SUMMARY: In the book Interface Culture, Steven Johnson describes the culture that surrounds the computer interface through several stages of development.  In his cynical, and often satirical style, he moves through the beginnings of bitmapping, the invention of the mouse, the desktop metaphor, windows, links, text and lands squarely on a topic that is near and dear to my heart, agents.

Just as I finished this paragraph, the dog agent that resides on my desktop irritatingly asked me if I wanted to amend a feature of Word or turn it off completely.  This is a perfect example of an annoying little personal agent that is residing on my desktop.

Johnson begins the chapter by wittingly having us envision the story line on the short story “The Sand-Man” that was written by E.T.A. Hoffman.  The theme of this short story is the description of the eventual danger and allure of mistaking machines as humans.  A perfect segue into agents.

KEY IDEAS: What is an agent?  Agents can take multiple forms.  They can be the cute little dogs that reside on the desktop or can be as impersonal as a browser window.  Agents can perform tasks as simple as emptying the trash can to traveling the internet, communicating with other agents, only to return when they have located the information requested.  In short, agents can be classified in three types:  1) Personal 2) Traveling and 3) Social agents.

The use of agents may appear to be highly useful and harmless as they work for us to gather information we request.  These so called beings can be programmed to take on a life of their own, however, and anticipate our needs and wishes.  The most sophisticated agents that Johnson describes in this chapter will become anticipatory to our needs and may even perform tasks like making an appointment with a nutritionist after it has scheduled several pizza deliveries for you over the past few weeks.  They might even roam the Internet using the RPC (remote procedural calling) protocol; lodge themselves within a server or host of servers to glean information that you request.  As it locates information it transmits back to you long after you have gone on to doing other tasks.

The author warns that these agents could become counterproductive to our society and, in time compel humans to become less aware of their own needs and desires since they will be submitting to these agents.  Johnson focuses on the work of Jaron Lanier and his description of agents and counter-agents-both the intrigue of agents to the macabre.

Lanier focuses his criticism on the more intelligent agents rather than the personal agents that are performing routine tasks or tasks that are based upon mathematical constraints.  These agents, in Lanier’s view, are not likely to change the “future of culture and society.”  Once the agent begins to anticipate our needs, the consequences could begin.  Just as you receive junk mail at your doorstep that is targeted at your specific personal tastes, you begin to develop junk e-mail tailored in the same manner, only using more sophistication in the development of your personal tastes.

Johnson states that beyond personal taste, agents are beginning to infiltrate the more nebulous realm of taste and aesthetics.  Logically, software can determine that you like softball because you frequently visit fastball.com.  The agent can then begin to send you updates and news items on breaking news concerning softball.  The problem will begin when the agent starts to tell us what we like and dislike based upon logical “assumptions” that it is creating from our past history.  Will agents get smart or will humans just get more stupid?  This is a question that Lanier is posing through his objections to such intelligent agents.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: This was a very interesting chapter involving the use of agents in interface culture and design.  It is definitely on that could create a good case for some alarm and concern at the direction agents are taking humans on their travels in cyberspace.  I wonder just how much projection does occur as we interact with these agents-I am going to monitor my interactions more closely in the future

Expanding on what Alyssa has written about plotlines and The Sopranos, in Everything Bad Is Good For You, Johnson first argues for the existence of what he calls “the Sleeper Curve.” The Sleeper Curve maps average changes across the pop culture landscape, it explains how media exists and is becoming more intelligent and complex than it has been before, and that this is good for us. We can see the existence of the Sleeper curve through video games. Johnson takes the reader through how even this ‘bad’ is ‘good’ for human kind. “The clearest measure of the cognitive challenges posed by modern games is the sheer size of the cottage industry devoted to publishing game guides, sometimes called walk-throughs, that give you detailed, step-by-step explanations of how to get through the game that is currently torturing you” (28). Johnson gives numerous examples of these game guides, from early mock-ups of what Pac-Man guides would look like (simple and directional) to present day novels of objective maps that bring the gamer through extensive series’ of tasks in order to complete a larger goal.

The Sleeper Curve is also shown in television, despite popular beliefs that television is, like video games, dumbing us down. “If we’re going to start tracking swear words and wardrobe malfunctions, we ought to at least include another line in the graph: one that charts the cognitive demands that televised narratives place on their viewers” (63). Johnson applies the Sleeper curve to television programming; he tracks the viewer through charts of the linear narrative paths and plots of Dragnet, Starsky and Hutch, Hill Street Blues, and The Sopranos in attempt to show the complexity of plot ‘threads’. “Put these four charts together and you have a portrait of the Sleeper Curve rising over the past thirty years of popular television” (70). The need for more complex threading and social networking in television programming is proving that this medium is enhancing cognitive development and therefore influencing the Sleeper Curve.

Johnson also applies this theory to the internet and films. “It’s one thing to adapt to your lifestyle to include time for sitting around watching a moving image on a screen; it’s quite another to learn a whole new language of communication and a small army of software tools along with it” (117). Because the internet is providing new extremes of communication (social networking, video chatting, blogging), it is forcing humans to jump in and understand. Google has become the new encyclopedia—we consult the internet first. And modern films, like television, have proved that the Sleeper Curve is affecting our ability to comprehend complex threading of plot lines. “By each crucial measure of complexity—how many narrative threads you’re forced to follow, how much background information you need to interpret on the fly—Lord of the Rings is several times more challenging than Star Wars. What Johnson is inferring is that sometime between the release dates of these films (Star Wars: A New Hope 1977, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001), human cognition for extensive complexity has increased. Like the tracing of television plots from Dragnet to The Sopranos, film plots have become more intense and intricate, even in children’s movies. Johnson’s argument for the existence of the Sleeper Curve is proven correct in relation to video games, television, the internet, and films. Technology over the last half-century has revolutionized human daily activities, from how we read the news to what television shows we enjoy on Sunday nights.

This chapter is about how human’s use of computers has effectively influenced not only our writing process, but has also resulted in the creation of new acceptable forms of written communication. Once we look beyond the word processing component of computer use, text can be used as benchmark indicators for knowledge or document management and author identification.

A key idea in this chapter is how using a word processor changes how one writes.  “the computer fundamentally transforms the way we conjure up our sentences, the thought process that runs alongside the writing process.”  I used to compose in my mind, then put it onto paper. Sentences were only as long as I could remember them. Now with on-screen composition, sentence structures are more complex – the thinking and the typing processes began to overlap.  “The textual revolution may well be the Great Leap forward of interface design circa 2000.” A new role for computers in understanding text.  Instead of organizing ones computer files based on special orientation, what about organizing files based around meaning? Pattern-recognition V-Twin search engines could be used within the personal computer to organize storage of documents based on ‘likenesses’; multiple aliases allow for multiple connections for storage.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: There are two main areas in this chapter that I keyed into as human computer interaction conduits. First, Johnson chronicles his process of moving from writing in ‘long hand’ to using the computer for brainstorming through revision – a complete process. This change in his process has resulted in a very different, and far more complex written product. With the added opportunity that email affords, this too has changed the process of communication resulting in a new form of dialogue.

The story Johnson communicates about determining the author of Primary Colors and how the same process was used to determine the order in which Shakespeare’s works were written and performed open new avenues for textual analysis. The explanation of uncovering an author’s patterns, vocabulary tendencies and other contextual clues are both exciting (wearing my archival hat) and of concern. If this technology develops sufficiently, the whole concept of anonymity will be in question. Culturally, we may have shifted from respecting the thoughts independently of the author’s identity. Are we then also  questioning the value of the nome de plume?  Pen names have been used through history to protect those who would otherwise be persecuted or discriminated against. The messages may not have been shared if it was known we could uncover the author.

Introduction

In 1974 Raymond Williams wrote an essay about the impact of television on society, “Television: Technology and Cultural Form.” In it, he expressed concern that while television had the ability to offer “extreme social choices” and could potentially lead to a “more educated and participatory democracy,” it also has the ability to further limit and regionalize the way we think and interact with one another to the few choices offered to us by large corporations and institutions.

In today’s reading, “The Lo(n)g Revolution: the Blogosphere as an alternative Public Sphere?”, Anna Notaro begins with this excerpt from Williams’ article in order to put her own into context. While Williams’ assertions are seemingly out-of-date, they can be reapplied to the technology of today, which is the Internet. Her goal for this essay is to explore the political implications of the Internet and she wonders whether the Internet will remain a delimited public arena in which intellectual exchange freely flows between ordinary people, or become highly monitored and limited by potentially anti-democratic values. She concentrates on the “blogosphere” in particular (a term coined by William Quick in 2001 to refer to the “intellectual cyperspace” that bloggers inhabit), and its role in relation to “the intersection between technological change and a reformulation of the public sphere.”

Notaro goes on to explain Williams’ idea from his 1961 article “The Long Revolution,” that there are three long, simultaneous revolutions occurring—the democratic revolution, the industrial (technological) revolution, and the cultural revolution. Williams had an optimistic view of these revolutions, arguing that the public’s desire to govern themselves was directly related to the development of industrial organization (or in more modern terms, the development of new technologies), and that the cultural revolution then, reflected the public’s desire to allow everyone to actively learn and participate in culture as opposed to a small group of people. The link between these three revolutions is less obvious today, and Notaro wonders whether it is possible to continue to be optimistic about this relationship. Is this democratic desire still relevant in a time when large companies are all fighting to be the ultimate controllers of our consumption?

Habermas’s Public Sphere

Notaro next explores Jurgen Habermas’s idea of the public sphere, and how much of it has changed or remained the same in today’s technological world. Habermas’s idea, in “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere written in 1962,” was that in 18th century Europe, the public sphere emerged as a forum for critical discussion amongst the public, which would allow for the free sharing of ideas, ultimately serving as a check to state power. In the more modern times of the Internet, the public sphere has evolved. Notaro is skeptical about applying a concept that was formulated in a different media world to the current media environment, especially due to one aspect of Habermas’s idea of the public sphere—discussion strictly as a form of rational debate, ignoring any sort of emotive language that could be used in a free flow of ideas. He believed that everyone should have “a common interest in truth, no matter their status.”

This idea has been critiqued due to its narrow-minded nature. Modern theorists argue that this idea implies a “public” only open to the elite and educated, while more realistically in today’s technological world, there are many publics that include anyone and everyone, in the form of list-servs, chat rooms, blogs, and gaming communities. Many media scholars seek to discard Habermas’s view of the public sphere completely. Others believe that there are still modern implications of his theory. Notaro is hesitant to discard Harbermas’s idea of the public sphere as being completely irrelevant to the modern media world, however she argues that even if it can be applied, Habermas’s public is only a small component of the numerous publics that exist on the Internet today.

Internet and Electronic Democracy

Many scholars believe that computer-mediated communication opens the doors for democratic progress by enabling widespread discussion and the ability to make each and every voice heard. Rheingold, one scholar, among many others, who believes in this newfound democracy, strongly believes that technology, “if properly understood and defended by enough citizens, does have democratizing potential in the way that alphabets and printing presses had democratizing potential.” These scholars see the Internet as a utopian, electronic agora (public forum of ancient Greece). In line, to some extent, with Habermas’s public sphere, blogs and news groups engage people in discussions of public and political relevance, promoting a more widespread democracy.

However, there are also many media scholars who lack this optimistic view of an electronic democracy. Benjamin Barber conjured three different scenarios of what could happen with the relationship between technology and democracy: the Pangloss scenario, the Pandora scenario, and the Jeffersonian scenario. The Pangloss scenario refers to the ability of technology to serve corporate agendas. The Pandora scenario refers to the idea of the government utilizing technologies in order to control the public and create an “invisible tyranny” which takes away freedoms and limits privacy. The Jeffersonian scenario is refreshingly optimistic compared to the first two, and refers to a society in which the government and its citizens use technology in order to promote active participation in democracy online and elsewhere.

Backtracking for a moment, Barber’s Pandora scenario directly ties in to the second reading of the day, “Scroogled” by Cory Doctorow. In this highly imagined story, a Google employee comes back from a long vacation in Mexico to find that the Department of Homeland Security, along with the entire American government, has partnered with Google to gain access to the search histories of citizens in order to monitor their actions online as a way to eliminate any sort of threats to the security of the nation. I won’t get into too many details of the story, but the main character, Greg, is interrogated by the DHS on his way home for some completely innocent, yet seemingly threatening searches he made while he was away. His friend and fellow Google employee, Maya, explains to him exactly what happened while he was gone and informs him that once the government gain access to a person’s Google identity, it monitors it forever. There is no more privacy whatsoever. Maya tells Greg she has created a software capable of completely wiping out and masking online identities so that the government can no longer track them. Chaos ensues, and by the end of the story, the software is used by Google as a form of political corruption, in order to erase the questionable histories of certain political candidates.

This whole scenario seems completely fantastical, but at the same time it is unsettling to realize that this sort of government control is completely possible with today’s technology. This story, combined with many of the ideas I will discuss shortly, brings up my own questions about the democratic value of the Internet as well as ties back to questions of freedom in the use of the computer due to interfaces. But I will come back to that at the end.

