Tuesday, March 01, 2005: John Seely Brown and Lucy Suchman
I read Michael J. Streibel's (1989) "Instructional Plans and Situated Learning" today. A bit dated on the instructional technology front, but still full of important points on *stuated learning*. Basically, Lucy Suchman (1987) and John Seely Brown (1988) argue (and Streibel echoes) that we don't act according to what the "cognitivist paradigm" terms a "plan", which Streibel asserts are the cognitive scientist's "essence of human action" (p. 145). (Remember, this article is a 1989 piece; since then the field of situated cognition has sort of taken center stage in Cognitive Science, as seen in the emergence of the Learning Sciences). We may start with a plan, and intend to use it, but in the thick of the situation we act according to our embodied/lived experiences. Afterwards, in retrospect, we may reconstruct our actions and call it a "plan", but it's merely a generalized reconstruction that represent our actions. Is this a spitting of semantic hairs? Let me argue for their point. When I make plans to travel, I take into account the amount of luggage I typically take, the time typically needed at the airport I fly out of (In my experience, Madison's check-in is generally faster than O'Hare), how lazy (or not) I am, and how much time I typically like to spend doing one thing or the other. Then, since I don't consider myself an "expert" traveler, I factor in a lot of "squish" time to cover things like missing a bus, traffic jams, getting flagged for the cavity search, etc. If you make a plan to travel based on mine, you're going to be very frustrated. Likewise if I made plans based on yours, I'd probably be frustrated because we both have different lived experiences that guide our plans (and actual actions). Since we make our own plans, we have (hopefully) a margin of patience that we give ourselves. But even if we took travel plans from Frommer's or Lonely Planet, we would choose which one based on our lived/embodied experience, and then we'd modify according to what we actually experienced. More coming...
posted by regardingjohn @ 2:30 PM 0 comments
embodiment, intelligence, and the Tao
It seem clear to me that the "Mind" extends beyond the brain through the nerves, muscles, bones, cells, etc, to the *rest* of the body, so there can be no mind/body dualism. Learning is not a "brain" thing, and embodiment is not a matter of getting something that is empirically sensed *through* the body by the brain. The "Mind" seems too integrated of a system to say the brain is an information processor, and the body is an input device. Given that, it seems easy enough to argue that the mind extends beyond the body to social groups, and beyond that into the affordances of socially-mediated objects -- the spoon has human intelligence designed into it. From there, one can argue to broaden "social groups" to include any living creatures, friends or foes, whose behaviors and practices we mimic, learn from, or use -- the dog sniffs out buried earthquake victims. Is it too far of a stretch to go there? Let's extend the mind further, into other non-human objects of "nature" and consider the "intelligence" of the raindrop or a crystal. What is it that we know? Who are "we" and what knowledge is "ours"? If our mind extends beyond our brains, bodies, social groups, and species, then too so must our values and identities. Can we claim anything as "ours"?
posted by regardingjohn @ 8:17 PM 0 comments
embodiment vs. experience
A colleague last week argued that languages, rules, systems of government, social norms -- all these things are part of his embodied experience. It was convincing argument in that I realized that the term "embodied" is probably not the word I should use. This week I keep running across the term "situated experience" and have to wonder that, here too, *all experience* is situated. Likewise "lived experience" is pretty general. I have multiple lived experiences of the Revolutionary War. It took place once, rather memorably, in 3rd grade History, and every July 4th since. It's not the *same* lived experience as George Washington's, of course, but then neither is Martha Washington's, so who's "right"? This is the beautiful thing about academics. We can argue over seemingly preposterous arguments, and have wildly different concepts of the same term (and my colleague was as adamant that I had "embodiment" all wrong as I was that I had it right). Who is right? What is right? It's all a big messy mess, and (I strongly contend), that is exactly the point (or one of them). I had a chance to see (and even "feel") embodiment from his view, and he had a chance to see it from mine. And we didn't kill each other, and we're even still talking. And I think we recognize that a difference in perspectives over something as important as embodiment isn't, in the scheme of things, all that important. To laugh, to love, to learn -- how cool is life?
