Both of these readings get at the idea that we are complex beings who need more complex modes of communication otherwise we are just lying to ourselves or at least not getting to the full nature of things as they actually are. The reality is we are complicated and so is everything else. To simplify only blinds us to what more there is out the to understand.
“The boundaries between genres and disciplines keep people dumb and inflexible and make them careerist of the imagination. You can’t let other people decide what is important to write or think about. Other people are wrong. This is a good rule of thumb. (But also keep in mind that you are someone else’s “other people.”)
“Language must be teased into displaying its entire madcap lavish beauty. If you let it be serviceable then it will only serve you, never master you, and you will only write what you already know, which is not much.”
- Shelly Jackson
The Jackson reading seemed to make more of an argument for why common modes don’t work, where they fail and how Hypertext as a solution can help us gain stronger and pos sibyl more honest understandings of ourselves and the context in which we live. I liked her take on things but found her argument limited in her tactic of comparing the way things are and how much better they will be with the use of hypertext as a better way of understanding. The chapter over all left me wanting to know, how hypertext works. Theoretically though, the argument is strong the ideas sound right, but I’d like to see evidence that is actually is. In some ways it seems like gaining and understanding of hypertext through comparison shallows the focus a bit to one way of understanding it. It leaves me wonder how you would defend hypertext as an entity in and of itself. I think that Jackson would argue that nothing is in and of itself, but for some reason I still feel that that us an argument that needs to be stated.
Much like the autoethnography piece, Jackson employ her own tactics in the text itself by focusing on relationships, in this case the disjuncture between established modes of communication and perception and the possibilities that hypertext proposes. In this sense I was won over by the idea of hypertext in the way that I was engaged with the reading more so than with a basic academic text, I found it entertaining yet enlightening and felt as if I were have a conversation more so than reading a text.
Where Jackson left questions Hillis seemed to fill them in. His discussion on middle voice and middle ground speak to this notion that there are spaces and points of connection that are hard to define; yet we still find ways to get at them.
Middle Voice: reveals a subjectivity that that seemingly emanates from a time or space situated between the author and the characters he or she crafts. There is a lack of acknowledgement of either author or character causing the reader to identify with what is being said more.
Free indirect discourse allows an author to attempt to give voice to what is at the threshold of imagination as oppose to what dare not be said. In this sense it may speak more of the ineffable and constitute a nascent effort on the part of the author to symbolize or actualize that, which is still virtual, incipient, not fully thought.
Middle Ground: lies between an embodied user this side of the screen and any other individual she or he may connect with through its use.
As a virtual spatial strategy, telepresence relies on and promotes a flexible theory of subjectivity also evident in the novel’s middle voice; telepresence is neither fully here nor fully there, yet both at once.
The concepts mention above are actually existing examples of the kinds of ideas that Jackson talks about in her article. Hillis really gets at the heart of it fore me in a more substantial way though. In a sense I’d love to grasp the notion of hypertext more fully but the reality is I have been trained to learn in this particular way and breaking from that feels like I’m missing something.
When Jackson talks about the boundaries of our bodies and alludes to the notion that we exceed our physical barrier in a sense. She actually says, “Hypertext is the banished body – It’s not opinions I’m interested in, but relationships, juxtapositions, apparitions and interpolations.”
So okay that’s nice, but what exactly does that mean? Hillis presents the avatar as an actual thing that we have created that exemplifies this notion that Jackson speaks of. With an avatar and multiple avatars we can exercise our multiple selves (our complexities) in a virtual space.
Telepresence, as mentioned earlier is also a subject in Jackson piece. She says, “In the no-place of hypertext, there’s finally room to move around, like an orifice I can fit my whole body into, instead of just my finger or my pen.” Telepresence happens in virtual space, a space of partial imagination and partial reality yet infinite and no placed anywhere physically.
Overall I get the strange sense the hypertext debates kind of happen in a vacuum where these arguments come form nowhere or no place. They do mean something, as Jackson stated and that is why I am in favor of implementing more hypertext discourse into our modes of learning BUT the way that they mean something are in there manifestations in the real world. The imaginary realm is great and a lot can be learned form it, but we do exist in a physical world where things like force and impact totally exist.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Reading Response Three
All of these readings seem to speak between tensions between certain trains of thought and understanding.
Accounting for System Behavior (Dourish):
“A clear tension exists between the traditional process-oriented view of interface design and the emerging improvisation-oriented view of interface activity, which arises particularly from sociological investigations of computer based work.”