Now, back to Barber’s last scenario (Jeffersonian), which envisions a more democratic society. This scenario again reflects people’s tendency to think that new technology allows for some democratic utopia to form. Rheingold, while he advocates this utopia, still realizes that the Internet can be easily commodified and while it seems like the Internet allows the public to break free from traditional media’s monopoly over their attention, in reality it is just another means for companies and the government influence public discourse. Carl Boggs is one scholar who seriously doubts the Internet’s democratic capabilities, saying that it does not in fact “empower ordinary people,” but rather “the global village…operates at the expense of real communities.”

At the end of this section Notaro leaves us with a paradox: the online public sphere will always lack a certain democratic value due to the inequality and irrationality of certain online discourse, but at the same time, the Internet draws in many different people, enables many new connections and allows for democratic discussion. She concludes that our understanding of democracy and the Internet need to be reworked and continuously developed on a “glocal” scale, and that this democracy is worth fighting for in order to protect ourselves from media conglomerates.

The Blogosphere

Notaro briefly outlines the development of weblogs by referring to Rebecca Blood’s Weblogs: a history and perspective (2000). Blogs began as a way to discuss specific scholarly topics to a more personal diary, that transformed consumers into creators of information.

Blood stresses the importance of blogs today in a world where we are exposed to so much information so frequently that it is difficult to stop and reflect on any given piece of information anymore. She claims that modern blogs are one remedy. Notaro notes that since Blood’s article in 2000, blogs—both directly political in nature and simply reflective—have contributed to national and international political dialogue, especially after September 11th. One example she gives is that of Salam Pax from Baghdad. He wrote a blog about the mood of the city as it awaited the U.S. bombing, which created a buzz around the world. These random, unprofessional blogs have begun to have a real impact on the journalistic world. Notaro argues that bloggers and journalists are all part of the same family of writers, and that all blogs have some journalistic aspect, whether or not they live up to professional standards.

Notaro then defines the blogosphere. She explains how blogs are collective in nature and foster ongoing active participation—through comments—by tons of people anywhere in the world. The computer language is a common one that eliminates certain political and cultural divisions between different regions of the world. She says that this transcendence of physical and cultural borders “presents a case of interactivity in a local/global public sphere that may re-energize democratic values.” Despite this, Notaro questions the novelty of such a public sphere. She thinks that perhaps the idea of ordinary people discussing in the public sphere is old news, and connects it back to Habermas’s idea of the public sphere emerging way back in the 18th century.

Andrew Baoill sets out to find this connection between Habermas and the blogosphere. He identified three factors of Habermas’s theories: inclusivity, disregard of external rank, and rational debate. He claims that while the blogosphere is somewhat inclusive in that anyone can start a blog, it cannot help but favor certain blogs over others, failing to disregard rank. Further, the fact that there are so many blogs out there, very few of them will be given a chance for rational discussion. Therefore, the blogosphere does not live up to Habermas’s ideal public sphere. Notaro concludes that the blogosphere is just a “constellation of intellectual space” where people can freely express themselves, as they feel necessary, without much order to it.

One problem is that because there is so much information out there, people begin to filter out only the things they want to hear without listening to what other people have to say. It creates “echo chambers” where the individual becomes important and the public sphere begins to decline. This divide between the individual and the public is becoming more and more apparent.

Notaro then describes a report done by the Hansard Society, which assessed the state of political blogging in the UK. These are some of the findings:

• Blogging has the potential to significantly impact on political engagement and political processes as they provide an opportunity for alternative informal voices to enter into the political debate without a great deal of cost or effort.

• Blogging breaks down the barriers between public and privates spaces and allows elected representatives to put across their individuality and personality.

• The availability of low-cost, low maintenance authoring software means blogs are far easier to construct and update than conventional websites.

• The most appealing blogs are those which provide genuine debate between bloggers and visitors to the blog. Blogs that do not offer this facility give visitors little reason to return.

• At the moment, political blogging is still regarded as the pursuit of internet connoisseurs rather than ordinary members of the public. While our jury found blogs easy to navigate, they found the tone of content unappealing.

• Blogging has the potential to be of enormous benefit to MPs and other elected representatives who use it as a listening post rather than another tool to broadcast their ideas, achievements or party dogma.

Notaro notes a paradox in these findings: while politicians are needed in order to represent the diversity of the public, blogs wind up eliminating the need of individuals to be spoken for by someone else. This feeling of individualism provides a great sense of democracy in that individuals no longer feel the need to have their opinions represented by others, but instead people want to express their own opinions for themselves. Notaro celebrates the death of one ideology and the birth of a “digital nation” full of individuals. She calls them Digital Citizens. 

I would like to connect parts of this reading back to our discussion of the desktop interface. In my last post on the reading by Steven Johnson, I mentioned that the original desktop released by Apple was considered revolutionary in that it enabled the ordinary person to be able to use the computer and “understand” its functions. Apple advertised the interface as providing a sort of freedom, which would allow people to have an equal understanding and ability to use the computer. We discussed, however, that in reality this understanding is false and that while we think we are being given choices and freedom within the interface, we are actually being completely influenced by the designs of the interface designers and only know and understand what they allow us to. This ties back to the skepticism of scholars like Benjamin Barber about the true freedom that the Internet allows us. Perhaps we believe that we have complete freedom on the web, but in reality the Internet is filled with advertisements and agenda of all sorts, so that the content we see is in fact regulated to some extent, whether we realize it or not. Do you think that the Internet is limiting or is it truly free? Further, do you think that something like “Scroogled,” where we literally have no freedom whatsoever, could actually happen? Are we heading in that direction?

This chapter was a critique on how links have been utilized over the past decade.  Johnson makes the case that links have been used to merely connect locations in a site.  He suggests that much more can be done by linking ideas and using links creatively to communicate in several dimensions by offering tangents to the reader as in-text links.

Johnson discussed the web surfing metaphor.  Like flipping through the cable channels, the user is passively clicking to see what’s on.  Links are between loosely related sites, that one sifts through to find items of interest.  The author shows his disdain for this metaphor.  He laments the way it has dominated world-wide web use and design.

“Web surfing and channel surfing are generally different pursuits; to imagine them as equivalents is to ignore the defining characteristics of each.”

“But what makes the online world so revolutionary is the fact that there are connections between each stop on a Web itinerant’s journey.  The links that join those various destinations are links of association, not randomness.”

“These new versions (of Netscape and Microsoft browsers) between them unleashed more than a hundred new features, according to press materials that accompanied them. There were upgrades for Java support, new animation types, sound plug-ins, e-mail filters, and so on.  But not one of these new features – not one – enhanced the basic gesture of clicking on a text link.”

Johnson then developed a bit of the history of links as a literary device.  They are synthetic devices, bringing ideas together.  Reminiscent of the writing of Dickens, who used links of association.  Dickens weaves partial epiphanies and half resemblances into the fabric of the novel.  The web has failed to use links to do this synthetic work.  The possibilities of hypertext language, developed by Vannever Bush, that emerged in the early 1990’s have generally been overshadowed the less well thought out, more random kinds of links.

“As the word suggests, a link is a way of drawing connections between things, a way of forging semantic relationships.”

“To see the relationship between a street orphan and a baroness, you needed a little magic, a little artifice.  And to the link of association – leading us inexorably toward a secret history of heritage and inheritance – became the stock device of the Dickensian novel.”

“The imaginative crisis that faces us today is the crisis that comes from having too much information at our fingertips, the near-impossible task of contemplating a colossal web of interconnected computers.”

“Bush’s proposed solution (the Memex) should probably go down in history as the birth of hypertext, at least in its modern incarnation.  Only he chose to imagine the “links of association” connecting all that data as “trails” not links. … Bush’s system was closer to those half-resemblances of Dicken’s novels; links of association, tantalizing, but not fully formed.”

Johnson concluded by giving some Recommendations for How Links Should Work on the Web.  Links can be used in richer ways.  They can be used to draw new relationships by connecting things might not be immediately obvious.  Links can replace the linear way that a novel reads with multi-dimensional narrative.  The author designed FEED, an online cultural magazine.  This magazine included two sections – document (the primary text) and dialogue (online commentaries on the primary text).  He also discusses Suck.  Suck is an irreverent site, where contributors use hypertext to communicate and link in such a way that the author interacts with the text, linking in mid thought, and taking the reader on excursions that add to the reading experience.  The possibilities of hypertext language, developed by Vannever Bush, that emerged in the early 1990’s have generally been overshadowed the less well thought out, more random kinds of links.

“Suck’s great rhetorical sleight of hand was this: whereas every other Web site conceived of hypertext as a way of augmenting the reading experience. Suck saw it as an opportunity to withhold information, to keep the reader at bay.”

” … They (Suck) used hypertext to condense their prose, not expand it. … They didn’t need to spell out their allusions; they could just point to them and leave it up to the reader to follow along.  They buried their links mid-sentence, like riddles, like clues.”

PERSONAL REFLECTION: At first, I was taken back by the critical tone of the chapter. It seemed that Johnson had little good to say about how hypertext links are being used today. As I read on, it occured to me that this very direct assault was intentional in order to jar the reader into considering alternatives to “traditional” uses for links. It’s made me thing about reinventing my techniques of communicating with web documents.

Qualcuno sostiene ci sia una tendenza in atto che caratterizza l’informazione al tempo della Rete: quella della snack culture.

Ci si nutre in modo rapsodico e compulsivo, tra uno spazio di vita e l’altro, di spezzoni di informazioni da consumare in superficie e velocemente. Questa bulimia del frammento è fatta di feed RSS, di articoli brevi con molti-link-che-poi-mi-saranno-utili, di molte letture sparse di post contro poche di quotidiani, di tranci tv sbattuti su YouTube che deresponsabilizzano dalla necessità di guardarsi un intero programma di approfondimento (o di intrattenimento).

Qualcun altro sottolinea come questa sia, di fatto, un’illusione e che in realtà ci troviamo di fronte ad un ambiente mediale mutato che ha fatto crescere la sua offerta culturale, rispondendo in modo differenziato ai bisogni e saturando la dieta mediale con offerte che si legano in modo nuovo e diverso ai nostri spazi/tempi. E poi, aggiunge qualcun altro ancora, c’è il piacere delle “schifezze” che condensano esperienze e gusti differenti in moltissimi modi, per cui se per qualcuno si tratta solo di junk food per qualcun altro diventa l’unico modo di sfamarsi, o di farlo nei tempi che la vita ti concede, tra uno spostamento e l’altro, ecc.

Sia come sia, c’è necessità crescente di coniugare le esigenze di “fame” informativa – con appetiti diversi e diverse esigenze spazio/temporali di consumo- e la capacità di muoversi tra i percorsi dei produttori informativi “dispersi” – professionisti e non – in un’epoca di convergenza culturale e di socializzazione di massa alla Rete.

Così parte Filtr, nella sua provvisorietà da versione alpha, che pensa (anche) ad un rapporto di socializzazione informativa alla rete della classe media digitale. Come scrive Granieri:

Probabilmente, se sei uno che sguazza su Friendfeed, usa un client per Twitter e va dal barbiere con l’iPhone, Filtr non è per te, o lo è solo in parte (poiché hai già probabilmente la tua rete di riferimenti). Il tipo di lettore cui pensiamo, giocando con questo numero zero, è quello che che non ha il tempo (o la legittima voglia) di costruirsi i suoi strumenti di analisi e ricerca di informazioni. E a cui può far piacere un po’ di vita semplificata.

Ovviamente c’è una complicata dose di ambiguità che sta dietro ad un tentativo come questo: cos’è, giornalismo dal basso? cos’è, un aggregatore? cos’è, un modo per mettere in relazione agenda dei media e agenda della Rete? o di mettere in agenda cose che sono uscite o sono proprio fuori dall’agenda mediale? cos’è, un racconto dell’informazione in chiave locale? cos’è, un riassuntino dei fatti del giorno ma neanche tutti? cos’è, un modo di pettinare i flussi? cos’è, una selezione fatta dalla gente per la gente?

Per me è semplicemente una realtà adatta alla convergenza culturale, che mette in connessione (dal basso) la realtà informativa del sistema (mainstream) dei media e i flussi online, miscelandoli in un condensato in cui gli sguardi, esterni ed interni alla Rete, si relazionano. Una realtà in cui consumo informativo di superficie e di profondità si intrecciano; con la collaborazione del lettore che può segnalare articoli “irritativi” a chi viene dopo di lui.

Una realtà in evoluzione, dunque, un progetto collettivo che forse non può essere definito in positivo ma solo attraverso ciò che non è: Filtr non è snack culture. Non lo è se pensiamo a questa cultura come puro consumo di info streaming – per capirci la lettura con sguardo distratto delle breaking news. Ma è una forma adatta alla realtà dell’informazione all’epoca della snack culture, se pensiamo ad una dieta informativa che miscela personalizzazione ad approfondimento, superficie e profondità.

