WWW http://rutube.ru/tracks/4465754.html
“Machines of Loving Grace,” dream of
perfect system of self-controlled, homeostatic
systems
Set up Ayn Rand, objectivism, selfishness, individualism:
Silicon Valley as “Randian” heroes
ESPECIALLY 7:10 to
12:50:
Networks can self-organize, “cybernetic dream” of
intelligence from machines
"Pong" in a mass audience; proof of spontaneity, or
that we are never individuals, always
grouped
No hierarchy or direction: where right and left
meet, in libertarianism/anarchism
California ideology, self-selected priesthood, no
government or regulation
• Andreas
Kitzmann, “A Brief History of Hypertext: Origins and Ingluences.”
Chapter 1 in Hypertext Handbook, The Straight Story (New York: Peter Lang, 2006): 7 – 31.
Chapter 1 in Hypertext Handbook, The Straight Story (New York: Peter Lang, 2006): 7 – 31.
We understand hypertext through its history: a narrative, how and for whom it works
Value-laden explanations: history has its own
motives, Hayden White
Linked to entire history of writing and print, Gutenberg and James Joyce or
Borges
(Hor-hay L’wees Bore-hays!)
Language a technology, Greek techne, skills and abilities as well as tools
NB: New kinds of writing change the meaning of the
previous technologies
Need to consider the material of the written medium
Ancient, oral traditions like hypertext: make many
links, associative method
Harold Innes: time
bound, limited by passage of time; today is instantaneous, T4 space bound
Oral was communal; fast speed today is individual,
isolated, impersonal, about control
Books very limited; Modernist writers and designers
challenged their conventions
We are driven to proclaim it is revolutionary, something completely new,
the future of writing
1945 Vannaver Bush suggests a “memex,” massive
memory device with everything in it
Also capable of easy search and infinite linkages
Idea outside the dominant paradigm, Thomas Kuhn
Inspires Theodor Nelson: beyond tyranny of the
book, academia, linear thinking (McLuhan)
Coins “hypertext,” ideas too scattered to fit in
book, turns to computers (liberates us today?)
Top level of hypertext organization called “the
real dream”
Also Doug Englebart (mouse, internet, user
interfaces etc.), kudos as great 20Ce
inventor
Victorian Web, a hypertext and an early wiki
Apple program HyperCard, 1986, linked flexible info
cards, like Rolodex or recipe cards
Languishes b/c Bill Atkinson wanted it to be free,
Apple opposed
Shift control partly to reader, user, not just
writer (Barthes, DotAuthor)
Not
just reception of transmission, MacKay’s
How you navigate web, Facebook, wikipedia, etc.? We saw some flex in Renaissance Computer
Expanded Books, links to further info on pages
(like Much Music PopUps?)
Or Dungeons n’ Dragons, fixed rules and given
structure, but order and direction of play open
Net conceived as decentralized, redundant,
and non-hostile (passive networked transmissions)
vs. a centralized nuclear bomb, Unintended
social impacts, i.e.
Tim Berners Lee, HTTP the origin of the web, 1989;
first server ran on Jobs’s Next cpmputer
à difference between the internet and the wwweb?
Marc Andreeson and Eric Bina, Mosaic browser, images and text together, 1992
Netscape, October 1994, eventually destroyed by Microsoft Internet Explorer
All (except Jobs)
driven by vision of free
information, massive power of open links
What biases built
into hypertext and web? Have a “way of being”
Hegemony of technological
rationality: machines are good, neutral, positive things
Conformity simply necessary to make things work between humans
Tech. gives us
our logic? Foucault e.g.
Virtual extensions for identity, loose definition
of links, conections etc.
Lori Andrews,
“Facebook is using you” NYTimes
New York
Times on Facebook’s control; $100
bn. IPO; %3.2 bn. revenues, 845 million people
Mines your preferences and posts etc., Google scans G-mail, the ‘right’
ads pop up
Can also cost you your job, credit, health
insurance, or marriage
Don’t show up in wrong neighborhood on the web:
unaccountable uses for data on you
6. March 5, 2012
Debate: Malcolm Barnard, “Graphic Design and
Communication,” and
Robin
Kinross, “The Rhetoric of Neutrality”
Is design purely communication?