How to make sociological insight “real” in computational design.
Context (Dourish):
HCI and
(1) The mutual relationship between physical form and activity (affects on patterns of Interaction)
(2) Computation as sensitive and responsive to its setting
The tension between the human sociological formations of context and how a computer might begin to simulate that, if it’s even possible.
What I found most useful in these readings was the break down of the different areas of theory in the social sciences.
Positivist Theories: Derived from the rational, empirical, scientific tradition, seek to reduce social phenomena to essences or simplified models to capture underlying patterns. Qualitative or mathematical in nature.
Critical Theories: The nature of human existence is a product of social and economic conditions which themselves reflect the historical distribution of power and control in society,
Phenomenological: Social facts are emergent properties of interactions, not pre-given or absolute but negotiated, contested and subject to continual processes of interpretation and reinterpretation. Turing away from the idea of a stable external world that is unproblematicaly recognized by all, and towards the idea that the world, as we perceive it, is essentially a consensus of interpretation.
This point of view can help us avoid issues like double bind theory and the many pathologies that we face personally and socially because it gives light to the many variables at play in how we build and understanding of the world around us, as well as how unfixed they are.
This comes into play more precisely in the idea of how we develop a notion of context. Context defined in this article by Schilit states:
“Context encompasses more than just the user’s location, because other things of interest are also mobile and changing. Context included lighting, noise level, network, connectivity, communication costs, communication bandwidth and even social situation.”
This situation presented here is two fold. We must first understand how we perceive and how our understanding of context is built before we can build technologies that also perceive in a useful way.
Use to Presence (Hallnas & Redstrom):
“When computer systems change from being tools for specific uses to everyday things present in our lives, we have to change focus from design for efficient use, to design for meaningful presence.”
What does it mean for a computer to disappear in a phenomenological sense?
This speaks again to the notion of how we perceive which brings the authors into a discussion of expressions and aesthetics. But once again we must first evaluate how we perceive tools that are already part of our living world. The argument stated here is that we take these things for granted and we don’t necessarily perceive them but rather except them as a part of our lives that will always be there, i.e. taking these object for granted.
All of this speaks to the ides of human complexity. We develop technology to enhance ourselves, to become super human, to move through the world with ease, but this transition forces us to better understand ourselves first. It is an interesting interplay between building from understanding. But what happens if our understanding is skewed or narrow sighted, then what are we building exactly and how is it affecting us?
Surveillance and Capture (Agre):
I really found this article enlightening in the sense that it completely focuses on technology’s effects on our sociology and the reverse. The idea that Surveillance in a social phenomena, that it is socially constructed and he also lends a moment in the article towards our critical understandings of these concepts often facilitated in literature such as Orwell.
This really makes me think about the role that the arts play in our development as far as better understanding ourselves as individuals and our role in the relationships and agreements that build social constructs. Arts provide a space to reflect on these issues and better understand them. What I’ve seen in the articles that we have read is that there is a disconnect between this understanding of ourselves in this way and the development of technology. It seems that the arts may be a way of bridging this gap.
Accounting for System Behavior (Dourish):
“A clear tension exists between the traditional process-oriented view of interface design and the emerging improvisation-oriented view of interface activity, which arises particularly from sociological investigations of computer based work.”
How to make sociological insight “real” in computational design.
Context (Dourish):
HCI and
(1) The mutual relationship between physical form and activity (affects on patterns of Interaction)
(2) Computation as sensitive and responsive to its setting
The tension between the human sociological formations of context and how a computer might begin to simulate that, if it’s even possible.
What I found most useful in these readings was the break down of the different areas of theory in the social sciences.
Positivist Theories: Derived from the rational, empirical, scientific tradition, seek to reduce social phenomena to essences or simplified models to capture underlying patterns. Qualitative or mathematical in nature.
Critical Theories: The nature of human existence is a product of social and economic conditions which themselves reflect the historical distribution of power and control in society,
Phenomenological: Social facts are emergent properties of interactions, not pre-given or absolute but negotiated, contested and subject to continual processes of interpretation and reinterpretation. Turing away from the idea of a stable external world that is unproblematicaly recognized by all, and towards the idea that the world, as we perceive it, is essentially a consensus of interpretation.
This point of view can help us avoid issues like double bind theory and the many pathologies that we face personally and socially because it gives light to the many variables at play in how we build and understanding of the world around us, as well as how unfixed they are.
