Here is my thoughts in response to this essay about the function of windows on the Urban Computing blog:
I think it is very interesting to contemplate the idea that windows can be both physical and virtual. I have always thought of windows as a point of visual tension between two functionally different places and perspectives, an access point of energy between the extention of vision and its restriction. It is interesting to define the function of a window as an object that allows for the process of looking in, looking out and looking through, yet to me this process is at times a simultaneous one. In the physical world, windows are often made of glass, or other materials that allow light to enter and exit a space. But glass also allows for the reflection of light, not in the sense of a mirror of course, where the reflection is almost always a reversed image of the same thing, but in the sense that the process of seeing and being seen coexist. If you are looking in or out, particulariy at certain times of day when the light has a certain quality, what you end up seeing in effect is not the 'outside' but a small portion of the outside combined with an image of yourself looking and effectively what is behind you and surrounding you. The ability to see the combination changes, for the moment, the definition of the physical space you are in as well as the visual representation of what you are looking at.
I think this physical reality, which is simply a function of light and glass, brings up interesting ideas when considering the possibility of virtual windows. The existence of things in a virtual context that also exist in a physical one seem to me to represent this idea of simultaneous in and out. What happens in the virtual context can inform the physical and vice versa, yet they are functionally separate, existing on a different plane from each other. For instance, and perhaps this is not the greatest example, when we construct identities online in a social network context, what we are effectively creating is a window. What we do and who we are in a physical context informs what we do and who we are in a virtual one. Yet in the virtual context, there are varying degrees of visibility. People can look in and we can look out but what we see and what they see depends on how far the window is open or how much 'light' is allowed through.
As with any physical window, I think energy is created because it provides an extension of vision past a 'wall', because there is always the possibility that two worlds that exist on a different plane will collide (i.e. you will be seen) and because there is the distinct possibility that light will reflect and place you in the position of both looking in and looking out. This is not as obvious with virtual windows because as the essay states "a digital wall need not be perceptible - that what is new in our age is that the ability to block traffic across or access to a given region has been progressively decoupled from materiality". However, it seems that the "Hole in Space" project is maybe exactly that, a hole, rather then a window. Or if it is a window, then we have created a new virtual definition of window, where reflection is impossible, where all we are able to do essentially is look through, since looking in and looking out seems to imply that there is a consistent blur between the two. When this happens, what we see is more straight forward. The fact that people used 'Hole in Space" to see loved ones they had not seen in twenty years then is therefor not surprising.