With complexity and detail, Steven Johnson justifies the use of the windows environment as a way to make computers easier to use.  In a simple way, he sees windows as a spatial tool that is used to organize textual information.  Spatial information is easier for our brains to navigate through due to the consistency of the layout.  Since windows is fluid, and information is never anchored to one place, Steven poses the question, “What good is our visual memory when it’s dealing with a device that moves around so much?”

Steven Johnson contrasts interface evangelists as he develops this chapter.  He applauds the use of windows as an effective interface, even though he sees that the spatial dimension of windows is “just an illusion, or the illusion of an illusion”.  It is most useful for the discrimination of information, or shutting things out, since “surplus information can be just as damaging as information scarcity”.

The use of windows did not create a new consciousness, but it let us apply our existing human structures to digitized information.  This is evident in mode-switching. This imposes a fragmented and  disconnected experience, but could also help us to see multiple viewpoints.

Even though Johnson clearly shows that the use of windows contributed to an historical evolution of the organization and interpretation of information, he notes that there are some modifications that could possibly allow designers to focus on advertising vs. editorial, and opinions vs. news.  Windows that open out onto other windows (frames) might be used to gravitate us toward the designer’s choice of content.  It may be in the past that we utilized our own information filters.  “Today’s browsers alter the look-and-feel of the data they convey; tomorrow’s will alter the meaning of that data, by emphasizing certain stories over others, or by punching up sections that are particularly relevant to the reader”.

Sherry Turkle, in Life on the Screen shares Johnson’s view that windows has the potential to be used as a propaganda tool. In this work, she generalizes when she says that “we construct our technologies, and our technologies construct us and our times.  Our times make us, we make our machines, our machines make our times.  We become the objects we look upon but they become what we make of them.”

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Even though Johnson consistently notes the limitations of windows in this and other articles, he seems to have the depth of understanding about the historical development of computer technology as it is driven by human need. He also points out that the intended need a product was designed to address might not be what it ends up being used for. Variations on the intended use, or exaptations, naturally occur as problems arise that a tool intended for something else can solve.  Modifications then might be made to the original tool, and technology evolves.  This theme appears throughout the book, and to me is encouragement for designers and users to be problem-solvers and users who are never satisfied.

Na, bent savotiškai. Minėtasis mainstremas arba, sulietuvintai tariant, populiarioji kultūra nuolat atsiduria tartum viduramžiškose viešose patyčiose, kai koks nors nelaimėlis prirakintas prie gėdos stulpo priešais piktdžiugišką minią ginkluotą kiaušiniais, pomidorais ir pašvinkusia žuvimi… Nors geriau pagalvojus – turbūt ne, prieš šimtus metų žmonės maisto klausimu buvo daug taupesni. Tarkim, jie buvo apsiginklavę purvu, fekalijomis ir marą skleidžiančiu kosuliu… O gal akmenim, šakėm ir fakelais?  Mano žinios apie viduramžius kiek miglokos, surinktos iš tos pačios pop-kultūros  ir šitas palyginimas turbūt buvo viena prastesnių idėjų, bet mintis turėjo būti ta, kad popsą ar meinstrymą labai madinga ir viešai priimta maišyti su žemėmis, vadinti gašliu, nemoraliu, tapusiu buku žmonių uždarytų name su kameromis stebėjimu, begaliniu žmonių žudymu žaidimuose ir sekso scenų festivaliu. Kiekvienas toks paburbėjimas, paapeliavimas į moralę ir dorovę sulaukia gausių galvų linksėjimų. Tai galiausiai tapo tokiu nemirtingu atpirkimo ožiu, kurį galimą kaltinti dėl visko: nuo karo Irake iki nusilaužto nago.

Aš visuomet jaučiau, kad toks požiūris į pop-kultūrą (turint omenyje visas populiariausias entertainmento rūšis: kompiuterinius žaidimus, televiziją, internetą ir filmus) yra trumparegiškas ir nevisiškai informuotas. Visai neseniai aptikau ir mano požiūrį palaikančios literatūros, su kuria ir norėčiau supažindinti, nes… Nes man ji tikrai patiko, o taip pat ji man pritaria. Manau, tai  – pakankamai svarūs argumentai. “Everything Bad is Good for You“. Knygos autorius – Steven Berlin Johnson. Mūsų, lietuvių, tarpe vadinkime jį Steponu. Stepu. Stepuku. Be jokios priežastis, išskyrus tą, kad mes lietuviai ir TURIME VISKĄ LIETUVINTI. Žinodamas, kad retas turi priėjimą prie angliškų  knygų bibliotekų, o dar retesnis pirks kažką Amazonėje paskaitęs vieną neypatingą mano žinutę tinklaraštyje, pabandysiu glaustai pristatyti, ką minėtasis Stepas dėsto ir ypatingai, ką jo dėstymas byloja apie televiziją.

Kyla natūralus klausimas apie laidą. Jums ne?

Taigi, pagrindinė knygos tezė yra tai, jog plačiai paplitęs požiūris apie kultūr0s prastėjimą ir paprastėjimą pataikaujant kvailiausiems ir infantiliškiausiems žmonių įgeidžiams yra nesąmonė. Tai jis grindžia tuo, kad yra ypatingai koncentruojamasi ties ‘ką’ mums rodo pop-kultūra ir visai pamirštamas ir nenagrinėjimas ‘kaip’. Pavyzdžiui, žaidimai, pasak Stepo, yra kritikuojami už didelį žiaurumą, kraujo kiekį, tačiau nuolat pamirštamas faktas, kad visi jie yra žiauriai sudėtingi. Užtenka palyginti kokį eilinį Age of Empires ar Grand Theft Auto su senuku Pac-man. Age of Empires sukasi apie tvirtovės statybos sistemą, šiai tvirtovei statyti reikalingi resursai – antra sistema, tvirtovei ginti reikalinga kariuomenė – trečia sistema, visa tai reikia supinti tarpusavyje ir pritaikyti vienai bendrai žaidimo strategijos sistemai – kada pulti, kada kaupti jėgas, kaip pergudrauti priešininką. Palyginus su tikslais kuriuos turėdavo Pac-mano žaidėjas (pabėgti nuo vaiduoklio ir rinkti taškelius), Empires žaidėjo galvoje verdantis pastovus užduočių prioretizavimo, daugelio “žaidimo detalių” valdymo ir trumpalaikių tikslų derinimo su ilgalaike strategija viralas greičiau atrodo kaip darbas nei pramoga. Nekitaip yra ir prastą reputaciją turinčiame GTA. Viso žaidimo įveikimo aprašymas (walkthrough) reikalauja 53000 žodžių, panašiai kaip vidutinė novelė. Pac-mano 256 lygių strategiją galima sutalpinti į kelis puslapius. Tačiau, kas iš to? Stepas atrėžia, kad tokie žaidimai yra puiki treniruotė smegenims, žaidėjas mokosi priimti sprendimas pagal turimus duomenis, analizuoti savo pastebėjimus ir pagal tai atkurti žaidimo taisykles (jei esate žaidę bent truputį populiarių kompiuterinių žaidimų, pastebėsite, kad dauguma jų iškart neišduoda savo taisyklių, už kadro vykstančių skaičiavimų, taip kaip, tarkim, visas taisykles pateikia šachmatai). Vaikas (ar nebūtinai vaikas) žaisdamas žaidimą nesimoko, kaip žudyti žmonės ar kautis su begalėm fantastinio pasaulio monstrų, jis mokosi sistemingumo, problemų sprendimo ir teorijos-bandymo principo.

O dabar apie televiziją. Tą šviečiančią dežė, kuri žmonės paverčia vegetuojančiais ir pasyviais it agurotis ar komos būsenos pacientas be lašelinės. Be abejonės, jokios ilgalaikės naudos iš to būti negali. Priešingai mąstantis Stepas kilęs iš Jungtinių Valstijų, todėl ir pavyzdžiai jo beveik visi iš amerikitiškų laidų ir serialų, bet tai neturėtų trukdyti – lietuviai sėkmingai ir gausiai vartoja Valstijų TV kanalų produkciją – nuo Simpsonų iki Hauso ir nuo Lost iki Sopranų. Būtent Sopranus, autorius kartoja ir linksniuoja daugybę kartų, galbūt pagautas baimės, kad puslapis teksto be žodžio ‘Sopranos’ yra neįtikinantis ir nesuprantamas. Tačiau tam yra priežasčių.  Bet kokiu kitu laikmečiu toks darbas būtų palaikytas gan avant-gardiniu ir per sudėtingu, tačiau mūsų visuomenėje jis iškopė į visišką mainstremą, aukščiausias reitingų vietas, retransliaciją visame pasaulyje ir milžiniškus pinigus. Sopranai, nuostabiųjų HBO kūrinys (toks žodis kaip ‘nuostabus’ kalbant apie bet kokią didelę kompaniją ar godų transliuotoją atrodo kiek iškrypėliškai, bet čia jis tikrai tinka), kaip ir daugelis po jų sekusių ir keletas juos aplenkusių serialų, reikalauja iš žiūrovo vis didesnio ir didesnio įsitraukimo į patį veiksmą. Tai ne tiesi istorijos linija, kuri žygiuoja paskui herojų nuo užuomazgos iki pergalingo galo. Sopranų laikų serialas – tai nuolatos besikeičianti dešimties siužeto linijų mozaiką, kuri neveda žiūrovo už rankos ir nebaksnoja pirštu, o tikisi iš jo dėmesingumo, išvadų darymo ir įvykių (kartais nutikusių prieš 30 minučių, praėjusioje serijoje ar net praėjusiame sezone) siejimo. Pasak Stepuko, būtent toks pasitikėjimas žiūrovu, nenoras visko supaprastinti atvedė Sopranus į šlovę.

Penki vyrukai ir biliardo lazda. Laida apie biliardą? Snūkerį?

Kitas punktas, kuriuo Stepas gina televiziją nuo neišgydomų pesimistų, yra subtilumas. Įsivaizduokite kokį senesnį siaubo filmą (pvz. Scream), veiksmo serialą (pvz. A-Team) ar dar kokią nors masiniam vartojimui taikytą nesudėtingo entertainmento formą. Jos turi vieną bendrą bruožą (ne, ne siaubingas šukuosenas/prastą vaidybą). Žiūrovui nuolat baksnojamą į svarbius siužetui įvykius: “Pažiūrėkite į duris! Ji pamiršo jas užrakinti! Bet kas gali laisvai įsibrauti.” arba “Štai nieko nesuprantantis veikėjas įmestas į siužetą tam, kad mes galėtume viską jam ir žiūrovui paaiškinti”.  Iš pažiūros suprantama prodiuserių baimė, kad žiūrovas pasijutęs nors kiek pasimetęs griebsis distancinio pultelio ir puls perjungti kanalo, bent jau šiais laikais yra nepagrįsta. Pavyzdžiui, gana populiarus ligoninės žanras su tokiais Lietuvoje transliuotais šmotais kaip House M.D. ar kiek senesnis E.R. užverčia žiūrovus specialybės žargonu ir terminais, kurie statistiniam piliečiui Stepui absoliučiai nieko nereiškia. Niekas nesitiki, kad jis juos supras. Iš žiūrovo tikimasi nuolatinės analizės ir atsirinkimo tų dalykų, kurie jo niekur neveda, tiesiog suteikia daugiau realizmo ir tų, kurie leidžia susiprasti situacijoje. Be abejonės, vienas kitas pabaksnojimas pirštu išlieka, tačiau jie pateikti daug subtiliau ir pagrįsčiau. Tolimesniam įrodinėjimui Stepas naudoja dideles citatas, bet aš vėl būsiu tingus barsukas ir pasiūlysiu netikintiems pasižiūrėti šių dienų ir 80-ųjų serialą vieną po kito. O visiems kitiems, piešinukas su atseit juokinga antrašte:

Tai akivaizdu! Limbozinis išsigalvocitas. 15 miligramų dešracetamolio - skubiai!

Galiausiai – realybės šou. Visuotinai pripažintas žiūrimiausias istorijoje bevertis šlamštas. Kuriame Steponas ir vėl randa privalumų. Trumpai tariant, tai nėra labai aukštos kokybės ar didelės vertės produkciją, bet ji, priešingai nuo pirmtakų, įtraukia žaidėją emociniame lygmenyje ir priverčia jį dalyvauti patį. Tikri žmonės, tikri tarpusavio santykiai žadina vojeristinį smalsumą ir mes net užsimirštame, kokį didelį kiekį žmonių ir jų tarpusavio santykių sekame. 20 ir daugiau dalyvių anaiptol nenaujiena kokiam nors Survivor ar The Apprentice. Grįžkime 10-15 metų atgal ir joks televizijos projektas nesiryžtų turėti šitiokio beprotiško skaičiaus pagrindinių veikėjų. Realybės šou žiūrovo protinės pastangos pažinti šiuos žmonės, nustatyti jų santykius iš pasąmoningos kūno kalbos ir sekti nuolatinę šių santykių kaitą neturėtų būti nuvertintas. Mes tą patį darome kasdien, o toks socialinis nuovokumas vienaip ar kitaip yra įgūdis ir net labai naudingas. Taip, tai kažkiek primeną muilo operas, kuriame išraižytas dieninis Lietuvos televizijų tinklelis, tačiau muilai neturi nuoširdumo faktoriaus, nekviečia mūsų dalyvauti žaidime galvojant, ką mes patys darytume tokioje situacijoje. Vienaip ar kitaip tai yra žingsnis į priekį nuo anų dienų televizijos The Price is Right, kur iššūkis būdavo teisingai įvertinti rankšluostį ar Wheel of Fortune, kur tereikia geru metu nusipirkti balsę. Negaliu nepaminėti rusiško Wheel of Fortune atitikmens По́ле Чуде́с, kur taip pat reikėdavo atnešti laidos vedėjui trilitrinį stiklainį raugintų agurkų.