This comes into play more precisely in the idea of how we develop a notion of context. Context defined in this article by Schilit states:
“Context encompasses more than just the user’s location, because other things of interest are also mobile and changing. Context included lighting, noise level, network, connectivity, communication costs, communication bandwidth and even social situation.”
This situation presented here is two fold. We must first understand how we perceive and how our understanding of context is built before we can build technologies that also perceive in a useful way.
Use to Presence (Hallnas & Redstrom):
“When computer systems change from being tools for specific uses to everyday things present in our lives, we have to change focus from design for efficient use, to design for meaningful presence.”
What does it mean for a computer to disappear in a phenomenological sense?
This speaks again to the notion of how we perceive which brings the authors into a discussion of expressions and aesthetics. But once again we must first evaluate how we perceive tools that are already part of our living world. The argument stated here is that we take these things for granted and we don’t necessarily perceive them but rather except them as a part of our lives that will always be there, i.e. taking these object for granted.
All of this speaks to the ides of human complexity. We develop technology to enhance ourselves, to become super human, to move through the world with ease, but this transition forces us to better understand ourselves first. It is an interesting interplay between building from understanding. But what happens if our understanding is skewed or narrow sighted, then what are we building exactly and how is it affecting us?
Surveillance and Capture (Agre):
I really found this article enlightening in the sense that it completely focuses on technology’s effects on our sociology and the reverse. The idea that Surveillance in a social phenomena, that it is socially constructed and he also lends a moment in the article towards our critical understandings of these concepts often facilitated in literature such as Orwell.
This really makes me think about the role that the arts play in our development as far as better understanding ourselves as individuals and our role in the relationships and agreements that build social constructs. Arts provide a space to reflect on these issues and better understand them. What I’ve seen in the articles that we have read is that there is a disconnect between this understanding of ourselves in this way and the development of technology. It seems that the arts may be a way of bridging this gap.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Reading Response Two
Notes:
Autoethnography: “The researcher’s own experience a topic of investigation in its own right.”
“I start with my personal life. I pay attention to my physical feelings, thoughts, and emotions. I use what I call systematic sociological introspection and emotional recall to try to understand an experience I’ve lived through.”(737)
The affect of academic writing: The “third person passive voice gives the feeling that the work is written from nowhere written by nobody.”
Autoethnography asks readers to “think with our story instead of about it.”
The argument seems to be that through discursive writing we are able to remain critical and find more useful forms of knowledge that can blend in with our personalized ways of knowing rather than bog us down into one particular train of thought.
Other points on autoethnography:
To show us how partial and situated our understanding of the world is
To encourage compassion and promote dialogue
To be an agent of self-understanding and ethical discussion
The three axes of autoethnography:
“Emphasis on the research process (graphy), on culture (ethnos), and on self (auto).”
Questions that arose for me:
How does this concept apply to documentary? Has this technique been implemented in documentary structure and if so what are some examples?
Something that also comes to mind is reality TV, the way that it is passed off as reality with out acknowledging authorship. An interesting model that I haven’t seen in this genre is where the subjects film themselves and each other in a real world setting. It would be interesting to see how acknowledgement of authorship would affect the content. Another huge factor in the dissemination of information regarding television and film is editing which speaks to how what’s being shown is chosen and who chooses it. This also speaks to authorship or the development of information and our hand in molding it. In the model I am thinking of it would also be interesting to see what happens if each member of the project makes there own editorial decision on how the story should be laid out for viewers, where each participants version of the experience is shown.
I also noticed a repeated mention of the connection between autoethnography as a tool in feminist text and often related to being a popular form among women. I too find this to be a completely viable form from of academic writing from which we can learn a lot but I am a woman. I wonder if the basic form of academic essay writing is still useful in a gendered sense. Perhaps men receive and disburse information in this particular way while it may be better for women to receive and disburse information in the from of autoethnography. This is just a postulation, but it there are biologic al differences in human experience that also need to be addressed when trying to reach a level of understanding amongst ourselves. Regardless we need to diversify our ways of knowing, as humans we are capable of gaining new understanding in many different ways and we should tap into all of them.
Autoethnography: “The researcher’s own experience a topic of investigation in its own right.”
“I start with my personal life. I pay attention to my physical feelings, thoughts, and emotions. I use what I call systematic sociological introspection and emotional recall to try to understand an experience I’ve lived through.”(737)
The affect of academic writing: The “third person passive voice gives the feeling that the work is written from nowhere written by nobody.”
