches and palaces and

entered the public sphere. Using a method for constructing accurate perspective on curved surfaces, 360 degrees images known as Panoramas arise. These static and mobile panorama views were an early form of spectacular entertainment (Kemp 1990, 186). In these static and even mobile panoramas the spectator was positioned in the centre, seamlessly surrounded by a panorama of a landscape, a battlefield or a historic event. Later light and sound effects were added to create the illusion of a other world even more. The spectator was installed in the picture of the panorama (Grau 2003, 57). The entertainment apparatus immersed the viewer within the image, letting the viewer enter another virtual space through the window of the panorama. The apparatuses that created a virtual world that can be entered through the apparatus evolved further in the nineteenth century. They were part of a continuum of technological development. Other illusional apparatuses were the peep show and the stereoscope. The peep show was a device that consisted of two small boxes held to the eyes, which contained perspectival images that were lit from above (Grau 2003, 51-52). One could hold the boxes in front of his eyes to enter this virtual space. Another, more popular, device was the stereoscope. The apparatus contained a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth. It showed two offset images separately to the left and right eye. Both the images combined give the brain the perception of 3D depth. In Spectres of Cyberspace Geoffrey Batchen, a Professor of the History of Photography and Contemporary Art, refers to this as an early nineteenth-century technology of seeing that would appear to parallel closely the VR experience (Batchen 1998, 276). These small devices did not engulf the whole body or hide the spatial limitations of the images in design, but offered a window to look through. In all examples shown thus far we can detect the technology of perspectival construction or the technology of the apparatus functioning as a window into another space, raising speculation

about viewing regimes, embodiment and experience. Pictorial perspective is in itself a technology of the virtual as it has been a dominant scopic regime of visual representation in the Western tradition (Jay, 1998). In this tradition we can distinct two major forms. One is found in the environment of viewer and window. The architectural schemes and the surrounding wrapping of Panorama exemplify this. The other form is found in apparatuses like the camera obscura or the stereoscope that enable viewers to look through and see a virtual space. In the early twentieth century the age of the Panorama came to an end due to the rise of other media. The new popular magazines of that time were already illustrated with photographs that were far easier to produce and to distribute then the spectacle of the panorama. But not only magazines put an end to the static visual perspectival perspective. There was another type of screen on the rise that Panorama was simply unable to compete with. The dawn of early cinema was set on the horizon. This new period altered the metaphor of the window and charged it with social and cultural expectations and desires. The dynamic screen saw daylight. The dynamic screen is the screen of cinema and television; it is a screen that shows moving images. This screen builds upon the same viewing regime as the classical screen. Both strive for complete illusion and visual plenitude. Both are windows of limited dimensions and both demand that the viewer completely concentrates on what is seen, focussing on the screens representation and disregarding the physical space outside. This is possible because both the dynamical and the classical screen are completely filled by the (moving) image. The dynamic screen does not change anything about the immobility of the viewer. Both in the classical and in the dynamic screen, the body of the viewer had to be and stay centred in front of the screen (Manovich 1995, 2-3) The dynamic screen came with great expectations about new

ways of being present. We can slightly grasp this in Friedbergs great description of the dynamical screen and its expected function. She writes: The screens of cinema and television open virtual windows that ventilate the static materialitys and temporalities of their viewer. A widowed multiplier of perspectives implies new laws of presence not only here and there, but also then and now a multiple view sometimes enhanced, sometimes diminished out the window (Friedberg 2006, 4-5). These cultural desires were found in earlier globalizing technologies such as the railroad, the telegraph, the steam vessel and radio. On all these technologies the same cultural and social desire was projected: to annihilate distance and enable people to touch elbows across the sea (Douglas 1986, 37). The same expectations were projected on film and cinema. It was believed that the screen of cinema enabled audiences to take a journey through different spaces without leaving their seats. In her 1994 book Window Shopping Anne Friedberg calls this a mobilized virtual gaze to explain the desire of temporal and spatial mobility (184). Walter Benjamin also describes a notion of an audience that can travel through the window of cinema in his 1936 article Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin also saw the potential of film, arguing that film opened up a space in which the viewer can travel. According to Benjamin film extended our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action (225). Benjamin argued that film extended far beyond our own small world and enabled us to go travel in a space consciously explored by man (225). The metaphor of the window can also be traced in Realist discourse on cinema. In their theoretic position Realists acknowledge the cameras expressive nature in its selective and shifting vision. They are seeking to reveal and discover the worlds expression in all its meaning. In this notion we can detect the

