A Cyborg Manifesto
- Haraway’s text is an “intervention at the level of mythology, of the imagines identities and positions from which action can proceed
- the cyborg is a socialist feminist mythology that is not founded on belief in an idyllic past
- argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction
The GNU Manifesto
- for a while, open source software was the norm – people at MIT created their own open source operating system and users could supply their own code to create new environments
- in 1984 things changed and open source started becoming closed – Unix became closed by AT&T, for example
- this forced users to beg the companies to add functionality
- Stallman created GNU, a free open source operating system
- free can survive, as many do, like Apache
- Stallman has become an outright critic of companies redefining copyright as a private good rather than a public good
- free software is on the rise but free information is declining
Using Computers
- a stinging critique of artificial intelligence
- there is a rigidity in computer programming and inexpressible subtleties in human cognition that will never allow computers to attain human-like intelligence
- we should design computers as tools
- away from machine understanding and towards machine support
- Human communication has taken AI’s place on the center stage of computing
Two Selections by Brenda Laurel
- the key to understanding computer interaction – to Brenda Laurel – is a book more than 2300 years old – the Poetics
- the computer can be studied from a humanistic approach – using well-defined models established for other forms of art
- computer interaction is seen as dramatic
Towards a New Classification of Tele-Information Services
- this essay considers the social role of various digital media
- “the basic technology employed does not determine the category of service a telecommunications system provides
- software can fulfill the role of the service center at time and at times take the role of another individual
- The Eliza/Doctor programs could be seen as conversational
Mythinformation
- positive social change has to be advocated and fought for – therefore, positive social change wont come about as an inevitable result of the growing use of computers
- the “computer revolution” is not really a social change
- people are bereft of information – information is knowledge – knowledge is power – increasing access to information enhances democracy and equalizes social power
- BUT the people must ACT
- waiting for a revolution will not bring about a revolution
From Plans and Situated Actions
- To Lucy Suchman, early AI attempts were misguided
- human action – stories that some of us use to organize our actions
- intelligibility understanding and interaction between people and machines must be seen as profoundly different from that between persons
- primary intelligence concern is – the users own – the designers – the systems – or those of communicating users
Siren Shapes
- Web hypertext is limited – the true hypertext concept still has potential
- exploratory or constructive hypertext environments
- constructive hypertext – those in the process of creation by the user/author
- “a user can freely move back and forth between the roles of author and reader, between the experiences of contsruction and exploration”
- exploratory hypertext – the ability for users to create annotations and links
The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems
- Nichols discusses “a shift from a fetishization of the object to fetisization of the process of interaction, of simulation”
- Interaction offers the feeling of freedom but this freedom is placed within the confines of a larger simulating system
- For example, in The Sims friendship and happiness exist in direct relationship to ones house and possessions
- simulation in war as well – “missile cam” images resembled a videogame
The Fantasy Beyond Control
- Lynn Hershmans Lorna is considered the first interactive video art installation (1979-83)
- Viewers watched Lorna as she watched television and could interact with her and make her do things
- the language of cinema was reinvented for context of interaction
- touch screen – touch the woman over her body as means of navigation
- networked video interaction can also be realized at some point in the near future
Cardboard Computers
- everyday users of new media should be able to design and create their own tools
- today this ideal is not evident
- design cannot be completed by the designer sitting alone, it must include users
- Utopia – new media tools should be designed for the quality of work they produce
The Lessons of LucasFilms Habitat
- people were shocked when a large, online MMORPG came online – “shocked to find that players enjoyed killing each other online
- this primitive graphical environment “provided numerous lessons in online interaction and the shared experience of a simulated world”
- computer mediated communications – MOOs, graphical virtual worlds, and chat spaces
- networked systems that provide real-time communications along with a graphical respresentation of each user in a simulated space bring different dynamics of exchange to the forefront
Seeing and Writing
- how typography and printing relate to the present movement of writing onto the computer screen
- how new media influences our concepts of reading and writing
- “remediation”
- some aspects of writing on screen have carried over from print based – but other things, like resizing a screen to allow for more text area is completely revolutionary
- Bolter’s ideas on the history of typography can help us understand and better explain the changes we see in new media reading and writing on the screen
You Say You Want a Revolution?
- “by placing the new medium against others, and considering how it might function in the extreme, certain assumptions previously taken for granted were upset”
- the hypertext does not replace the book – it’s more likely a replacement for TV
- but not every aspect of hypertext has been rosy:
- Most of the population read information off of big media company sites such as Yahoo, CNN, and MSNBC
- although individuals can find more sources of information, most do not even try
- “the open and dynamic docuverse that hypertext was supposed to bring can’t be sensed in the pullulation of possibilities today, even on a Linux computer that is forking like mad
The End of Books
- allowing students to write on the computer furthered the end of books
- the ability to collaberate on the authorship of hypertext systems meant that students more easily wrote more well-versed papers
- “the Golden Age of literary hypertext has ended, this heavily textual era of innovation in the form has given way to the WWW”
- “perhaps the next way to stimulate students into literary creativity using the computer will involve something more novel than link-and-node hypertext”
Time Frames
- McCloud has explained how the comic format works – what its underlying structures and techniques are
- comics = sequential art – and as old as the ancient Egyptians
- McCloud wrote a comic about comics
- “new forms do indeed have certain conventions and rules – if the form being studied is considered with care – these rules can be determined..and thus can improve the practice of their art”