Dar ponas Stepas kalba apie internetą, tačiau jo nauda gana savaime suprantamas dalykas. Vargu ar kas nors ims ginčytis, kad gausus šiuolaikinių technologijų vartojimas nestiprina problemų sprendimo įgūdžių.

Deja, sunku surasti iškalbingų pavyzdžių šiems teiginiams lietuviškoje televizijoje. Iš dalies dėl to, kad Lietuvoje televizija dėl istorinių priežasčių vystėsi visai kitaip. Iš kitos pusės, esame godūs užsienio produkcijos vartotojai ir lietuviški serialai pranyksta tarp šių tarptautinių brendų (nors mielai aprašyčiau palyginimą tarp “Moterys meluoja geriau…” ir “Giminių”/”Atžalų, jei tik kas žino iš kur rasti pastarųjų įrašus). Žinoma, turėjome “Robinzonus”, “Akvariumus”, turime “Muzikos akademijas”, į bendrai paplitusias televizijos madas lygiuojamės, tačiau didesnio žingsnio link labiau angažuojančio turinio turbūt dar teks palaukti, bet, kaip byloja Stepas, vilties yra. Besikeičiantis visų medijų tarpusavio ryšys (o labiausiai TV archyvai internete ir įrašų (DVD ar kitomis formomis) platinimas) galiausiai atveda prie televizijos, kuri ne bando išlaikyti jūsų dėmesį ir nesupainioti jūsų tos vienos ir svarbiausios pirmos transliacijos metu, bet stengiasi surimtėti, eksperimentuoti ir įtraukti ilgesniam, daugkartiniam žiūrėjimui.

Moralas turbūt būtų vertinti televiziją (žaidimus/internetą) ne kaip vieno lygmens turinį, bet kaip veiklą įtraukiančia mūsų smegenines įvairiais metodais ir būdais ir skatinančią mus vis daugiau mąstyti apie tai ką mątome ir girdime. Stepas į visą šitą įtraukė netgi karta iš kartos augančius IQ, įvertinimą nepriklausantį nuo išsilavinimo, bet nuo šiais laikais ypač svarbaus problemų sprendimo ir loginio mąstymo įgudžio. Galbūt taip ir yra, galbūt tai ir išgelbės pasaulį (dar nežinau nuo ko), bet faktas, kad mūsų kultūra keičiasi (ir į gerąją pusę) yra akivaizdus ir išdėstytas šioje pusantro tūkstančio žodžių sienoje. Dėkui už dėmesį.

P.S. Taip, prisipažįstu negailestingai apiplėšęs Steveną Johnsoną ir prisigaudęs jo minčių sausokai išbėręs jas jums. Tačiau vyrukas išties nekvailas, cituoja tokius žmonius kaip McLuhan ar Flynn, rašo daugeliui gerbtinų publicistinių žurnalų. Manau – neprašoviau. Nepaminėjau daugelio svarbių jo pastebėjimų, tad komentarai visuomet laukiami.

Title of Book: Everything Bad is good for you

Author of Book: Steven Johnson

Chapter #1: Television

In this chapter  Steven Johnson discuss about older tv shows versus new tv shows  and contrast from between them. He explained in his text the story lines has changed dramatically and even the best shows from 20 years ago would be regarded as quite primitive were they to air today. He mention the concept of Autism Quotient or is capacity a person has for determining and understanding the interpersonal connections between people insofar as their emotional intelligence will allow them. This is determined by how low the score is; the lower the AQ score the higher the ability to determine these interpersonal connections. He writes, “People with low AQ scores are particularly talented at reading emotional cues, anticipating the inner thoughts and feelings of other people, a skill that is sometimes called mind reading .

Television turns out to be a brilliant medium for assessing other people’s emotional intelligence or AQ—a property that is too often ignored when critics evaluate the medium’s carrying capacity for thoughtful content”. So, insofar as television programming can be said to be a vehicle for cognitive content, the Autism Quotient must be taken into account, at least according to Johnson.

Johnson also discusses social networks which is  groups or classes of people linked in intertwined relationships, such as a family, a group of friends, coworkers, or any set of people with a continual and substantive interaction. He writes, “Where media is concerned, this type of analysis is not adequately illustrated by narrative threads or a simple list of characters. It is better visualized as a network: a series of points connected by lines of affiliation. When we watch most reality shows, we are implicitly building these social network that are maps in our heads, a map not so much of plotlines as of attitudes: Nick has a thing for Amy, but Amy may just be using Nick; Bill and Kwame have a competitive friendship”. Because everyday human social interactions are more complex than a linear series of events, Johnson argues that they must be visualized, even in television programming, as a web of interconnected lines in reference to all occurring social interaction.

In film, Johnson highlights the recent trend of mind-bending films:  Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind and Pulp Fiction.  He argues these films have become popular despite their use of avant-garde   techniques, which normally would restrict their accessibility and economic viability. The popularization of narrative experimentation in these films works to further Johnson’s main thesis, which highlights an increase in complexity and viewer involvement throughout mass culture in the last twenty years.

Prior to “multiple threading”, television episodes contained one or two main characters and one storyline. With the additional “collection of distinct strands” to the episodes, the public became willing “to tolerate more complicated narratives”. This allowed the audiences to comprehend more storylines and characters as well as linking different episodes, improving their cognitive skills. In television shows like The Sopranos multiple threading is a common tactic used to provide information to the audience in an interesting way. Johnson explains, “The narrative weaves together a collection of distinct strands-sometimes as many as ten, though at least half of the threads involve only a few quick scenes scattered through the episode”. He believes that due to the rising technology in pop culture the audience is conditioned to comprehend the increasingly difficult plots developed with multiple threading. Essentially, then, Johnson’s theory of “multiple threading” is based on the increase of narrative complexity through time.

Another term Johnson uses to describe the rising difficulty in television storylines is the disappearance of the “flashing arrow”. Flashing arrows act as “a narrative signpost, planted conveniently to help the audience keep track of what is going on”. For example, in typical slasher films,  the audience knows that leaving a door unlocked leads to “unwanted visitors”. The unlocked door acts as a flashing arrow. In recent years, there has been a shift in reducing the number of flashing arrows causing “the cognitive labor you are forced to do filling in the details”.Television shows based in a hospital do not take the time to explain every medical term used; the audience is expected to grasp their meaning through context. In recent years television shows, the reduction of flashing arrows leaves the audience to discover plot twists for themselves.

Johnson discusses substance and texture and the way they are used to create a “reality effect”: “substance” is all of the subtle, and sometimes obvious, clues that tell the audience what is happening in the show in a more direct way. For example, “When a sci-fi script inserts a non-scientist into some advanced lab who keeps asking the science geeks to explain what they’re doing with that particle accelerator – that’s a flashing arrow that gives the audience precisely the information they need to know in order to make sense of the plot.” “Substance is the material planted amid the background texture that the viewer needs to make sense of the plot.”

“‘Texture’ is all the arcane verbiage provided to convince the viewer that they’re watching Actual Doctors At Work”. Texture is what is used to make the substance more believable. For instance, in Grey’s Anatomy, texture is the complicated medical jargon the actors use. Viewers are not expected to completely understand the language but it is needed to authenticate the plot.

Reality effects are designed to create the aura of real life through their sheer meaninglessness: the barometer doesn’t play a role in the narrative, and it doesn’t symbolize anything. It’s just there for background texture, to create the illusion of a world cluttered with objects that have no narrative or symbolic meaning you don’t need to know what it means when the surgeons start shouting about OPCAB and saphenous veins as they perform a bypass on ER“. The reality effects are created in concert with the texture to give the show more reliability; they enforce the believability of images as well as verbiage.

X Time line (http://www.xtimeline.com/timeline/Kitty-s-Media-History-Timeline)



This chapter discusses the history of the interface design of “desktop”, building on the concepts presented in chapter one about the inherent nature of “bitmapping”.  The desktop, as presented by Steven Johnson, provides the bridge between the initial design aspects of the first personal computer to one of the most critical components of our design language, windows.   Therefore the evolution of the desktop is critical for a full understanding of the computer culture of today’s society.   According to Johnson, the first true desktop interface was found on the Macintosh computer.  The desktop interface built into Apple’s groundbreaking personal tool was revolutionary because of its character- it allowed the computer to be thought of as a “medium” rather than just a tool.  As a medium, the Macintosh not only expanded significantly the pool of PC users (by identifying and reaching a target customer base of computer phobics), but it also made significant strides in setting the primary human-computer interface for most personal computers found today.  And the basic principles of the desktop still endure, even after the “PC” wars where Apple and PC’s went head-to-head for winning the acclaim of best interface design.

Architecture reflects more than just a tool to use, therefore establishing the importance of the design of the desktop. “Each design echoes and amplifies a set of values, an assumption about the larger society that frames it.  All works of architecture imply a worldview, which means that all architecture is in some deeper sense political.” (p. 44)

The desktop is a metaphor, allowing it to function as user-friendly tool. “Alas, the desktop metaphor has as many limitations and conceptual blind spots as its command-line predecessors.  Only these restrictions come from being too faithful to the original metaphor itself, extending the original desktop into more fully realized 3-D spaces, into office buildings and living rooms.” (((p. 57)

The importance of the metaphor concept and how it affects all levels of computer design.  “Metaphors create relationships between things that are not directly equivalent.  Metaphors based on complete identity are not metaphors at all.”  When one thing becomes another it is essentially a simulation.  The value in the desktop as a metaphor is what it can do beyond a traditional physical desktop. (p. 59)

The broader implication of desktop as a metaphor is.   “Organized space implies not just a personal value system- as in the religious order of the Gothic cathedrals- but also a type of community.”  This provides a means for gathering.  “That alone suggests that spatial metaphors of the original desktop will expand into more vividly realized environments over the next few years, environments designed specifically to accommodate gatherings of individuals separated by geography.” (p. 62)

Remix mit Steven Johnson, Lawrence Lessig und Shepard Fairey auf Fora.tv Shepard Fairey erklärt schnell und einfach, was wenige im Sinne von Urherbrechtsreform verstanden haben. Leider nur englisch. Wann erfinddet Google endlich ein Video-Live-Übersetzungstool?

Das ganze Video gibts hier

Zweiter Teil Fora.tv. Beitrag zum Copyright.

Dazu gibts ein paar meiner Lieblingsmotive von Shepard. (Der mich sicher nicht dafür verklagen wird)

Shepard Fairy - Animal Farm

Shepard Fairy - Ripper

Title of Book: Everything Bad is good for you

Author of Book: Steven Johnson

Introduction Chapter: The Sleeper Curve

In this introduction part of the book I have read Steven Johnson uses the term Sleeper Curve from the Film Sleeper made from Woody Allen, to give a comparison between the scientists from 2173 that were shock the 20th Century society failed to grasp the nutritional merits of cream pies and hot fudge”. As to what Steven Johnson had quoted The Sleeper Curve serves to “undermine the belief that . . . pop culture is on a race to the bottom, where the cheapest thrill wins out every time”, and is instead “getting more mentally challenging as the medium evolves”. He also point out that by no means does the Sleeper Curve imply that popular culture has become superior to traditional culture: what “the Sleeper Curve undermines is not the premise that mass culture pales in comparison to high arts and its aesthetic and intellectual riches”.

Chapter #1: Video Game

This Chapter Steven Johnson made a very good argument about the video games not through their violent or sexual content, but rather through the fact that the “structure” of video games that stimulates the reward centers of the brain. He first explains how the brain chemicals function: “a strong case can be made that the power of games to captivate involves their ability to tap into the brain’s natural reward circuitry. As I read further into this chapter establishes the connection between brain chemistry and the physics of a virtual world: “If you create a system where rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment, you’ll find human brains drawn to those systems, even if they’re made up of virtual characters and simulated sidewalks. The example that was used in this chapter was best selling Zelda series on the Nintendo platform. It’s the reward system that draws those players in, and keeps their famously short attention spans locked on the screen. No other form of entertainment offers that cocktail of reward and exploration”. Some people that are playing video can learn more visually than reading a book.