Autoethnography asks readers to “think with our story instead of about it.”
The argument seems to be that through discursive writing we are able to remain critical and find more useful forms of knowledge that can blend in with our personalized ways of knowing rather than bog us down into one particular train of thought.
Other points on autoethnography:
To show us how partial and situated our understanding of the world is
To encourage compassion and promote dialogue
To be an agent of self-understanding and ethical discussion
The three axes of autoethnography:
“Emphasis on the research process (graphy), on culture (ethnos), and on self (auto).”
Questions that arose for me:
How does this concept apply to documentary? Has this technique been implemented in documentary structure and if so what are some examples?
Something that also comes to mind is reality TV, the way that it is passed off as reality with out acknowledging authorship. An interesting model that I haven’t seen in this genre is where the subjects film themselves and each other in a real world setting. It would be interesting to see how acknowledgement of authorship would affect the content. Another huge factor in the dissemination of information regarding television and film is editing which speaks to how what’s being shown is chosen and who chooses it. This also speaks to authorship or the development of information and our hand in molding it. In the model I am thinking of it would also be interesting to see what happens if each member of the project makes there own editorial decision on how the story should be laid out for viewers, where each participants version of the experience is shown.
I also noticed a repeated mention of the connection between autoethnography as a tool in feminist text and often related to being a popular form among women. I too find this to be a completely viable form from of academic writing from which we can learn a lot but I am a woman. I wonder if the basic form of academic essay writing is still useful in a gendered sense. Perhaps men receive and disburse information in this particular way while it may be better for women to receive and disburse information in the from of autoethnography. This is just a postulation, but it there are biologic al differences in human experience that also need to be addressed when trying to reach a level of understanding amongst ourselves. Regardless we need to diversify our ways of knowing, as humans we are capable of gaining new understanding in many different ways and we should tap into all of them.
Notes from last weeks presentation: Reading Response One
These reading seem to discuss three main elements. Power, Control and technology.
In Technology we seem to have a lot of possibility for empowering ourselves as human beings as well as for social movement, development and in some cases change (for better or for worse).
The idea’s proposed in the Rheingold readings are suggestions to the possibilities that can occur through the integration of technology out of the basic computer form and into other forms that identify with and correspond to human need such as:
(The Era of Sentient Things)
Smart Things (responsive/pervasive technologies)
Wearable Computing
Web Signs (locationall information)
Intelligent Cities
Phicons (tangible bits)
He also speaks to the idea of wireless networking and its many current capabilities and possibilities:
(Wireless Quilts)
WiFi or 802.11b
Wireless Guerilla Movements
Tool Sharing
Dense Packet Radio Networks
Ad-hoc-peer to peer networks or Mesh Networks (Device driven WiFi connections)
Bluetooth
**********(Show examples of new technologies here)*************
Earthlike computer skin/ Invisible computers/ Situation aware and assistance oriented
Possibilities expressed as Pro’s
Gaining knowledge about the world you walk through and connect with groups who can benefit you.
Extending Human Capabilities
Free people by embedding the means to solve problems in the things around us
Independence (?) page 108 Sentient things
Maximizing public space with wireless networks (NYCWireless)
Netwars (168 Smart Mobs)
Possibilities Expressed as Con’s
“If the computational system is invisible as well as extensive, it becomes hard to know what is controlling what, what is connected to what, where information is flowing, how it is being used, what is broken (versus what is working correctly, but not helpfully), and what are the consequences of any given action (including simply walking into a room).”
Mark Weiser, page 87 (The Era of Sentient Things)
Who owns access to your devices, either to push information at you or to pull information from you?
Electronic Control that we are evermore subject to and unaware of (?) page 108 Sentient things
Netwars (168 Smart Mobs)
Development Smart Mobs based on anything ranging from potential match sites, communities of interest, peer-to-peer journalism, social middleware (ad-hoc)
Actual Definition: A new social form made possible by the combination of computation, communication, reputation, and location awareness.
Forces that will determine the development of technology
Political Policies regarding access and use(FCC, internet law) page 137 Wireless Quilts
Limited space (WiFi) or better more efficient devices for sending and receiving signals
Design Decisions
Corporate priority, investments by telephone companies, commercialism
Social movement and need
Military need and warfare
**************(Shoe they live part 2 and part 4)*****************
The Cell Phone
Chapter 4
Personal Ownership comes across in two ways: reaction to loss and its incorporation as style.