metaphor of the window on the world (Shobchack 1994, 46). French film theorist Andre Bazin best represents this side of the discourse on cinema. Bazin believed that the screen space centrifugally impels the viewers awareness toward off-screen reality that he conceived as continuous with the space of the screen, hence the metaphor of the window. This believe is in contradiction to a formalist view of for instance Russian director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein who conceived the film image as a frame controlled by the editor. The distinction here lies in the perception of screen space whereas for Eisenstein the screen edge enclosed the only reality (Altman 1982, 188). In What is Cinema? Bazin specifies that the masking action of the screen is like that of a window. The viewer cannot see the space, which extends on all sides of the screen, but there is no doubt about the existence of that space. According to Bazin viewers feel that if one moves to the left or to the right we can see the space masked by the border of the screen: on-screen spaces always suggests off-screen (Bazin 1967, 105; quoted in Altman 1985, 517). We can detect the same social and cultural desires and the metaphor of the window in the early years of television. Again desires to bring the world closer and make space or distance irrelevant dominates television discourse. The positioning of television as a screen for the public derived from these expectations. A clear example of this is shown in the text of Monika Elsner et. al. The Early History of German Television: The Slow Development of a Fast Medium. In this text one of the things the authors describe is the role of television in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. In this position, television offered a window of experience to those who could not be there. The stadium was fully packed during the Olympics. For those who could not be there a special daily television program was broadcasted in television rooms. The German regime at that time organised these rooms to show of their advancement in technology. In this case viewing the television was

not a specific or privileged form of vision, but it was a substitute for being in the stadium (130-131). In this case television offered a window into an experience. German perceptual psychologist and film theorist Rudolf Arnheim acknowledged the perception of the television as a window to a place where one could not be. In his visionary text A Forecast of Television he argues that television is not only a window into a nearby stadium, it is a window into the world. His vision becomes even clearer in the following quote: We see the citizens of a neighbouring city assembled in the market square, the Prime Minister of a foreign country making a speech, two boxers fighting for the world championship in an arena across the ocean, the British dance bands performing, an Italian coloratura singer, a German professor, the smouldering remains of a wrecked railway train, the masked street crowds at the carnival, the snow-capped mountains of the Alps as they appear through clouds from an aeroplane, tropical fish through the windows of a submarine, the machines of a car factory, an explorers ship battling the polar ice. We see the sun shining on Mount Vesuvius and, a second later, the neon light that illuminate Broadway at the same time. (...) The wide world itself enters our room. (Arnheim, 160) Arnheim envisioned television as the window into the world, comparing it to the motorcar and aeroplane: as an apparatus for cultural transportation (160). Arnheim gives television the agency of changing our attitude towards reality, providing us with a feeling for the multiplicity of what happens simultaneously in different places (161). Televisions big deal was that it would overcome spatial boundaries. Televisions ability to bring another world into the home was then often figured as the ultimate ability to conquer