Barnard: What is design? How does is communicate? Does it
“transmit,” i.e. is it a medium
From mark-making to planning
Kalman: very broad definition, “words and images,”
but also reproduced images
Richard Hollis “convey” information and ideas
Or: Jobling and Crowley, a form of visual culture: important difference in
approach here
Mass reproduction (not art); affordable, words and images
Marshall Arisman: “Art is pure; Illustration begins
to sell out; deign is commercial art; advertising is just selling”
Purity not a
useful concept; art also bought and sold, but design is usually for client from start
Functions: identification, information, promotion
Or: Information (knowledge); Persuasion (change
behavior); Decoration (aesthetics, pleasure); Magic (symbols, transformation,
fetishes: make s/g more than what it ‘really’ is)
Codes and other framing devices, ‘special’
functions of signs, above simple message
Mentions Kinross, “Rhetoric of Neutrality”: finds
excess in simple railway timetable
Persuades, connotes modernity, influence, create
identification, association, belonging
Communication: conveys
something? Transmission, movement of a thing
Transparent medium, i.e.? Unimark wanted this, says McCoy
Not an iteration,
a repetition: communication creates a new thing, not ‘transports’ the old
Define communication: Shannon and Weaver, signal
moving through a channel
Websites: what is the medium? The server, or the
program, or the computer screen,
the
fonts, the pictures, etc.: too many
codes and media at once
Receiver shapes the message, when designer
anticipates audience
Is noise a problem? Or is design largely noise? Adds interpretation, fashions the text, after all
Fails to see the complexity and lack of redundancy
in social systems: design is not language
Need semiology
as basis for definition: look at system
that creates meaning, not just signal
Kinross: Information
design a new field: studies effective communication
Gui Bonsieppe: all communication has rhetoric, expressive excess
Kinross looks closely at use of borders and leader
dots in typesetting of train timetable
Changes to Gill Sans, simpler dots, use of colour:
all expressive, rhetorical
Can’t separate from information per se not even from “resonance” of typefaces
Aura of system
in Gill or Univers; modernity, like the very idea of neutral information:
Products
of modernism, ideas from a specific
period, still in wide use
Reduction and minimalism as science, not style, preference or taste
Product of a “dreamworld” of the 1950s: wish for
transparency and predictability
7. March 12, 2012
Jorge Frascara, “Graphic Design: Fine Art or
Social Science?”
1988:
well into age of postmodern theory and practice: high modern stance here
à Can we define fine
art: closer to personal creativity?
Wrestle with it because it is
autonomous, self-defined, self-referential
à Social science: deals in facts and truth?
-Problems: art is ideological form of
design, seen to be individual, not
bound by society
Science is
a method, observation, comparison, things we can sense and measure, facts
But also deduction and conclusion from that, what facts mean, change theories
Page 18
Gr des has existed a long time: why is its
purpose not understood?
- ideological power, necessity of art
Lack of
theoretical reflection: where is the great theory of design?
- practitioners not challenged to
reflect, because it is so useful:
just do it
Image captions:
Safety
signs: is this area of design
incompatible with aesthetics?
- is there a place for aesthetics in
rigorous communication?
Forms,
designed with psychologists, ‘human factors’ research, not artists
- user-based;
human perception and biology set the parameters
Alphabet
for the learning disabled: memorize letters with patterns in back
- tested and shown to be more effective
Lack of
critical apparatus, discourse, compared to literature and architecture
Style: flaws in this approach?
- aesthetics emphasized: what is the
aesthetic? Is it always extra?
- “omits problems of appropriateness?”:
isn’t style how we get things right?
- incompatible with signage, forms,
maps etc.? Or just overlooked? Tufte
- style leaves ideas out of
communication? Or is it a way of thinking, comm’n.?
- doesn’t distinguish between visual
creation and manipulation?
- omits impact of design on public’s
ideas: Style has no impact?
Doesn’t
style work in all these things too?
“Problem
solving” debate: issue polarizes YSDN department still
“How long
will the praise of El Lissitzky continue?”