En los últimos dos días he venido intentando delinear el argumento que quiero presentar mañana en la mesa del V Simposio de Estudiantes de Filosofía que girará en torno al comic Watchmen. Primero, una corrección – según me informaron hoy día, la mesa se ha movido al Auditorio de Humanidades de la PUCP, mañana jueves a las 4pm (originalmente sería en la Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya). Así que si alguien está por ahí, y está interesado, es bienvenido a darse una vuelta.

La primera parte del argumento, en el nivel del texto, partió de Watchmen para elaborar el significado cultural del superhéroe y, sobre todo, lo que significa desmontar ese ideal en su concepción clásica tal como lo hicieron Alan Moore y Dave Gibbons a partir de Watchmen. La segunda parte, desde una suerte de metatexto, busca extrapolar la lógica de lo que nos ofrece Watchmen para intentar mapearlo a una concepción diferente de cómo se produce, se consume y se intercambia la cultura. Aquí el argumento se puso decisivamente más pastrulo.

Lo que quiero hacer en la tercera parte es dar otro paso hacia atrás, a algo así como un meta-meta-texto, para hacer una lectura de la lectura que he intentado hacer. Es decir, ¿por qué Watchmen nos permite realizar esta extrapolación? ¿Qué tiene de especial, y cómo debe verse modificada nuestra aproximación al “texto” en este sentido, para responder a la lógica cultural que he querido presentar en la segunda parte?

Es importante responder a estas preguntas porque, en verdad, nos enfrentamos a dos ideas un poco escandalosas. La primera, es que todo esto se pueda desprender de un “texto” como puede ser Watchmen. Obviamente hemos extrapolado esto y lo hemos llevado a niveles que, quizás, no pretendía llegar, pero hemos tomado Watchmen como el punto de partida de una narrativa cultural que hemos ido desplegando siempre a partir de lo que, me parece, es quizás su mensaje más interesante. Por otro lado, he postulado que este mensaje es, justamente, no sólo el desmontaje de la idea infantil e ingenua de los superhéroes, sino el desmontaje de un nodo articulador cultural. Es decir: el desmontaje de la idea de que algunas personas están, por alguna razón esencial, legitimadas para producir la cultura, o de que algunas ideas están legitimadas para ser más importantes, mientras que las demás personas o ideas simplemente no lo están.

Ésta es la idea que comúnmente ha significado la distinción entre una “cultura ilustrada”, de ideas legitimadas formuladas por las personas legitimadas para formularlas, que agrupa todo lo que es verdadera cultura; y una “cultura popular”, donde todos los demás, “los que no saben” pueden dedicarse a hacer sus cosas, a tener sus expresiones y manifestaciones de todo tipo, y todo está muy bien, siempre y cuando quede claro que la cultura ilustrada tiene más valor y es más verdadera, auténtica, profunda, significativa, que la cultura popular. La cultura popular no sabe apreciar la cultura ilustrada; la cultura ilustrada no aprecia la cultura popular porque no encuentra en ella nada que apreciar. Por el contrario, a partir de la idea de las industrias culturales que introducen Adorno y Horkheimer con su Dialéctica de la Ilustración, las industrias culturales y la cultura popular que producen, serialmente y en masa, son vistos simplemente como mecanismos de engaños de masas: recursos que utilizan gobiernos totalitarios, o clases dominantes, para mantener a las clases dominadas bajo control y, de cierto modo, sonámbulas ante lo que efectivamente está pasando. Son, en cambio, los intelectuales que saben apreciar la cultura ilustrada (aquella que no es industrial, que no es comercial, que se produce con un propósito artístico o ilustrado – aquella que tiene, como diría Benjamin, “aura”) los que pueden ver más allá del engaño de la cultura popular y no verse sometidos por sus mecanismos de dominación.

La mayor parte de expresiones culturales de nuestro siglo quedan excluidas de la cultura ilustrada – la radio, la televisión, el cine (al menos en su gran mayoría), por supuesto que todo lo que vino con Internet, y sí, también los comics. Todas estas expresiones vistas como un derivado más de la lógica del mercado, no tienen, por ello, nada más que ofrecer pues no son formuladas con el propósito de ser analizadas, sino consumidas lineal, ciegamente. El individuo que consume este universo simbólico, se dice, no se detiene a considerar lo que hace, sino que es cómplice sin saberlo de su propio sonambulismo.

Analogicemos esto de nuevo con la lógica Watchmeniana: esto es el equivalente a decir que los superhéroes están legitimados por sus propios superpoderes, y que responden a un mandato superior, de algún tipo, de protegernos. Están del lado del bien, y somos afortunados de tenerlos con nosotros porque nos protegen de las fuerzas del mal – Lex Luthor, la Unión Soviética, psicópatas como el Joker, etc. De la misma manera, tenemos guardianes de la cultura que se encargan de proteger por nosotros lo ilustrado, aquello que vale la pena, haciendo uso de sus superpoderes culturales.

Pero un momento… cuando descubrimos que, en verdad, no hay nada especial que haga de los superhéroes propiamente superhéroes, y que sus superpoderes son producto de una contingencia histórica, y que, además, son caracteres que exhiben tantas fallas, complejidades e imperfecciones como nosotros mismos… Descubrimos también que ellos no están, entonces, tan legitimados como creíamos que lo estaban para proteger lo ilustrado, al mismo tiempo que nosotros, si se nos viene en gana, estamos tan legitimados como queramos estarlo para expresarnos, para formular ideas, para proponer modelos, para experimentar con ellos. En ese momento deja de ser tan obvia la separación entre cultura popular y cultura ilustrada.

En ese momento empieza a tener sentido el desprender toda una narrativa cultural a partir de un comic.

Y hay, además, algo singular respecto al comic. El comic no es cualquier formato, y sería erróneo negarle una especificidad. Porque el comic ofrece una relación muy especial con el lector, que Watchmen sabe explotar de manera muy especial. Son dos características saltantes que lo hacen especialmente interesante: la relación que establece con el espacio, y la relación que establece con el tiempo – ambas las cuales están, por supuesto, íntimamente ligadas.

Por su disposición visual, el comic nos obliga a relacionarnos con la manera espacial como está distribuida una narrativa. Aunque no hay necesariamente indicadores claros respecto a cómo debe seguirse la lectura de los paneles en una página, aprendemos rápidamente a discernir los diferentes caminos que existen para reconstruir mentalmente la historia que se nos intenta contar. Aquí el elemento clave es, en realidad, el espacio que existe entre los paneles. Cada panel nos da un segmento parcial de información, que es continuada por el siguiente. Sin embargo, en ese espacio blanco que existe entre panel y panel, no hay nada, o mejor dicho, hay un espacio vacío que es rellenado por la imaginación del lector. Es, a pesar de su alto contenido visual, lo que Marshall McLuhan llamaría un “medio frío”: un medio que tiene los suficientes vacíos como para involucrar al usuario a llenarlos con su propia información. Medios que invitan, inevitablemente, a una mayor participación e involucramiento. La narrativa que se teje entre los paneles de un comic se presta singularmente a la co-creación por parte del lector, precisamente porque está repleta de estos espacios vacíos que rellenamos automáticamente conforme avanza nuestra lectura.

Lo que rellenamos no son solamente esas transiciones, esos espacios entre los paneles, sino que estamos permanentemente introduciendo, también, la variable temporal de lo que ocurre entre los paneles, y dentro de los paneles mismos. Entre un panel y otro puede pasar un segundo, un minuto, una hora, o diez mil años, y en el transcurso de un mismo panel podemos presenciar el desenvolvimiento de una acción que se despliega sobre la línea del tiempo, pero que es representada a través de un único cuadro estático. Eso es suficiente para que nosotros completemos lo demás. El comic es un medio de indicios, de pistas, de sugerencias, que nos aporta una serie de piezas de un rompecabezas que, sin embargo, corresponde a nosotros reconstruir de una manera que tenga sentido: la goma que utilizamos para pegar las piezas no es otra que la de nuestra propia imaginación.

Por todo esto es el comic un medio híbrido por excelencia. Es heredero de la tradición visual del cine, la fotografía y la pintura, encontrado con la tradición literaria de la imprenta, pero no es ni la una ni la otra. Es al mismo tiempo la hibridación entre una tradición conceptual occidental que se ha visto fuertemente influencia por una tradición conceptual oriental que se fusiona a través del manga y del anime. Y es, al mismo tiempo, un producto cultural de la era industrial, un objeto realizado para su consumo masivo, para su intercambio comercial. Scott McCloud quizás explora mejor que nadie la singularidad del medio del comic, en uno de los intentos más conocidos por formularla como medio artístico, en su libro Understanding Comics.

El comic es, además, una forma expresiva/artística que ha estado principalmente asociada con el universo de la cultura popular, la mayor parte de su historia. Es ampliamente considerado, sin embargo, que Watchmen fue, si no la principal, una de las más importantes obras que ayudaron a establecer la idea de que el medio del comic se prestaba para mucho más. Watchmen introdujo, si quieren, la idea de que un comic podía explorar, sin salir del ámbito y el formato del medio, temas más complejos y demandantes hacia los lectores. Eliminó la noción de que el comic era un medio destinado únicamente al entretenimiento, sino que mostró como a partir del entretenimiento mismo se podía llevar a los lectores en un recorrido de exploración de temáticas que escapaban a lo que la historia misma contaba. El camino que he intentado que recorramos juntos aquí busca ser un ejemplo de eso: de que Watchmen puede ser tomado como el punto de partida de la construcción de una historia más amplia en la cual nos involucramos como lectores, haciendo un tipo de lectura distinta, donde somos cómplices en la reconstrucción. Es ampliamente considerado que Watchmen marcó el paso a la madurez del comic, no porque empezara a tocar temas serios, sino porque mostró que podían abordarse temas serios y complejos desde la realidad misma del comic, sin pretender escapar a lo “popular” para volverse algún tipo de medio ilustrado. El paso a la madurez está, además, simbólicamente demarcado por la superación de la noción ingenua, lineal del superhéroe para introducirnos de lleno en un universo de personajes psicológica y moralmente complejos. Lejos de ser historias donde el bien y el mal están claramente delimitados, las historias que se empezaron a contar en esa época (y no es coincidencia que haya sido precisamente esa época) empezaron a reflejar una serie de tonalidades de gris y matices de color que, en gran medida, el público consumidor también reclamaba.

La cultura popular ha crecido enormemente en complejidad conceptual, así como en complejidad moral. La complejidad conceptual es algo que explora Steven Johnson en su libro Everything Bad Is Good For You: los videojuegos desarrollan finos mecanismos de ensayo y error y elaboración de estrategias sobre la marcha, mientras que la televisión actual, liberada de la programación lineal (primero por los VHSs, luego por los DVDs y ahora por YouTube) permitió a los televidentes manejar grados más altos de complejidad donde antes las historias eran sumamente unidimensionales. La carga mental que significa hoy, por ejemplo hacerle seguimiento a todos los cabos sueltos, personajes, e historias entrecruzadas de una serie televisiva como Lost sólo es posible porque podemos hoy día ver los episodios todas las veces que queramos, y luego discutir teorías y posibilidades con otros usuarios en línea.

Al mismo tiempo, la complejidad moral se incrementa porque la simplicidad moral que la cultura popular de antaño ofrecía terminó por desgastarse y chocarse con una realidad que se volvió ella misma más compleja. La reivindicación de la cultura popular por parte de diversos campos de estudio hizo también posible que empezaran a desentrañarse complejidades que no habían sido previamente encontradas. En todo este proceso, la distinción tradicional, adorno-horkheimeriana, entre cultura de masas y cultura ilustrada dejó de resultar tan explicativa como alguna vez lo había sido. Lo ilustrado se vulgarizó a medida que sus temas empezaron a incorporarse de una u otra manera en productos construidos para su consumo masivo; y lo popular se “ilustró” a medida que sus productos empezaron a volverse objeto de estudio y de reflexión por parte de la cultura ilustrada. El resultado de todo esto es que deja de tener tanto sentido insistir en que ambos campos están claramente delimitados, o que deberían estarlo. Empiezan a aparecer espacios híbridos de intercambio, donde, de nuevo, ya no son unos cuantos superhéroes los legitimados para tomar la batuta y establecer las distinciones entre lo que es y lo que no es, sino que empezamos a regalar las licencias para tener superpoderes culturales, y luego empezamos a filtrar sobre la marcha los resultados que resultan más interesantes de los que no.

Todo esto, sin embargo, partió de Watchmen. Creo que Watchmen nos permite contar una historia sumamente interesante de la manera como hemos venido a interpretar nuestra propia cultura en los últimos 30 años. No es que la historia de fondo sea fundamentalmente nuevo; pero sí que está magistralmente ejecutado, y que su ejecución magistral llegó en el momento justo para llenar una demanda cultural latente: la de complejizar aquello que podía decirse desde los medios identificados como de la “cultura popular”, y difuminar un poco las distinciones entre culturas cuyas relaciones han sido mayormente asimétricas. No es que esto sea sencillo, sino que es sumamente traumático. Para aquello que mantenemos vínculos con el mundo académico, tanto más aún: ¿esto quiere decir que no especialistas se pronunciarán sobre temas especializados? Sí, quiere decir eso, y quiere decir también que no te pedirán permiso, y que no se detendrán aunque te moleste. Es inverosímil pensar que podemos retornar a una idea de superhéroe del pensamiento, o superhéroe conceptual, que sea analóga a la idea de un superhéroe como el Superman de los años cincuentas. Pero más aún, hay una enorme oportunidad perdida si es que pensamos, además, que eso sería deseable.