posted by regardingjohn @ 8:48 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, March 02, 2005: Jim Gee and embodiment
To answer the question "What does Jim Gee think about embodiment?" I turned to ch4 "Simulations and the Body" in his Situated Learningbook. What I gleaned from it, is that he feels that simulated experiences are darn close to "real" experiences (which are basically just mentally constructed anyway, so why wouldn't they be as "real"?). He says, "School learning is often about diembodied minds learning outside of any context of decisions and actions. When people learn something as a cultural process their bodies are involved becasue cultural learning always involves having specific experiences that facilitate learning, not just memorizing words" (p. 39). He doesn't mention bodies again until he talks about "comprehension" and situated cognition studies (e.g. Baralou 1999a, b; Brown et al. 1989; Clark 1997, 2003; Engestrom et al. 1999; Gee 1992; Glenberg 1997; Glenberg and Robertson 1999; Hutchins 1995; Latour 1999; Lave 1996; Lave and Wenger 1991; Wertsch 1998; Wenger 1998) -- "they share the viewpoint that language is tied to people's experiences of situated action in the material and social world Furthermore, these experiences are stored in the mind/brain, not in terms of language but in something like dynamic images tied to perception both of the world and of out own bodies, internal states and feelings: 'Increasing evidence suggests that perceptual simulation is indeed central to comprehension' (Barsalou 1999a: p. 74)" (p.49). Perceptual simulation. This is my interpretation: we make models of experience based on our perceptions of the experience. If our perceptions are "rich" (multi-sensory simulation, actual first-hand experience), the models will be rich. If our perceptions of the experience are not rich (lecture, boring book, typical drills), the models we build will not be as robust. It's a matter of perceptual proximity. This is why small personally seminars are more effective than large lectures; why engaging in an activity is more effective than hearing about it; why it's harder to fire a person face to face than over the phone, or in a letter; why Milgram's "teachers" less likely to shock their "students" when in the same room. There's a quality to the models of experience we make that intensifies as we inch closer to the actual experiences we model. But, as the colleague I discussed in a previous blog argued, all of these things are embodied. So perhaps, as with so many other things, embodiment is not an "on" or "off" binary of "embodied" or not "embodied" (is there anything we know that is totally disembodied?) but rather a matter of volume, or "richness" of embodiment.
posted by regardingjohn @ 8:31 AM 0 comments
on transparency and identity
Many years ago I was inspired by the story of the Emperor's new clothes. I've revisited the story numerous times from different angles, arguing, for example, that nudity can be construed as fashion, or that the story would have been more poignant had the emperor and his tailors held their ground and continued to insist that the clothes are made of weapons of mass destruction, er... I mean made of "democracy" -- and the only reason you can't see it is because you're not refined enough (and, of course it'll look different than ours). [oops, I went off on a tangent]. Getting back to transparency, yesterday in a talk on "Balancing Academia and the Rest of Life" panelists spoke on how difficult it was to do, but of course it's possible, and can even be easy. One panelist said [paraphrased here] "No. Not with young children. There is, for me, no sense of 'balance'. It would be an absurd lie for me to tell you there was. I'm not even good at faking it." Echoes of the little boy. The crowd, very confused and stressed out because they came feeling unbalanced, and were just told to persevere and they'll make it, and they were thinking "I'm failing. I'm swimming as hard as I can, and I can't persevere any more. I'm a failure." and then they heard: "I'm off balance too" -- and, I swear to you, there were tears -- literal tears-- of relief. How much of academia is about "show"? How much about "success" in this study or that, in these implications or those. We strive to "prove" through "rigorous scientifically-based" studies one thing or another, and we are taught (impicitly or explicitly) to never flinch. Never let them see you sweat. Because if you are weak, if you show any sense of doubt, then your work is suspect. If your work is suspect, then your worth is suspect. There is *no* room for error. Lives are at stake. How much crap. This is (in my laughably humble, but strongly contended opinion) a major problem in academics. We take ourselves too seriously. We do not allow for mistakes. And this gets filtered down to grad school, and to undergrad, and to K-12, and permeates throughout our entire learning lives. We need to be okay with questioning the emperor, and ourselves -- in public. I put together a presentation on embodiment based on an initial foray into the field, using terms that I was struggling to understand. I'd make a different one now (even a week later), but at the time it seemed "about right" (even as I built in disclaimers of broad generalizations). If I made one now, I'm almost 100% certain that I would consider it wrong in a month. Should I apologize for it? No. Should I be embarrassed by it? No. Should I defend it as absolute truth? No. Should I defend it as a perfectly fine exploration? Absolutely. I purposefully made the above presentation a bit outlandish ("provocative" is the term Gloria Ladson-Billings used to describe my concept of discourse bending, and I think it fits with my intention here too), and got reamed on it (mentioned here: embodiment vs. experience), but that's okay. I learned his perspective. And had I "hidden" my thoughts on embodiment because I feared others might think I'm an idiot, I'd have not learned his perspective, and we'd all sit around watching the parade, commenting on how snazzy the emperor looks. I'm mostly naked. We all are. Get used to it.