- praise of
avant-garde: made design look like art, and study of design like art
-
abstraction not suited to mass communication
Pg. 19
Schwitters
Pelikan ads: unrelated to product,
style unlike package
Praises the
pre-modern Pelikan logo, as “clear reference” to drawing and ink
‘Meaning ’ of these was constructivism,
Russian Revolution
Pg. 20
El L.
wanted communication; just not achieved, too
much about aesthetics
Why modern
innovation? Sales? goal of avant-garde as negative
aesthetics, Adorno
Adorno
supported radical rejection of abstract avant-gardes
Individual choices,
not identity thinking: how to affect
society, positivist vs. oppositional
But…
communication requires agreement on codes, not rejection of entire process
JF: work with the public, improve its access to
codes
We can
praise El L and Schwitters’s quality, “worshipped” for abstraction
Not
“appropriate” in most situations
à aren’t you drawn to
radical style? To pushing boundaries for their own sake?
What does that mean? Examine your
assumptions
Elite distinctions:
reflect a
true elite, or create one? Do they
matter? Why? To whom?
de Stijl
and Dada work only in limited context
Can you lead avant-garde revolution in
everyday?
Adorno’s approach only works in limited
context of art, not about real world
Design other
than an “art form”: more than aesthetics
Define: gr.
des. “organizes visual communication in society”: efficiency, social
responsibility to communicate
-
does this follow? Communication, yes: efficiency the only measure?
- what about innovation, leading
discipline, or just pleasure?
- social responsibility? How to measure
that? Maybe art works to that end?
Pg. 21
Images: Miro knew how to promote with his own art: Albers
not represent film fest
Design is
about perception and behavior: not what people say but what
they do
Make it
visible, legible, and make it change people’s actions and attitudes
Find its
effectiveness within a system
Pg 22
Images: rubber cement toxicity label illegible; Johnston
Underground type, clear;
Tschichold was both aesthetics and organized information
Functions: ads, propaganda, signage, teaching, currency
- function is clearly defined and
measurable
El L. vs. Jan Tschichold: one works
Armin
Hoffman “beautiful style” vs. Giovanni
Pintori, “flexibility, appropriateness”
Pintori’s Olivetti system still works
Pg. 23
Images: Hoffman self-indulgent, but Pintori clear
- or do they look the same?
Selling
cookies and teaching children to read require different approach to design
“Every time a graphic designer really wishes to achieve the objectives
of the communication proposed, the cross-disciplinary nature of the profession
becomes apparent”
Design
needs research and researchers, “active dialogue” with other professions
- admit what you don't know, and go get
it from someone
Marilyn Crafton Smith,
“Culture is the Limit: Pushing the
Boundaries of
Graphic Design Criticism and
Practice.”
A simple as a social science?
Object-oriented studies, how produced,
aesthetic intention foremost
Look at much broader social circuits
and networks of meaning
Also like last week: much broader than
simply ‘sending a message’
Design as profession, defining itself
in terms of:
Aesthetic
expression, communication, persuasion, information management,
problem-solving or as a vehicle
for social responsibility
Out of a Fine Arts tradition,
expression; also gestalt, transmission
of intended message
Reductionist definitions,
vs. structuralist or semiotic methods
Can be read as just about coding and
decoding, simple transmission
Persuasion: Crafton Smith accuses
Buchanan and Frascara of being behaviorist
Aim to change attitudes and bahaviors, despite allowing that the viewer makes
meaning
Early information theory: measure
effect of single message on single receiver
What do designers know about how their
work is received, really? Design a private party
Marketing methods treat viewer as black
box, look for simple effectiveness,
sales
Works slip outside intended circuits of
meaning, beyond commodities or messages
“Masses” do not exist; idea of “mass” is
just a way of seeing people; mechanistic
Need more sophisticated tools: comm’n
theory; feminism; lit crit’m; post-struct’m
Re-locate design within cultural
studies frame
Contemp. Centre for Cultural Studies,
CCCS, Birmingham, Stuart Hall
Beyond economic reductions (Marxism)
and elitism of high culture
Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Marx, Gramsci,
Althussser, Lacan, Laclau and Mouffe…
Groups of unequal power: sociology
can’t be objective; high art not above politics
“Culture, language, ideology and the symbolic”
all in complex relationships
Meanings come from wider field, not
just the single object as transmitter
Production, Circulation and Consumption
all have their own conditions
Reception “subjectively inhabits” the
objects; production not strictly individual etc.