La filosofía misma se ve amenazada por esto. No con que vaya a desaparecer, que finalmente no creo que suceda. Tampoco con que se vuelva irrelevante. Pero sí con el hecho de estar sistemáticamente excluyendo de su discurso y de su reflexión todo un universo de objetos, personas e ideas interesantes que pueden aportar mucho a sus conversaciones. La filosofía es muy buena para exportar conceptos que luego otras disciplinas, otros estudios, llevan por caminos sumamente sugerentes y creativos; pero es, en cambio, muy mala para realizar luego la importación, el circuito de feedback que le permita retroalimentarse y explorar ella misma nuevas posibilidades.

Cuando dejamos de pensar en los filósofos como superhéroes del pensamiento, dotados de algún tipo particular de superpoder, entonces empezamos a reconocer en la vida cotidiana, en las expresiones de los demás, en el mundo en general, todo un nuevo conjunto de problemas sobre los cuales podemos pensar “filosóficamente”. Pero si no lo hacemos, la dirección que toma la cultura simplemente será una diferente a la que los superhéroes del pensamiento tengan, y el rol que puedan jugar en ese camino no podrá ser sino uno menor. Tales de Mileto decía que “todo está lleno de dioses”, y el argumento que he querido formular aquí, a partir de Watchmen, es más o menos el mismo, pero cambiando lo que tiene que ser cambiado: todo es susceptible de ser pensado filosóficamente. Lo interesante radicará, justamente, en lo interesantes que sean los resultados que encontramos en el camino, como formas de expresión artística, como redefiniciones de problemas, o incluso como modelos para reorganizar la sociedad de una manera más “justa” – digamos, mejor, de una manera más feliz .

I read most of the first chapter of Steven Johnson’s book entitled Interface Culture:  How New Technology Transforms The Way We Create & Communicate.  The basic idea so far is that today’s idea of an “interface” in the minds of most people would automatically trigger a mental visualization of icons & colors, etc.  Whereas this is correct, it’s because of the GUI’s popularity today, and rather an idea of a more specific aspect of interface, that being ‘user-friendliness’.  The interface in it’s most elemental definition is basically a medium for a machine or tool & its user to successfully communicate with one another.

Johnson points out that many discussions focus on how interfaces help us work by adapting our ways of thinking and our real-world metaphors, but tells us that on the contrary, we should look at how our thinking and world view are altered  by our computer interfaces.

The way we choose to organize our world dictates our own place within it—in Gothic times the cathedral, for example, stood at the center of town, inherently helping us perceive what was important, where we stood in relation to it, and how we should and could interact with the rest of the space surrounding it.

The first generation of interface designers had to decide, then, how to organize the computer space. They had, essentially, an entire world at their fingertips, which they could mold and design and organize in any way possible—the space could look like anything. It was important, however, especially given he limitations of technology of the time, that the space was easy to represent.

In this week’s reading of Interface Culture, Johnson takes us through the creation and evolution of the desktop from its early stages to the interface we know today. Throughout his discussion in this chapter, he emphasizes consistently the idea of the “desktop metaphor.” Similar to the metaphor we discussed last class, it encompasses the way in which reality is represented and even simulated on the desktop interface and how those representations help us to understand the way we use and navigate it.

The desktop metaphor was born in 1972, at a Xerox research center in Palo Alto (PARC). Working off of Engelbart’s ideas about mice, bitmapping, and windows, a researcher named Alan Kay stumbled upon the first implementation of such a metaphor in his hesitation over Engelbart’s windows. He said that the windows were difficult to use because they lay side by side and the screen could get crowded easily. Kay suggested that they “regard the screen as a desk, and each project, or piece of a project, as paper on the desk” (Johnson, 47). He decided that the windows should overlap, just as pieces of paper in real life would. A fitting analogy for a paper company, no? Windows gave the computer space while Kay’s overlapping of them gave the computer depth. And so, the original desktop (metaphor) was born.

The original metaphor was weak, but as the Xerox PARC team continued to develop the interface, they began to tighten it up. They realized that if the computer could look like anything, and since the computer was on its way to replacing the world of filing cabinets and stacks of paper, it may as well imitate that world. This expansion of the metaphor to digital files, folders and trash cans ensured that a user’s navigation of the computer was made that much easier, and that much more familiar.

Why a “desktop” though? If the space could look like anything, why didn’t it look like a park, or a house? I mean, there was already the window metaphor, so why not hallways and doors? The desktop most likely seemed like the most obvious and relatable way to represent the interface because it reflected what the computer was used for. In the 70’s the computer was mostly just being used in place of paper, and a desktop simply reflected that. As we will soon see, something like a “house metaphor” doesn’t really work as well.

Xerox PARC completed the interface and packaged it as Smalltalk, an experimental operating system. Xerox never did anything with it, but a few years later a man named Steve Jobs got his hands on it and created the first successfully marketable personal computer in 1984, the Macintosh—“the computer for the rest of us.” The computer, with the use of the Smalltalk technology, became a medium. It was no longer a flat vehicle. Now, it was creative and had character, complete with folders, trashcans, and icons. The creation of the Macintosh was the first time that a computer interface was genuinely user friendly, and was a revolutionary shift from a concentration on hardware to a fascination with the software. Here is Apple’s one-time Superbowl ad that illustrates this countercultural tone.

And another to show how the Macintosh desktop was marketed thereafter.

Bill Gate’s Windows system, slightly different in design but still using the same original metaphor, outdid Apple and became the more dominant in the marketplace for whatever reason.  The triumph of Microsoft Windows confirmed the effectiveness of the desktop and its ability to translate well to the average user.  Still, many were initially critical of the new interface, writing it off as an unnecessary toy.  It was deemed too silly a design for a serious corporate environment, which was happy with simple drop down menus rather than icons. 

Johnson goes on to talk about the importance of subtlety when implementing the metaphor.  He describes an interface called Bob, released by Microsoft in 1997, which took the use of metaphor too literally, thus simulating a 3D living environment modeled after a living room.  The interface wasn’t just a representation of real life objects but a complete simulation of them.  A calendar hung on the wall, a mailbox with envelopes sat on the coffee table, and to enter the interface you had to knock on the door.  Needless to say the system was a failure, despite its intent to make the user interface more relatable and user-friendly.

Johnson claims that Microsoft Bob wound up preventing novice users from exploring beyond the simple interface.  Users would rely on the comfortable look and feel of a home and never really explore the computer’s capabilities and move beyond the novice level of computer use.  It might push the user further from the technology.  The desktop metaphor works because it is simply that: a metaphor.  Here is a tour of the Bob interface.

Johnson’s insights only take us as far as 1997, the year in which Interface Culture was written, but here is another, more recent graphic interface, BumpTop, that turns the desktop metaphor into something of a desktop simulation.  Does Anand Agarawala take the metaphor too literally?

Johnson sums up by wondering what the future of interfaces might hold in a world of public life on the Internet.  Well, we know just what does happen with the introduction of online interfaces like MySpace and Facebook and even WordPress.  This notion of “interface culture” is a real one, now even more than in Johnson’s time.

The next reading, which I will discuss briefly, is Lev Manovich’s discussion of “teleaction.” Teleaction literally means “acting at a distance.”  When we talk about telaction, we are talking about our ability to be telepresent (present at a distance) and at the same time use controls to manipulate and affect the environment in which we are telepresent. 

We can be telepresent through the use of a webcam.  We can see, in real time, a very important concept here, what is happening in another remote location anywhere in the world, or essentially the universe.  We are not actually present in these remote locations, but it is as though we are.  Teleaction, then, is enabled through certain image-instruments that allow us to act in that distant location, such as a switchboard operator controlling a vehicle under water to explore the bottom of the ocean (the opening scene of Titanic) or pushing a button in a small room to shoot a missile from one remote location and aim it at another.  To teleact is to manipulate reality through representations.

These ideas of telepresence and teleaction are not restricted to the real world, however.  We can be telepresent in a computer generated world as well, a world commonly known as virtual reality.  I would like to regard a desktop as a virtual reality, especially as its interface becomes more and more three–dimensional and interactive.  As I said in the very beginning of this post, interface designers had an entire world to create from scratch, which is essentially what they did in the simplest way.  By using the desktop, it is like we are telepresent in this digital workspace.  The desktop interface is a representation—we are not actually inside of this virtual computer world.  Yet by using other interfaces such as the mouse we are able to control and manipulate it.  We are essentially teleacting.  

And thus concludes our discussion of interface culture.

For your amusement.

Don’t you love titles with semicolons?  This one’s full name is The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World.  In a lot of ways, it’s like And the Band Played On – a medical mystery!  The book follows a cholera epidemic in London in 1854 (the year Oscar Wilde was born!), how it began and how it spread, and how a scientist and a vicar tracked it down and discovered how it was transmitted.

What had happened was that a baby girl got cholera, and her mother dumped her diapers in a place that contaminated the water supply of a water pump on Broad Street.  The pump was known to have unusually good water, and there were people several neighborhoods away who would send their children for water from the Broad Street pump.  V. unfortunate for them, this turned out to be, as they then all got cholera.  And died.

Scientist John Snow was a pioneer in the field of anesthesiology.  He tested doses of ether on himself repeatedly, explored the effects of ether in cold and warm environments, and assisted in the childbirth of Queen Victoria’s eighth child (with chloroform!).  He formed a theory that cholera was being transmitted through contaminated water supplies, and investigated it relentlessly, with the (eventual) assistance of Broad Street vicar Henry Whitehead.

While the cholera epidemic was still raging, this book had a lot of momentum, and I couldn’t stop reading.  This is what makes And the Band Played On compelling, that as the various doctors (the French guys and the NIH and the CDC) tried to work out what was causing the disease, it was killing people straight along.  John Snow figured it out, and got the (unconvinced) parish Board of Governors to take the handle off the Broad Street pump, and the epidemic was pretty much over.  This happened a little over halfway through the book, and after that it was less enthralling.

Another issue I had was that the author shifted focus at the end of the book, and went on about how the lessons learned from cholera are applicable to our issues today, with global warming and nuclear weaponry and urbanization.  This felt all deraily, and contributed to the general loss of momentum in the latter half of the book.  It was interesting, the future of our nation and so forth, but it wasn’t the same book.  Strange.

But mostly I enjoyed it a lot.  Thanks to Tara for the recommendation!  Other reviews: Rhapsody in Books, A Book a Week, Books and So Many More Books, She Treads Softly, What Kate’s Reading, Loud Latin Laughing, The YA YA YAs.  Let me know if I missed yours!

On December 9^th, 1968 Douglas Engelbart gave a 90 minute live public demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference at the Convention center in San Francisco. There they showed off many innovations including the public debut of the computer mouse. However the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface. This demonstration later became known as the “The Mother of All of Demos” because many of the innovations have become commonplace even today such as the mouse.

Doug Engelbart and his 17 researchers in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA were working on what they showed since 1962. Engelbart began the presentation by mentioning how valuable it would be if a workstation at your disposal all day that was perfectly…responsive” meaning he’s trying to find out how computers can make humans smarter. Now we know the value of what Engelbart said because everyone assumes you know how to at least work a computer mouse. The goal of the demo was to show what they were working on can do rather than explain it. Engelbart does word processing with a “blank piece of paper” and types in words, shows cut, copy, and paste. Also he shows how the many different levels and views a file can be given. While doing this a mouse is being used in the same manner we use the mouse today. These elements are extremely commonplace today.

“The Mother of All Demos” gave public the first glimpse of what Steven Johnson calls information-space. Information-space is the set of concepts and relations among them held by an information system. Also the demo gave Doug Engelbart the reputation of being the father of the modern interface. Steven Johnson says interface in its simplest terms “refers to software that shapes the interaction between user and computer (14). The relationship between the two is a semantic one. The interface is like a translator between the two entities making one easier to understand for the other. This is only capable in the digital revolution and for the “magic digital revolution to take place a computer must represent itself to the user; in a language that the user understands” (14) and I think Doug Engelbart was able to accomplish this.

This representation the computer does to the user takes its form metaphorically. The string of zeros and ones that most people cannot understand are replaced by a metaphor of a virtual folder on a virtual desktop. These metaphors are “the core idiom of the contemporary graphic interface” (15). The importance of interface design revolves around the paradox that “we live in a society that is increasingly shaped by events in cyberspace, and yet cyberspace remains, for all practical purposes, invisible outside our perceptual grasp” (19). I think Doug Engelbart was able to help people grasp cyberspace by what he showed at “The Mother of All Demos”.