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and to domesticate space. Evidence of this can be found in the 1946 book called Here is Television, Your Window on the World by Thomas H. Hutchinson, who was a experimenter in television programming at that time. He writes that no one can really understand the future of television, but that we do know that with the ability to bring the outside world into our home one of mankinds long-standing ambitions has been achieved (Hutchinson 1946, 23; quoted in Spigel 1992, 102). Charles Siepmann, a radio and television-broadcasting critic, also describes this achievement in his 1950 book Radio, Television and Society. He claims television provides a maximum extension of the perceived environment with a minimum of effort. Television is a form of going places without even the expenditure of movement, to say nothing of money. It is bringing the world to peoples doorsteps (Siepmann 1950, 340). This vision compares to early desires of cinema from someone as Walter Benjamin; the desire that the screen is showing another world or mediates in going through into another space. But it wasnt all utopias that dominated the discourse of television. The window metaphor can also be traced in social anxieties. Some thought that the television as a window was not only a window into the world, but also a window for the world into the home. In popular magazines such as American Home and Good Housekeeping suggestions were presented to hide the television screen or to add a small spring roller to the television screen so its vision was hampered. The aim being to shut down televisions field of vision, to manage vision in the home so that people could see without being seen. This anxiety also occurs in early consoles with doors that covered the screen, suggesting fear of televisions vision (Spigel 1992, 116-118). In this context I would like to show one more example that Spigel, a Professor of Screen Cultures, presents in her book Make room for TV: televison and the family ideal in postwar America. This example comes from a 1949 issue of The Saturday Evening Post where they told their readers: Be Good!

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Televisions Watching. (...) TVs prying eye may well record such personal frailties as the errant husband dining with his secretary (Spigel 1992, 118). The social anxiety suggested that television had the ability to turn its eye back on itself, entering the private window and record domestic life. In other popular media and especially in advertising the metaphor of the window would remain one with positive connotation. Advertisers for television effectively used the metaphor as part of their promotional rhetoricii. In a 1944 issue of Broadcasting DuMont, a manufacturer of television consoles, advertised their model with the text There is going to be a brandnew window in millions of homes... the most exciting window ever known the television screen! Through it people will see the whole wide world in vivid, vibrant panoramaiii. Other retailers also emphasized the entering of distant spaces through television. An advertisement from General Electric emphasized this by stating: Seeing things miles away at the very instant they happen! Thats the new thrill television now makes possibleiv. Another advertisement from Philco promoted their first network around the same principle: (...) the first step has been taken through which you will be able eventually to witness events in your home that take place thousands of miles away...by televisionv. In analyzing an ad series by DuMont in her 1991 book Electronic Heart: creating a American Television Culture author Cecelia Tichi, a researcher whose focus lies on aspects of culture from consumerism, notices the same use of the metaphor. In this ad series DuMont wanted to demystify television using Hollywood actress Paulette Goddard and a cartoon character called Alec Electron. Tichi writes: All the TV metaphors to be exploited in the following decades are present in this ad series. Television is The biggest window in the world, a looking glass, (...) the answer to mans ageless yearning for eyes and ears to pierce the barrier of distance (Tichi 1991, 13). The metaphor of the window did not only pop up in

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advertisements descriptions of television sets. Gary Simpson, television director at NBC in the early fifties, also explicitly uses the metaphor as already accepted by the public in his description of television benefits: Mr. Public views that television set in his home as a 20th Century electronic monster that can transport him to a ball game, to Washington D.C., to the atomic blast in Nevada and do it now. The viewer is inclined to accept it as his window to the world, as his reporter on what is happening now simultaneously. (Spigel 1992, 99) The metaphor of the window to describe the mediating role of the screen when analyzed in the age of the dynamic screen is broadly maintained in academic discourse, popular media and in advertising. The metaphor, used as part of a technological approach for creating an image (Albertis window), lost its use. In the age of the dynamic screen the metaphor was picked up by companies and used for advertising. We have seen how the window metaphor is still used throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century to describe an entrance to another space, another distant place in which we can travel form the comfort of our couch. In the forthcoming we move on to the next type of screen: the screen of computers. The next type of screen on which the metaphor of the window was applied is the computer screen, especially after the Internet was introduced to the public. We could call this screen the digital screen, but television sets nowadays are also digital, so that is not comprehensive. I have chosen to call this the computer screen and set some distinctive characteristics to exclude it from other, similar screen types. The computer screen I am talking about is connected to the Internet and second it shows computer generated content such as digital video, photo, software or websites. A third characteristic is that what Manovich calls the coexisting of windows, a fundamental principle in modern computer interface (Manovich

