Customer Reviews

How Images Think

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3 star:		(1)
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Ron Burnett's "How Images Think" is a major contribution to the current discussion surrounding images and the digital universe, and is essential reading for anyone interested in thinking about the implications of our relationship to analog and digital media. The book itself is gorgeously designed, with a luminous cover; each chapter is absorbing, and the reading experience is enhanced by the inclusion of additional sidebar comments/text, and interesting photographs. Most importantly, the text is full of intelligent and honest ideas about the contemporary process of interacting with images. It is academic and personal, complex and readable. The author's discussion of the internet as a "gateway" that transforms the computer from a device into a portal (ref. Chapter 6 "Humans--Machines"), is very astute, as are his thoughts on how current discussions of mind/consciousness often draw on metaphors used in computer science and engineering. A great book, overall, which I recommend to all.

What a wonderful experience! This books is both personal and critical. I was impressed with the author's range of knowledge and desire to bring new ideas to the reader. His range is wonderful!!

How Images Think never quite lives up to its clever title or Douglas Coupland's glowing endorsement on the back cover. Ron Burnett's wide-ranging interests, as evident in his excellent bibliography, too often distract from his focus on the way images work in today's computer mediated world.

Burnett is constantly skidding off on some new tangent, (entire chapters go off track) seemingly compelled to tell the reader everything he knows, even as it muddles the difficult argument he is trying to make about the locus of meaning and intelligence in an increasingly hybridized and mediated world, an argument that never becomes entirely clear.

How Images Think is admirable in its ambition and presents many welcome invitations to investigate the artists and thinkers who intrigue Burnett. In the end, I was reminded of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read in high school with the similar anticipation and finally disappointment in its lack of rigor.

The first chapter of this book examines a photograph taken by the
author. He use the photo to meditate on the Holocaust. It reminded
me of the work of Roland Barthes. Overall, a great book!

How Images Think is a must read for those who create, work with and consumer images today.

The author opens a window very wide and asks us to consider, with him, the changes and the effects technology continues to have on the act of representation.

The author's breadth really impressed... a handsome book, well-written, well-designed. The cover is unique. The book should be excellent for college level courses. I loved reading it.

What an interesting title! what a dissapointing book!
The book is hard enough to read because of the author's lack of skill in writing, but the problem is compounded by printing the entire book in a non-serif font! One of the cardinal rules of printed material is that any text longer than a title, figure caption, or short sidebar should use a serif font to make it easier for the eye to follow the text. This was discovered hundreds of years ago! This is supposed to be a book about seeing, for crying out loud! What was the author thinking - that all those other books were put together by idiots?