Stream of Engelbart’s demo http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8734787622017763097&q=engelbart#

To summarize it in one word, the October 1 Rally Agile Success Tour (AST) event in Seattle, WA was deep. Broad spectrum of topics – from CMMI  and SOX to Lean and “Lean+”; very knowledgeable participants; insightful panelists; plenty of hard Agile data; questions on real needs; dialogues that led to unexpected findings; and, 1-1 meetings focused on actions that could/should be taken after the event. Just like the recent AST event in Boston, MA, there was vibrancy in the air.

Getty’s Jeff Oberlander quantified the progress they made on fairly large scale releases (~900 user stories), shortening time-to-market (TTM) from 24 month to 4 months. He indicated this impressive change in time-to-market occurred in parallel with improvement in quality. Reader of this post might want to take a look at Chapter 1 of Agile Project Management by Jim Highsmith for a quantitative analysis of the correlation between the two (TTM and quality).

The impressive results reported by Jeff were supported by the classification given by Liberty Mutual’s Steven Johnson. Steven observes three kinds of projects, as follows:

• Grass roots initiatives. Such projects typically lead to: {New TTM = 2/3 Old TTM}.
• Organized pilots. Such projects typically lead to: {New TTM = 1/2 Old TTM}.
• Overall R&D transformation. Such projects typically lead to: {New TTM = 1/3 Old TTM}.

From what I know of David Rico’s forthcoming book The Business Value of Agile Software Methods, the results reported by Steven are consistent with David’s findings.

Boeing’s Ryan Kleps focused on the impact of Agile methods on developer satisfaction. He presented the following data from a survey conducted in Boeing:

• 30% improvement in satisfaction with respect to tools
• 25% improvement in satisfaction with respect to involvement
• 10% improvement in satisfaction with respect to trust

Interestingly, Ryan indicated that various “pirates” were starting to do Agile at Boeing as a result of the higher level of satisfaction noted above. We did not have the opportunity to cross-correlate data from Boeing with data from Liberty Mutual. My intuitive sense is that Ryan’s “pirates” and Jeff’s “grass roots initiatives” are synonymous.

thePlatform’s Reena Kawal and Microsoft’s Stein Dolan provided insights that are not often reported. Reena analyzed the much improved ability to assess trade-offs from a customer perspective. Stein highlighted how effective emulation can be in enabling teams to deal with code that has not been written yet. Their thoughts were vividly complemented by the 4X100 relay race metaphor given by Ryan: only 1 sprinter “works” at any point in time, while 3 are “idle”. Yet, there is no faster way to get the baton to the finish line…

One part of the event that was particularly gratifying to me was the role playing during the breakout session entitled “Socializing Agile with Your Executives.” Stein and I played the role of mean executives who do not get Agile. Participants in the session who played the role of the inspired Agile champion beat us up pretty effectively. As a matter of fact, one of the participants – CyberSource’s Tom Perry – gave the report from this breakout session to the whole audience when we reconvened. He delivered a very effective “why you should do Agile in spite of all your misgivings” message.

As indicated in a recent post, the AST “train” stops in Chicago, IL on the 15 of October. We are quite likely to address specialized topics that have not been brought up in previous events. The makeup of the panel in Chicago is unlike any of the nine panels I have prepped so far…

The function of hypertext

We’ve been talking in class about the progression of media and how society has taken technologies from the past and, not only, built upon them but applied them to needs of today.  Steven Johnson’s discussion of hypertext does exactly this.  What is the function of hypertext?  Johnson connects the ideas about a machine conceived by an engineer, Vannevar Bush, in 1945 to links on the Web.  He argues that links have become a form of punctuation but have the potential to completely transform storytelling, or, more generally, how people relate to information.

In “As We May Think”, Bush observed that society had reached a point where it was incapable of handling the knowledge now accessible due to technological advancements.  He argues that information is useless until aids are developed that can provide quick access to and facilitate the processing of pertinent information—a direct path to knowledge (sect. 8).  He goes through current technologies and theorizes how each can be advanced.  Since compression technology allows the storage of data, the next step is a selection device.  Advancement is useless if it can’t be consulted for “man only profits by acquiring knowledge (sect. 5)”.  Selection devices help with narrowing down information but fail to aid the processing of data.  His ultimate answer is the Memex, a machine comparable to the internet.  The Memex is a desk with two levers (for going forward and backward), a screen, and a storage space able to hold any amount of information necessary.  It consists of a code book in order to recall information faster and the ability to allow the user to create trails and take notes on the information he is sorting.  The idea is that the user will be able to search for any information on a topic and link his findings by associations instead of using an indexing system which is inefficient.  The efficiency comes from the fact that it is not simply mimicking how the human mind works, allowing finding to hold more meaning, but improves the process by making it faster and permanent.  He projects that once a device like this exists, society will change:  “new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them (sect. 8)”.

Multiple connections that can be drawn from the Memex to the internet: Bush’s code book is similar to today’s tagging feature and, the part Johnson focuses on; his trails are advanced versions of links.  Hypertext allows links of association to be formed; they can forge semantic relationships for they bind together ideas in digital prose and should be seen as a tool to bring multifarious elements together (111).  Links are inferior to trails for they do not allow the reader to create associations, and they lack permanency.  He also compares links to Charles Dickens’ “links of association” between characters which allows for the narrative to reach a conclusion.  He calls them “high-tech descendents” for they both have a stitching effect (116).  WEB 2.0 allows users more creativity than in 1997; however, it still lacks the personalization of the link back feature for readers.  The ability to embed media content allows for various types of media to be linked but a reader still cannot create their own trail, they would need additional program (to be the author of a blog, etc.) to be able to create an permanent association (though even then permanency can be contested as links die).

Even though links are most commonly used in a supplemental manner, separate from the text (as shown by recommended reading links), Johnson uses Suck’s website to show how links can progress; they take on a role of punctuation.  SUCK’S LINKS are a way to withhold information; it forces readers to be interactive in order to fully understand the column—they add another dimension to the text.  Though this is progress, Johnson’s argument is that links could be useful on the macro level of storyspace.  HYPERTEXT LITERATURE attempts this.  They are meant to allow readers control their own experiences instead of the authors (even though it had its failures).  It has yet to be actualized and Bush is still ahead of the times but progress is slowly being made.

When one considers the effect that modern technology has had upon scientific and social progression, it is nearly impossible to imagine our culture in the days of non-existent or even old technology.  As the flow of knowledge becomes greater and greater each day, the expectations of technology grow exponentially as well.  Everyday, a new technology, scientific breakthrough, artistic creation or even something as minor as a new interest posted on my Facebook page all become part of the information highway.  The Internet has allowed this constant knowledge flow to be recorded and stored in the World Wide Web, however, it is fundamentally incorrect to assume that the abilities of new media have completely surpassed and replaced old media.  Important minds in the scientific and technological fields have examined the ways in which some new media (i.e., the Internet) have appropriated and integrated old media models.  This paper will examine the works of Steven Johnson and Dr. Vannevar Bush, and the ways in which both men understand new media and the evolutionary processes that occur from old to new media.

Scientific author, Steven Johnson, posits in his book Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate that the Internet, for example, has incorporated more old technology characteristics than many would assume.  One of the first things that he focuses upon is the idea of links and hypertext.  It is literally written in code that the one page is associated with the other, thus a link was created (through hypertext) to get the user to his destination in a much more efficient manner, much in the same way that Dr. Vannevar Bush describes the mental associative processes of the brain (to be discussed in more detail below).  Steven Johnson believes that the ‘link’ has created a language in and of itself.  Links have transformed the simple written language into a more complex and technologically infused means of communication, and have also enabled an organization of the mass of information that is found on the Internet.  Through hypertext, this technology of association has evolved the early ways of navigating the Web into a more concise, meaningful process.  Johnson writes, “As the word suggests, a link is a way of drawing connections between things, a way of forging semantic relationships.  In the terminology of linguistics, the link plays a conjunctive role” (111).  In other words, hypertext has created new ways to read and write, giving multi-level meaning to data.  If one is reading an article about Dr. Vannevar Bush, for example, he/she can click on the word for his invention, the memex, and be immediately connected to an entire site dedicated to the object.  You no longer have to be fluent in computer technology to navigate through the Web.   An article is no longer limited to a two-dimensional piece of paper, hypertext provides a multifaceted way of displaying ideas.  Although these provide specific examples from Johnson’s argument, they highlight the ways in which new media have integrated the old and how these new systems appropriate old ways of thinking and recontextualize them to fit into the language of modern technology.  Newspapers, books, magazines each represent old media models, however, the new technology of the Internet and the advent of the hypertext have evolved that old technology.

Dr. Vannevar Bush, a twentieth century engineer and scientific figure, also comments on the ways in which new media have integrated old media and technology in his article, “As We May Think.”  He also considers the importance of links—albeit different from the form which Steven Johnson discusses—in the organization of information and in sorting data in meaningful ways.  Bush posits that there is a constant influx of new information being introduced into our world every second, but technology’s ability to recall and retrieve the information in a useful and concise manner is not as efficient as it should or could be.  Bush wrote his article in the early twentieth century, a time when computing devices were in their most basic of stages compared to what they have become today, but also a time when he was able to truly foresee the potential that automated technology held.  Bush writes that during his lifetime, “The machines for higher analysis have usually been equation solvers,” however, their inability to sort and recall information in a logical manner limits their maximum efficacy, which in turn, is detrimental for scientific and mental progress.  Bush believed that the perpetual flow of information exceeded technology’s ability to recall it in a sensible way, an enormous deficiency of the media.  He writes, “So much for the manipulation of ideas and their insertion into the record.  Thus far we seem to be worse off than before—for we can enormously extent the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it” (8).  Bush believed that the fundamental problem was technology’s customary ways of indexing information.  He saw the major flaw being the lack of a machine’s ability to ‘associate’ from one idea to another in the speedy, flexible way that the human mind is able to.  This form of logic thus posits the computer to actually be detrimental in a sense to man’s already rather adept mental capabilities, however, Bush does argue that where the computer lacks in adequate logical reasoning like the human mind, the mind is unable to recall data with the same exactitude that computers are capable of.^[1] Thus, he presents his invention of the memex, an automatic, mechanized device that has the ability to store and retrieve information through selection and association through a practical and constructive approach.  He refers to the ability to retrieve information through association as “associative indexing” (10), a process of correlating two ideas together (much in the same way that Johnson discusses the abilities of hypertext).  Links of association, or ‘trails’ in his language, created a way in which information could be sorted in a logical manner when chronological sorting was no possible (i.e., the information was such that chronological or alphabetical sequencing would not make sense).  Bush saw the use of trails as a way in which to link seemingly abstract, or ‘transient,’ ideas together in a sensible way.   Associative indexing would literally enable the machine to interpret data and connect information in a meaningful way for the user.  In the same ways that Steven Johnson understood the importance of hypertext and links, Dr. Bush believed that the memex would enable the user to more easily retrieve information in a more efficient manner and it would provide a way to maximize man’s scientific discoveries by providing an environment in which to store pertinent information.  It would combine the reliability of a computerized memory with the human mental process of association (although Bush did understand that the speed and flexibility of the human mind could not be mimicked exactly in computer form).  If science were to undertake the memex and create an economic and labor-friendly way to produce it, Bush believed that “science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race” (11).

Ultimately, Steven Johnson and Dr. Vannevar Bush understood new media to be a continuation and evolution of past media models.  Both figures believe the most efficient way to store and retrieve data in a useful way is through a computer’s ability to associate and ‘link’ ideas together, much in the same way a human brain is capable of.  Giving a computer the ability to link through association provides a way for the machine to literally interpret information being inputted into it, thus, providing a very useful service for the user to relate pertinent pieces of information together.  Although the two men existed in different technological contexts, they each understood similar ideas of a computer’s capability and the method of association and the evolutionary processes that occur from old to new media.

I don’t know about you, but books like this are crack cocaine to me. I do so much B- and C-level reading throughout the year in blogs, magazines, and newspapers, it’s great to have someone like Steven Johnson cultivate the A-level material. Rereading Dana Goodyear’s “I ♥ Novels” article was a revelation, the margins dripping with my notes. Or Clay Shirky’s blog post on cognitive surplus, another top-notch piece. There’s even an Onion article, “Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book.”

I guess for my niche reading habits, this book felt very essential. If you read this book, or have read this book, let’s talk. This thing is chockablock with ideas that are best debated and built upon in conversation.

Buy the book on Indiebound

: : : : : : : :

{This is the conclusion to a series on writing and learning. Previous posts in this series are listed at the end of this post.}

Habitat for Humanity

When people are trying to learn about writing or origami design, what they really want to know is, “How did you do that?” Many “experts,” however, don’t know how they did that. As I’ve found out from writers and as Lang says about origami, many things worth learning can be learned but cannot be taught—at least not with traditional, fold-it-like-this methods. Given what we now know about intelligence and how we learn, maybe it’s time to take another look at what it means to acquire and nurture ability. Whatever we think intelligence is and however we think ability is achieved or performance is improved will determine how we teach and what we learn and how we treat each other. As Johnson says in Mind, “The more we understand our nature, the better we will be at nurturing.” The more we learn about learning, the more inclusive we can be.