Individual objects and designs point to
cultural forms it participates in, draws on
Wider culture pre-dates the individual
object, multiple sign systems
Viewers have to be seen as producers of
meaning, negotiate complex systems
Design certainly not a single ‘language’:
uses “stories already in place”
Images and designs arrive with meaning
already assigned in other context: also change
it
Intertextuality: multiple
conventions in any one sign, unique to
one viewer; sort of subjective
Intersubjectivity: collective
aspect of any use or reading, relatively objective
Mass audiences of subjected subjects, in
ideology (Althusser), or resistant
and active?
Vs. Hall,
meaning and positions are negotiated, not passively dominant
à How do you
feel about the resistance of audiences to ideology?
Meaning and information is a dirty,
contaminated process, with “semiotic excess”
Deconstruction: meaning is unstable,
chain moves on indefinitely, never ‘arrives’
Is visual reading given? What do
audiences know about design? How “competent?”
Beyond the discrete design object to
“larger discursive fields”
8. March 19, 2012
Deeper Questions
About Information History
Some other ways to look at information
and design
John Bender, Michael Merrinan, “Numbers.”
From The Culture of Diagram
How entire cultures get remade through
simple inventions, like representing information
Crary: command of attention, making
people into observers, that formed us as modern
Or: single point perspective, control,
mapping, or analysis, all bring world under individual gaze
Another take on how modern vision
emerged: through collision, juxtaposition,
synthesis
Modern = living with strangers, seeing
yourself from another point of view, realize you are different
From one text, one god, to pluralism,
many interpretations, relativism
(Cabianca argument over standards: digs
down, dirtiest insult is “relativism”)
Review: Jonathan
Kramnick, Studies in English Literature
Working
objects artfully designed to offer their users many different pathways and
opportunities for making sense of their world.
The
possibility of simultaneous but conflicted patterns of vision and sense.
A mixed mode of diagram played a crucial
role in the many transformations of late
eighteenth and early nineteenth-century sciences
and arts
Genealogy of a non-experiential mode of understanding
located in the diagram
Collision of heterogeneous things demands active thought
James Elkins: Theorizing how images
model thought outside of linguistic analogies, naturalism, surrealism, and
aesthetics.
Chapter
5 NUMBERS
Great Encyclopedia, Enlightenment project:
a sequential folio, linear pages
How the form of the medium defines how
and what you understand
Mathematics: powerful tools for detecting
and describing things we can't see, predicting movements
Diagrams not based on fixed points, but relations, drawn up against background
of “whiteness”
Pure probability, not certainty, as basis
of knowledge?
Geometry of universe not fixed to horizon
line, single point etc. Many viewers,
points of view
Universe made of equations, not
Renaissance pictures with consistent, rational, full space
Deductive science, working from logic, not empirical observation and induction
French mathematicians, and descriptive
geometry, many PoVs
How to average observations of celestial
bodies, so that bigger errors are minimized:
“The method of
least squares” — not that I fully understand this
Like resolving
variations in temperature, averaging them into a smooth curve
Not certainty but
a more accurate approximation, not
perfect but better, relatively correct
A “Social
physics,” laws of norms based on averages
Feeds the
negative politics of social Darwinism: restrain deviation, punish and remove
extremes
Math and diagrams
began to predict things “in advance of experience”
à know any
examples? discovery of Neptune, or the Periodic Table of Elements
Physics today
looking for a Boson particle that must
exist, if current system is to be proven coherent
Deduce it is there, from what we do know, not
from new observations
à does design work
that way? We understand a logic of design, can deduce what design must be
International
Style not discovering the correct
way, but logically deducing it, insisting
on it
Not correct, but
consistent with nature of type and design as abstraction
Our laws of
vision, and our styles of design, not accurate,
but consistent with how we think
Kant: intuitions
of space and time, pre-existent categories
of thought for u/stdg sense impressions
Allows us to
“generalize from sensuous experience,” which would otherwise overwhelm us
Need to subsume experience and empirical
observation “under concepts”
“Space in not
something real – a single container into which things are placed – but is
rather a tools for symbolizing and representing various modes of interaction
between the world and our senses.”