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1995, 2). Instead of showing one single image at a time like a painting or in cinema or television, a computer displays a number of coexisting windows. Manovich compares this to the television phenomenon of zapping (Manovich 1995, 3). I do not agree with him on this, because although we can flip the channel most television sets still show one image at the time. Before we start exploring the metaphor of the window in the age of the computer screen, I would like to explain why the medium of Virtual Reality (VR) is missing form this archaeology. Although VR also opens up a virtual space and one could argue a window (a head mounted display for instance) is necessary to access this space, a screen (a rectangular surface) however is missing. This is also argued by Manovich saying, with VR, the screen disappears altogether (Manovich 1995, 3). Since I am investigating the metaphor of the window alongside different screen types, VR is not a part of this archaeology. The window metaphor in the age of the computer screen relies on a different set of assumptions then it did as a window metaphor for perspectival view. The word window has become part of the graphical user interface of the computer screen. When we go online, we open our browser window. This does not mean that the window refers to the full expanse of the screen, but more to a subset of the screen. However the screen, and therefore the window, still separates the materiality of spectator space from the virtual immateriality of space seen through the window (Friedberg 2006, 1-2). We can see the window metaphor pop up again in discourse on cyberspace (which the computer screen gives access to). In his 1984 novel Neuromancer science fiction writer William Gibson coined the term cyberspace and offered us his vision of an immersive, virtual world. Or as Gibson calls it a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators (51). In another early description of what cyberspace is, Michael

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Heim describes a person entering cyberspace through his screen as a cybernaut who emerges into a world of digital sensation (Heim 1993, 89). In these and other descriptions we again notice the virtual space created by a medium that can be entered through the window of the screen. We can trace the window metaphor in other early texts on cyberspace as well. In his book The virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier author Howard Rheingold describes his first experience with online communities. In his description of The Well, one of the first online communities, he describes how the community grew on him using the window metaphor: Over a period of months, I fell into the habit of spending an hour or two every day gazing in fascination at this window into a community that was creating itself right in front of my eyes (25). But also in books for children about cyberspace the metaphor is again used to explain the mediating role of the screen. In a book in the Megatech Series, a series of books explaining technology to children, the screen of a browser is described as a program that acts as a window in the World Wide Web and cyberspace (Jefferis 1999, 30). The metaphor of the window can also be traced in other discourses related to cyberspace. In writing about the affects of cyberspace and virtual computer worlds on the construction of identity Sherry Turkle, sociologist and Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, focuses on how the window metaphor has leeched into the life practices of computer culture. She discusses how the computer interface with multiple windows into cyberspace made windows a potent metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple and distributed system... The life practice of windows is of a distributed self that exists in many worlds and plays many roles at the same time (Turkle 1999, 547). The metaphor is also represented in the discourse on cyberspace and (dis)embodiment. When writing about disembodiment and the possibilities of transcending the physical body in cyberspace

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Barbara Brook, refers to the body after entering the window of cyberspace as leaving the meat behind (Brook 1999, 137). This notion of spatiality can be traced back to the notion of travelling in a virtual space we have seen in television and cinema. In all cases there was a sense of travelling to and in a virtual space after going through the window, leaving the meat behind. Also in other genres such as books with descriptions of specific applications on the computer screen the window metaphor can be found, for instance in the practice of video chat and webcams. Webcams and other video chat applications offer a view into the space of someone else, a window into another world or an insertion of that world into the viewers spaces (Busse 2005, 48). The metaphor of the window is basically used in the same way as we have seen in television, cinema and early visual art. The space that it lets the viewer of the window enters is slightly different. An excellent notion of this difference is found in Cyberspaces of everyday life by Mark Nunes, whose research focuses on the cultural impact of new media on contemporary society. While prior media all have been windows onto or into other worlds, Nunes argues that in cyberspace the virtual world or cyberspace becomes navigable terrain that can be explored in spatial terms (5). I would like to add that the notion of exploration in spatial terms could also be seen in the (virtual) worlds opened up by cinema and television. What these spaces have in common is that they give a sense of travelling. I do agree with Nunes that in Cyberspace we control where we are going, there is sense of navigation made possible by the computer interface. This differs from cinema and television where someone else, the director or editor, determines the navigation of the virtual space. As this archaeology has shown the window metaphor is reoccurring in media discourse history. At this point it is time to move forward to the present day. Connected mobile devices do something no