Groups are Darwin Machines. They take on a life of their own and evolve in their own largely unanticipated positive or negative directions. Under certain conditions, some of these Darwin Machines can become Learning Machines, developing adaptations that cause them to thrive under a variety of circumstances. Others may become too entrenched in old habits and consequently remain unable to innovate in the face of changing conditions. When you design a course, or run an office, or chair a meeting, or start a family, or devise a foreign policy, you are creating a Darwin Machine whether you know it or not. Which adaptations are advantageous? Which ones may become dead ends? What role do incentives play? Which environments allow which adaptations to thrive?

Pushing Buttons

In an interview, Susan McCarthy offers a key metaphor for what I want both as a writer and as teacher. Discussing the difficulties of teaching orphaned animals the skills they need to survive in the wild, she says,

In all these cases where we’re trying to teach things to animals, it turns out we’re actually not very good at teaching things to animals. We make a lot of mistakes. We’re always trying to drill them and give them lessons and lectures, and show them educational films. It works terribly.

One simple example that really impresses me is with baby zebra finches who have been raised in isolation by humans who tried to teach them zebra finch song by playing them tapes. And they didn’t learn. Who likes to listen to educational tapes? They found if they let the baby finches press the buttons on the tape recorder themselves it made all the difference. They would play the songs. They would flutter up and down in front of the loudspeaker like somebody dancing in front of the amp at a rock concert, and they would learn, because they had some control.

It causes me to wonder if we’re not really bad at teaching things to people. I think if kids get to push the buttons – it works for animals, and it seems like common sense that it works for people.

Students pushing the buttons is what I want. It sounds to me like Lang’s “playing around.” Button pushing is another way to talk about building necessary pathways for learning. As Johnson discovered with software design, the key with the finches was setting up an environment and then relinquishing control.

The writing process is a Darwin/Learning Machine. It includes evolution within its own structure. The button-pushing activities of writing—reading the world, sharing, emulating, reading the word, re-reading the world, taking risks, and so on—are their own instruction manual, writing’s DNA. How do you learn purse seining? By getting your hands wet. How do you learn origami design? By playing with paper. We learn these things by doing them with others under favorable conditions with the right incentives, thus creating pathways, “writing” them into our synapses, making them part of our bodies.

Classrooms, too, are Darwin Machines. You don’t take classes or teach them so much as compose them with your students while they in turn compose you. This is what was happening in my long-ago writing workshop. We had an enriched environment with varied abilities and “no pressure, just lovely, interesting discussions,” as Richard Feynman would say. We had plenty of incentives to take risks and play with alternatives. We pushed lots of buttons and developed our own language (“How smart is so-and-so?”), giving ourselves the chance to be smarter than we knew. The class took on a life of its own, “independent of formal rules” as Lang would say, mirroring the writing process, leading us into unforeseen places. Whatever “bumbling folly” we exhibited was recognized by all, starting with our kind professor, as “an early stage of a journey toward grace, competence, and comprehension.” The class activities became our “stories, music, and rituals,” our “concepts we lived by,” and these activities rewrote our writing brains.

How smart were my workshop classmates? Susan McCarthy asks a different question: How were they smart? Without even knowing it, we were calling into question basic assumptions about intelligence and ability, about teaching and learning, about what writing is, about what it means to know something. We were operating on a higher level without being aware we were doing so. How did we do this? By, as Johnson says, valuing more is different, by encouraging random encounters, by keeping it simple so complexity could emerge, by paying attention to neighbors, by looking for patterns, by making changes and seeing the results, and by being generous enough to give everyone a chance to participate and take risks.

This is how we were smart.

Our teacher set the parameters, then let the process take over. He created this world by transplanting us downstream to a place that allowed our spots to flourish, then by rewarding us for stepping down from our false peaks to search for higher ones. Because of him, we were able to reach what Thoreau called “a success unexpected in common hours.”

It was a gift.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Related Posts (in order, oldest at bottom):

No Success Like Failure II

Can a Leopard Change Spots?

Intelligence Can Be Dumb

Stupidity Is Learned

That’s So Random

Mean IQ

There’s No Success Like Failure

You Think You’re so Smart (a preliminary post)

How to Fold a Poem

Writing, Teaching, and Ants (a follow-up post)

Origami Talk (a follow-up post)

It’s a Gift!

No Success Like Failure

Photo by Silvana Gericke, Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

When thinking about learning and how abilities like writing skills are acquired, we can see that if the focus is on the individual, and if “fitness” is measured according to individual achievement, then we “lose sight of group selection as an evolutionary force.” This kind of blindness is not unusual, even among really smart people. Wilson quotes a passage from Darwin who describes a fossil-hunting excursion. Looking back, Darwin says he was blind to the evidence of glaciers that surrounded him, evidence he couldn’t see because he was too busy looking for fossils. In the classroom and in our own writing, too, we often can’t see key evidence because we have only fossils on (and in) our minds. This leads to certain selection pressures, favoring a specific result or product, thus leading to self-fulfilling prophesies and false validations. When certain traits are favored, others are easily overlooked. One of the overlooked qualities may be one of the most important—latent functions, for instance, what happens beneath conscious awareness. The intelligence that already exists or is more easily quantified is favored over other, more intangible intelligences that might develop in a different environment where multilevel group selection is fostered. As a result, mistakes are just mistakes, and innovation and alternative thinking methods are disruptive. (Those guppies get eaten alive.)

Imagine if my professor in that long-ago workshop had focused on individual abilities. The class would have touted a few “stars,” consigning the rest of us to the dust, unable to measure up. We would have been left to marvel at their works and lament the fact that we didn’t have whatever it took to reach their level. We would have learned that we were not really writers and had little to offer those who were. Instead of using “How Smart Is So-and-So” in our class lexicon, the language would have been more along the lines of “Be Like Mike.” But the stars also would have been cheated. They would have been robbed of the chance to learn important lessons from us.

Say What? How could the writing stars learn from the average Joes? A story from The Boston Globe might shed some light. The article points out a weakness in the MCAS test that all Massachusetts public school students must pass in order to earn a diploma. Here is a look at a ‘wrong’ answer that turned out to be right in a way the test makers hadn’t anticipated:

Dinner Party Math

A 10th-grade student took a pattern used in computers and found a completely different way to look at it. After explaining what she saw to MCAS officials, they gave her, and many other students, credit for answering the question correctly. In the following sequence, a filled-in circle means “off,” and an empty circle is “on.” The on or off sequences determine the number values seen at the right.

The test question asked which of the following represents the number 11:

The answer is C. The four switches represent 8, 4, 2, and 1 from left to right. If a switch is on, it is added to the other switches that are turned on. The sum is the number.

ALTERNATE ANSWER:

One student found a pattern of white dots “having dinner together.”

(Boston Globe 12/05/2002. Graphic: Globe Staff / Christopher Melchiondo. The link no longer functions.)

Once the test makers were shown the “intelligence behind the mistake,” they decided the student’s anwer was also correct. Because the test makers ended up giving credit for her newly correct answer, 500 people who thought they had failed MCAS actually passed. The dinner party student proved to have an innovative solution to the problem and proved to have a kind of intelligence that the test could not measure. She had a different frame of reference. The testmakers had no way to tell whether those 500 students arrived at their “wrong” answers similarly or if they were just mistakes or random guesses. The thinking behind the given answer is lost. Like Darwin and his friend who were fossil hunting one day but could not see the ample evidence for glaciers surrounding them, the test makers were blind to alternative solutions to their own test questions. The dinner party student had to teach the test makers how to think her way. Once they “learned” (aha!) they were able to see the question anew.

The dinner party student helped others to pass, but even after being given credit for her answer, she herself did not pass. This is an example of Jonathan Marks’ claim, “A good performance indicates good ability; but a poor performance need not indicate poor ability.” Yet what this student exhibited was a kind of thinking that if not valued in testing does seem as though it would be highly valued in many environments. She came up with a novel approach to the problem. Other students would benefit from having their eyes opened to another perspective. Imagine a classroom where thinking from a non-star such as the dinner party student is also valued. What kind of spots would those guppies have?

What price do we pay culturally for producing uniform spots? Is the student who passes the MCAS really more intelligent or just more versed in standardized tests? How smart are the MCAS students who pass? How smart are the ones who fail? The answer is, we don’t have a clue. We just act as if we do.

Various forms of stupidity and blindness abound even in places we normally don’t think of. Barking dogs, test makers, Darwin, chicken trainers, writing teachers––we’re all vulnerable. Even geniuses. Neurobiologist Robert M. Sapolsky in his book Monkeyluv wanted to know why in math and physics and so many other fields it becomes difficult to be innovative past a certain age. He found his answer in the work of psychologist Dean Keith Simonton. As Sapolsky put it, “It’s not chronological age, but ‘disciplinary’ age” that limits people’s creativity. “Scholars who switch disciplines seem to get their openness rejuvenated.” We get locked into certain ways of thinking and of seeing the world. It seems, then, that those who can help us out of this rut would be highly valued.

One of the essential ingredients in innovative thinking is the ability to “make the familiar strange,” according to W. J. J. Gordon in Synectics. Gordon might say that the dinner party math student’s way of “playing” with the question “upset” its “inner consistency” and made new ideas possible. Test makers think in their test-maker ways, and good test-takers think in their good test-taker ways, and fossil hunters think in their fossil-hunting ways, all with their noses close to the ground. Without other perspectives (like our dinner party student), they risk becoming trapped in their own small world, placing limits not only on themselves, but also on what can be achieved in their field. As C. L. R. James famously asked in Beyond a Boundary: “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” Even experts (especially experts) desperately need to have “their openness rejuvenated.” They need practice in making the familiar strange.

As with thirty-something physicists, there is an additional obstacle to consider when exploring how to learn or write, something Steven Johnson in Emergence calls “false peaks.” For instance, the designers for a number-sorting program noticed a problem—a ceiling developed on progress. The software could learn but only up to a certain point. Johnson explains,

Once the software climbs all the way to the top of the ridge, there is no reward in descending and looking for another, higher peak, because a less successful program—one that drops down a notch on the fitness landscape—would instantly be eliminated from the gene pool.

The problem with the software was that “the penalty for searching out the higher points was too severe.” These were “satisficer” programs, all too happy to find the first needle in the haystack with no incentive to look for sharper needles. (In origami it would be, “Nice crane!”) The idea, then, is to get the high achievers off their false peaks and down into the valleys where they can improvise. (“Make a change; see the result.”) For the number sorting programmer, the solution was to introduce a new element: “Any time the software climbers decided to rest on their laurels, a predator appeared to scatter them off to find the higher elevations.”

Whereas with the guppies predators could, through selection pressures, limit characteristics, with the ridge dwellers, they serve as an incentive to find a higher peak. How do you get the one who folds the most beautiful cranes to take risks? Provide incentives to revisit the valleys to search for routes to higher elevations. Make it a disadvantage to make beautiful cranes and an advantage to create other kinds of figures which, though imperfect, pave the way for new designs. What kind of predator/incentive you want and where depends on the outcomes you value most.

For groups, their “adaptedness,” says Wilson, “must be judged by the behaviors they motivate.” (Are they “ridge dwellers”?) What are the selection pressures and what kinds of spots do they favor? What kinds of “competition” or incentives would lead to new outcomes? Do questions, alternative viewpoints, and observations of others’ work serve this purpose? Would strong incentives to “make a change; see the result” help? How does it change a learning environment when you ask “How smart is miss Dinner Party Math?” What if the rewards are higher for making the familiar strange? Or are you more at home in a room full of people “who only cricket [or physics] know”?

Johnson lists some simple parameters that allow complexity to emerge in software design:

• “More Is Different” shows how having multiple streams of information that otherwise would not be brought together can lead to unforeseen combinations and potential results (à la Darwin and Gordon’s ants).
• “Ignorance Is Useful” is about the importance of starting with “simple elements” (a few basic folds) with which to develop interconnectedness since making matters complicated too soon can get in the way (like with McCarthy’s purse seining apprentice).
• “Encourage Random Encounters” values haphazardness as a source of information gathering and innovation (“in no particular order,” as E. O. Wilson said, like Heinrich’s ravens, or like reading economics and learning biology).
• “Look for Patterns in the Signs” shows how it is from recognizing patterns (the mockingbirds on one island being slightly different from the ones on another) that new knowledge can be born.
• “Pay Attention to Your Neighbors” is how “local information can lead to global wisdom,” (as with foraging or with reading Lyell, Linneaus, et. al).

These principles are similar to the learning activities in the wild (vertical, horizontal, and oblique). They provide the kinds of incentives that value descending from the peak, making a change to see the result, using dinner party math, and making the familiar strange. These, it turns out, are all essential writing skills.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Related Posts (in order, oldest at bottom):

Can a Leopard Change Spots?

Intelligence Can Be Dumb

Stupidity Is Learned

That’s So Random

Mean IQ

There’s No Success Like Failure

Writing, Teaching, and Ants

Origami Talk

It’s a Gift!