Ana was just raising the volume on our boombox. She could have held down the button (it’s the chiclet variety) but instead she clicked the button repeatedly, rocking a little back and forth with each click, until she reached the desired volume.
She was using her body as a metric. She was also compensating for a crappy interface. This boombox lacks a visual display of the volume. Moreover, a chiclet button is nowhere near as precise or handy as an old-fashioned dial.
We have the expression “too big for one’s britches” meaning someone whose sense of self is out of proportion with their reality; namely their physical reality. In the virtual world, it’s all too easy to lose track of the proportions that have helped our civilization advance. (See da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man for example.)
The Nintendo Wii, among other new interfaces, may help restore the human body to its helpful role in our play and work.