We do not
perceive the Real, the way things are,
but rather our own categories
PPT Ros
Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field
NOTE: Class slides for this class are on digital locker, file name is:
Lect8 Krauss Expanded Field.pdf
Barbara Stafford, “The New Imagist.”
Shift from a lens to a digital culture, “dissolution
of familiar structures”
Art history an object culture,
“materialization of thought” in museums
Now a virtual world of “instrumentalized
artifice,” convergence of every other medium
Erases boundaries of media; both positive
international communication and porn culture
Homogenizing, lowest common denominator,
online courses lowering standards of education
Everything just more “disembodied
information,” no embodied standard, no one responsible
Art becomes passive entertainment, design
becomes merely marketing and advertising
From early movement machines to laptops:
“Any media problem… becomes an image problem.”
“Need to go beyond conventional art,
architectural, or design history… to shape a disciplined,
transdisciplinary
imaging field.”
How to cope with the “global
pictorialization of knowledge”? Need to “define the new imagist”
Moving towards surround, immersive
environments, “hypersimulation”: total, constant
mediation
Easy to disregard trivial entertainments
in these media, but problems of understanding are real
Tend to be unreflective use, driven by easiest, simplest pleasures
But: real cultural change not directed by
highest values and elite cultures
“Machine euphoria,” technological
cheerleading: love the machines, lose choice and control over them
à why do students
love and obsess over Apple? Can’t wait to talk about it in essays
Everything, from classrooms and
departments, dissolves in cyberspace, old departments, disciplines etc.
But we need develop new standards in
virtual space
How to navigate this informational realm?
Understand new modes while remembering
physically mediated perception and production
à how design was
once pasted together and put under a lens, with separate plastic sheets
Vision as integrative, synthesizing field, not disembodied,
disconnected, indistinct sensations
Specific media, in face of
magic and transformation of single digital flow
What skills and proficiencies to navigate
ethical use, intelligent choices, analysis and evaluation
à Baudrillard: how
to tell the truth? What basis for material reality in total, immaterial mediation
Need to know how it is put together to
avoid being “adrift in phantasmagoria”
Concepts of traditional disciplines are
in crisis: images rejected by Plato, low status, too easy
All appearances are illusion, fake; one
big Matrix, produced by “simulation and stimulation”
Attack loss of reading and numbers,
linear logic; degrade the conceptual work that images do
An “intelligence of images,” the workings
of memory itself, held in pictures
“The graphic capacity to give vivid shape
to abstractions”
Two kinds of
information: generalizing through data, collapsing all media into one
and combining things into new patterns,
collage, arrangement, designs
Merging, integrating though data vs. linkage and invention
à how everything
is reduced to data through scanning;
and the new patterns digital images allow
Images the basis for imagining a new
university, and a new role for design at centre of knowledge
Look at this comparison through the
history of how we collected images, art history
Jumble of a cabinet of curiosities in
1700s, demands interactivity, like a field of icons on a Mac UI
Compartments make familiar things seem
strange, placement and context make uncanny
linkages
à Museum of
Jurassic Technology, in LA
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20061229/how-does-a-museum-become-a-performance
Strange assemblies, force us to make connections: why are these
things all here at once?