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other medium could do before; they embed their medium specificity in everyday practices. Connected mobile devices provide us with a more dynamic relationship with the Internet, embedding it in outdoor and everyday activities (Souza e Silva 2006, 263). This can also be said about computing as Andy Crabtree and Tom Rodden argued in Hybrid Ecologies: Understanding Cooperative Interaction in Emerging Physical-Digital Environments, connected mobile devices have moved computing away form the desktop and workplace into the fabric of everyday life (492). Manovich already described this arguing that mobile devices create a data flow between the virtual and the real world (Manovich 2002, 222). De Souza e Silva, whose research focuses on how mobile interfaces help shape peoples interactions with public spaces, acknowledges this notion and emphasizes that the flows of information that previously occurred mainly in cyberspace can now be perceived as flowing into and out of physical space, blurring the borders between both (de Souza e Silva 2006, 266). This article has explored the metaphor of the window alongside different screen types and how the metaphor is used to describe the mediating role of the screen between spaces. Regarding the metaphor we can conclude that we have witnessed a historical dj vu. Throughout media discourse history the metaphor of the window has always been used to describe the mediating role of the screen, regardless what screen type. Today screens have become larger then ever before; but even more so screens have become smaller then ever before. Despite size todays smartphone screens are still rectangular surfaces positioned at some distance from the eyes. This is one screen tradition that still stands, however traditional spatial characteristics are challenged. The notion of the screen as a mediator between spaces has passed. Instead of being a mediator between spaces, the screens of connected mobile devices are more like a facilitator of spatial convergence, embedding one space in

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another. Also the screens second spatial characteristic that the viewer must be positioned in front of a screen to use it and therefore lacks mobility is challenged. Connected mobile devices make users more mobile then ever before. It is in the affordance of smartphones, tablet-pcs and laptops to enable mobile usage. The tradition of screens that lack users mobility is therefore broken. Despite traditions being broken, the window metaphor has proven to be a reoccurring element of media discourse history and it still is in todays media discourse. As I have shown at the beginning of this article even with new technologies like Augmented Reality, the metaphor returns. With Augmented Reality yet another window on the world is born. The window metaphor is a formula that acts as a building block of a cultural tradition of describing the mediating role of media. It started as a way of describing a perspectival framework in the fifteenth century and it evolved into a dominant and leading cultural metaphor that lasts throughout centuries.

Notes

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Another dominant metaphor to describe the mediating role of Augmented Reality is a layer. The layer metaphor is used to describe a level of digital information that works on top of psychical reality. One of the most downloaded Augmented Reality applications is also called Layer.
i

For a excellent overview on the advertising of electronic devices throughout the twentieth century see these two online archives: <http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/electronics-ads> and/or <http://www.jitterbuzz.com>
ii

This is an ad from DuMont published in an issue of Broadcasting, a magazine about television at that time. It was published on July 31st in 1944. The image that is shown in this advertisement says more then the text underneath it and makes it a perfect example of how television was positioned back then. The original is available via: <http://file.vintageadbrowser.com/lyfuyic8atas2uq.jpg>
iii

This ad from General Electric is a perfect example of what television could offer viewers. It shows a boy watching baseball on television. The text beneath tells what great advantages television can bring to a family. It is unknown where it was published. The original is available via: <http://www.jitterbuzz.com/furn/GE_fortune_1939.jpg>
iv

This ad from Philco is yet another example of what television could offer viewers. It emphasizes how television is makes distance irrelevant. It is unknown where it was published. The original is available via: <http://www.jitterbuzz.com/nost/philco_network_life1944.jpg>
v

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