Signifier
Enhancing quality of life (mechanism and gimmicks)
Actual conversation
Text/Picture Messaging
Negotiation of public and private space
Ability to communicate in a dualistic manner
An extension of the self, as tool and signifier of individuality and status
Chapter 5
Facilitating life events, prolonging relationships
Migration
Relationships
Transnational
Advantages of Intimacy and distance
Discussion:
The main discussion that these readings provoke involve enhancement of life from an individual level (cyborgs) to a logistical day to day level (smart things) to a societal level (wifi movement). There are several arguments within these readings regarding what approach we should take towards these new enhancements as far as design elements and how this will affect issues of privacy and control. Another argument was what sort of policies should be enforced to make sure these new powers or extensions of ourselves do not get out of hand.
Really what it comes down to is what should the agenda be for these new capabilities?
Who should be in charge of them, or how should they be managed?
How will access be provided to these new capabilities?
Is individual enhancement more important than societal enhancement or are they equally important?
In Technology we seem to have a lot of possibility for empowering ourselves as human beings as well as for social movement, development and in some cases change (for better or for worse).
The idea’s proposed in the Rheingold readings are suggestions to the possibilities that can occur through the integration of technology out of the basic computer form and into other forms that identify with and correspond to human need such as:
(The Era of Sentient Things)
Smart Things (responsive/pervasive technologies)
Wearable Computing
Web Signs (locationall information)
Intelligent Cities
Phicons (tangible bits)
He also speaks to the idea of wireless networking and its many current capabilities and possibilities:
(Wireless Quilts)
WiFi or 802.11b
Wireless Guerilla Movements
Tool Sharing
Dense Packet Radio Networks
Ad-hoc-peer to peer networks or Mesh Networks (Device driven WiFi connections)
Bluetooth
**********(Show examples of new technologies here)*************
Earthlike computer skin/ Invisible computers/ Situation aware and assistance oriented
Possibilities expressed as Pro’s
Gaining knowledge about the world you walk through and connect with groups who can benefit you.
Extending Human Capabilities
Free people by embedding the means to solve problems in the things around us
Independence (?) page 108 Sentient things
Maximizing public space with wireless networks (NYCWireless)
Netwars (168 Smart Mobs)
Possibilities Expressed as Con’s
“If the computational system is invisible as well as extensive, it becomes hard to know what is controlling what, what is connected to what, where information is flowing, how it is being used, what is broken (versus what is working correctly, but not helpfully), and what are the consequences of any given action (including simply walking into a room).”
Mark Weiser, page 87 (The Era of Sentient Things)
Who owns access to your devices, either to push information at you or to pull information from you?
Electronic Control that we are evermore subject to and unaware of (?) page 108 Sentient things
Netwars (168 Smart Mobs)
Development Smart Mobs based on anything ranging from potential match sites, communities of interest, peer-to-peer journalism, social middleware (ad-hoc)
Actual Definition: A new social form made possible by the combination of computation, communication, reputation, and location awareness.
Forces that will determine the development of technology
Political Policies regarding access and use(FCC, internet law) page 137 Wireless Quilts
Limited space (WiFi) or better more efficient devices for sending and receiving signals
Design Decisions
Corporate priority, investments by telephone companies, commercialism
Social movement and need
Military need and warfare
**************(Shoe they live part 2 and part 4)*****************
The Cell Phone
Chapter 4
Personal Ownership comes across in two ways: reaction to loss and its incorporation as style.
Signifier
Enhancing quality of life (mechanism and gimmicks)
Actual conversation
Text/Picture Messaging
Negotiation of public and private space
Ability to communicate in a dualistic manner
An extension of the self, as tool and signifier of individuality and status
Chapter 5
Facilitating life events, prolonging relationships
Migration
Relationships
Transnational
Advantages of Intimacy and distance
Discussion:
The main discussion that these readings provoke involve enhancement of life from an individual level (cyborgs) to a logistical day to day level (smart things) to a societal level (wifi movement). There are several arguments within these readings regarding what approach we should take towards these new enhancements as far as design elements and how this will affect issues of privacy and control. Another argument was what sort of policies should be enforced to make sure these new powers or extensions of ourselves do not get out of hand.
Really what it comes down to is what should the agenda be for these new capabilities?
Who should be in charge of them, or how should they be managed?
How will access be provided to these new capabilities?
Is individual enhancement more important than societal enhancement or are they equally important?
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