We are producers and directors of
knowledge; performed live
vs. textual and
systematic approaches, not producing connections but assimilating, memorizing them
Chronologies, categories, narratives,
styles, movements: all discipline unusual
variations and variety
“Subsume everything under categories”
à Like information
engineering: redundancy valued vs. variety
Everything a canned, single story, the “Story of Man,” not a place to make your own
connections
Mac a place of friendly connections, vs. a challenging, linear code, compels
you, allows no error, redos
Mac icons to choose from, not pre-set,
written labels in a museum of MS-DOS
One for production and creativity, one for
consumption, templates, and taking direction
à An illusion of creativity? shaped by
programmers in both cases
Not merged
information, but differences that are linked
“Force homogeneous data to exhibit its
heterogeneity”
Slow down the rushing stream to the speed
of comprehension, “erased distinctions rearticulated”
Show the gaps, sutures, links, how the
connections are made and structured, what they are made of
People make meaning, not flows of data or
digital images from machines
How to work trans-discipline without
competing, or reinforcing existing hierarchies
Active looking and active learning, “put
vision back into visual experience”
9. March 26, 2012
Revisit Barbara Stafford, not quite covered it
NOTE: Class slides for this class are on digital locker, file name is:
Lect9 Stafford, Brand, Hall, Poster.pdf
Barbara Stafford, “The New Imagist.”
PPT Compare Robert Capa and Video Game: what
changes?
Shift from a lens to a digital culture, “dissolution of familiar structures”
What is at stake in
virtual reality, different relationship to images, point to themselves, their
own codes
à perhaps they are
more real? True to how codes work, no
reality in the sig’r/sig’d
PPT Watching
TV vs. computer, social media
Erases boundaries
of media; both positive
international communication and porn culture
Homogenizing,
lowest common denominator, online courses lowering standards of education
Everything just
more “disembodied information,” art becomes passive entertainment
à does it matter
where and how we see images?
“Any media problem… becomes an image problem.”
à Is design a
medium? Then how to understand it?
Do physical media
and matter? Phenomenology of reception
PPT Greiman Design Quarterly
“Need to go beyond conventional art,
architectural, or design history… to shape a disciplined,
transdisciplinary
imaging field.”
How to think of a
science of images?
à what categories would be absorbed in thinking about
just images?
Beyond art/design; machine/hand; word/image; photo/motion;
film/video; professional/amateur
à how to
understand this piece? Important as early adapter: is it information? Is it
good design?
Does it matter
that it was produced in print, on paper? Specific
media, or single digital flow?
à how design was
once pasted together and put under a lens, with separate plastic sheets
PPT Apple’s
history
“Machine
euphoria,” technological cheerleading: love the machines, lose choice and
control over them
à why do students
love and obsess over Apple? Can’t wait to talk about it in essays
Apple’s evolution
driven by what? ‘Good’ design principles; but, simply asserted, not found
Education as
passive entertainment: all images there to amuse us; how to get ahead in
design?
Everything, from
classrooms and departments, dissolves in cyberspace, old departments,
disciplines etc.
What skills and
proficiencies to navigate ethical use,
intelligent choices, analysis and evaluation
à Baudrillard: how
to tell the truth? What basis for material reality in total, immaterial mediation
Need critical
understanding of machinery, media, or
imagery?
Need to know how it is put together to avoid being
“adrift in phantasmagoria?” A media issue?
Or what is an image, an image issue?
Traditional
disciplines, concepts in crisis: images rejected by Plato, low status, too Matrix
PPT Images
vs. words
Attack loss of
reading and numbers, linear logic?
degrade the conceptual work that images do
An “intelligence
of images,” the workings of memory itself, held in pictures
“The graphic
capacity to give vivid shape to abstractions”
Two kinds of information: generalizing
through data, collapsing all media into one
and combining things into new patterns,
collage, arrangement, designs
Merging,
integrating though data vs. linkage
and invention
à how everything
is reduced to data through scanning;
and the new patterns digital images
allow new basis
for synthesis of everything
PPT Cabinet
of curiosities, and Mac
Jumble of a
cabinet of curiosities in 1700s, demands interactivity, like a field of icons
on a Mac UI
Compartments make
familiar things seem strange, placement and context make uncanny linkages
Visual memes collide and persist, reveal
connections
Images the basis
for imagining a new university, and a new role for design at centre of
knowledge
Textual and
systematic approaches, not producing connections but assimilating, memorizing them
Chronologies, categories,
narratives, styles, movements: all discipline
unusual variations and variety
“Subsume everything under categories”
Everything a canned,
single story, the “Story of Man,” not
a place to make your own connections
Mac a place of
friendly connections, vs. a
challenging, linear code, compels you, allows no error, redos
Mac icons to
choose from, not pre-set, written labels in a museum of MS-DOS
One for production
and creativity, one for consumption, templates, and taking direction
à An illusion of creativity? shaped by
programmers in both cases
People make
meaning, not flows of data or digital images from machines
Active looking
and active learning, “put vision back into visual experience”
à Museum of
Jurassic Technology, in LA
http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20061229/how-does-a-museum-become-a-performance
Peter Hall, “Disorderly Reasoning in
Information Design.” Journal of
the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60, no. 9
(2009): 1877–1882
How to relate to science, do we “pretty things up?” Can we say that
design is scientific?
How can information design satisfy the demands of representing science, getting it right
Need higher order questions,
what are we really trying to say?
Stanford’s D-School,
other businesses interest in design thinking
Harry Beck,
London Underground map, was an engineer: he threw out rules of a map
He did a diagram instead, with just key information
PPT YSDN
map
“Every map has an
agenda”
Can we make maps
or diagrams of social networks? How
people work together?
PDF Program Map
à how does the
YSDN map represent this program, e.g.?
Does it show how
information moves around the department? What we do? How to get things done?
Do social networks
always want the real connections to be shown?
PPT Tufte’s
critique of PowerPoint
Bad habits of
organizations determine the form of presentations software
Space Shuttle example,
again: hid the important information
PPT iPod
Apple: question
changes from compression format, to acoustic principles of hearing, to MP3
format,
to digital rights software
iTunes evolves
from music player to platform for selling
content: website controls the
hardware
Interface had to
evolve to new task: driving people’s iPods
Is a “desktop”
metaphor still the best information design for what computers do?
What do computers
do?
PPT Design
democratized
Not necessarily
in a good way: how to keep up standards?
Everyone have
their own standards? Subjectivity is a good thing, use images and styels to
mean
whatever you want?
Or does design
require imposing collective
understanding, like a dictionary?
Or a better metaphor:
a form of collective, cooperative commonwealth, of mutual interests?
• Stewart
Brand, “Frantic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums.” In Two Cybernetic Frontiers (New York:
Random House, 1974): 39 – 96.
Origins of video
games, 1972, among hippies and math geeks at Stanford: “heads,” i.e. stoners
Spacewar, “low
rent… but pervasive.”
Has a kinesthetic
sense; virtual movement
Room full of computing equipment to run a wheeled
device around a room
Likewise,
decentralized computing: 20 lousy speakers give better sound than one great one
(?)
Great, general
systems principles, cybernetics in daily life
• Mark
Poster, “Cyberdemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere.” Chapter 12 in
David Porter, ed., Internet Culture
(New York: Routledge, 1997): 201 – 217.
Leave you with
this: who uses information, and how; all about the internet
State control? Censorship?
To see the state as central is part of the problem
Commodification?
Entertainment? New media not an extension of existing politics and
institutions,
it forces
us into “new social functions”
To ask about
internet democracy is to “risk challenging our existing approaches to these questions”
Beyond left and
right, both based on individual subject as
sacred fiction, “every man for himself”
Postmodern
rejection of identity, as constructed: so whence liberation? Is it
a fiction too?
Democracy:
limited to voting once every four years? Internet suggests something far bigger
Need new idea of
basic concepts
Technology: not a
separate “thing” that changes us, works on us;
Internet changes
the definition of “us” as separate entities
from our communication networks
‘Canada’ makes
people ‘Canadians,’ a hammer doesn’t make people hammerers (but it allows it)
Internet not like
a hammer, it is more like Germany
Tools are optional;
Social spaces like the internet are performative,
make us into ourselves
Look at all the
public spheres: what are its limits? Make you look at the private sphere
Look at the fact
that we live in an undemocratic dictatorship: an economic dictatorship
Limits of what we
can do lies in mapping border of public sphere
and private interests
Every movement of
the public sphere measured against impact in private interests
Internet not just
a new tool within the old framework, but suggests the very limits of our culture
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