posted by regardingjohn @ 12:38 PM 0 comments
Thursday, March 03, 2005: Cyborgo De Bergerac (embodiment & identity)
Warning: This is a dream, and as such, probably not interesting to anyone but me. Additionally, it was written up at 3am, so it's not well crafted. You have been warned. I was a graduate student, loosely involved in a video game lab. I was not a primary researcher, or secondary, or even tertiary, but sort of hung out on the edge, interested but not obsessed. I was a graduate student with time (and a hunger) for the "rest of life" -- not as ambitious, maybe as I was expected to be, but not a complete moron. I was interested, among other things, in a ritual that, outside of the dream, I don't fully understand, although in the dream I found it compelling, as it developed it detail. It included a narrow brick ditch, or slot, filled with water and running into an under a building. It was completely filled, but you could surface at any time. The point of the ritual, or a part of it, was that you weren't supposed to surface. Another point was that you 'knew' when to dive in. A loose acquaintance in the dream, someone I don't really know in real life, but maybe based in character on the owner of 'The Portal' (ironic?), has an old bar with a back room, where people play poker. or gamble. You need to get past the bouncer (be "approved") to get in, and once I do, I find it a bit boring to play poker, but there are other things happening that are interesting enough to keep me coming back. The owner starts to build or develop, since it's already there, a slot that runs under his back room. He digs it out, pumps it full of clean water, installs lights at the corner where it runs under/into the building, and, and etc. And I've swum in it, explored the walls and floor of it during this development, and found it compelling, again, for reasons that I don't understand (or remember) outside the dream. A Latino man arrives one day, very much interested (obsessed) with the slot. He changes into full regalia: wet suit, shirt off, maybe he even greases up, then sits at the edge/beginning and waits and watches, deep in concentration, largely oblivious to the rest of us. And then he dives in, turns the corner expertly, disappears under the building, and swims through the ditch, and comes out the other side. He comes back the next day, or week, and becomes a "regular" there, until he one day brings his son and daughter. Later, at the slot, after a successful dive by the Latino guy's daughter, I'm supposed to drive off to another conference but my car gets stolen. Nobody saw it go, including the guy in the room next door (who looks and acts like Dennis from CBE). The police arrive, plain-clothes. They question me. They leave. Time passes. Strange things happen. I see the detective at a party. He smiles, avoids my questions, and leaves. Meanwhile in my life some conference is happening at some sort of place like an observatory, and Katie is there, and some "experiment" is going on that I know nothing tangible about, except that it runs all night, and I keep waking up and sneaking past the room that she's sleeping in (more artist's quarters or scientist's lab -- not a hotel room) in the middle of the night to turn down the heat. And the next day the rest of the video game crew arrives and I sort of move to the side and don't remember this part of the dream. Suffice to say that it occurs to me that my identity had been stolen, and the police officer and the slot-diver had something to do with it, and I thought "shit. I've heard about this. Now I have to watch my credit, cancel my cards, etc. etc. what a hassle! And my car's stolen!" Major hassle. At this point, I see the detective again and follow him, like Alice, into the rabbit hole. He's gone of course, and I'm alone, when I hear a voice behind me: Isn't something cataclysmic supposed to happen when you meet your opposite? It's a male voice, and I understand that it's the voice of my identity thief. I turn to look, but don't see anyone. I reply: But I'm not your opposite, I'm your alter-ego. Stealing my information doesn't make you my opposite, it makes you me. And this dialog continues, and I realize that it's not a person who stole my identity, it's a computer. And he says he need s now to get rid of the "Real me", and I argue that he needs me as his body because once my body dies, my identity dies. He wants to make a name for himself and doesn't want me screwing it up with my "lack of knowledge" in physics or computer science -- after all, what do I know in those fields? I counter that since he's pretty smart at these fields he should teach me ("shouldn't be difficult for someone as smart as you" -- classic type of line from an AI movie, no? these 'smart' machines always seem to have the same 7 deadly sins that we have: pride, gluttony, etc.), Of course he also doesn't want the "baggage" of me -- sleeping, eating, farting, getting involved in sticky emotional relationships and embarrassing sexual social situations. And I counter that this is what he signed up for when he stole a human identity. Maybe he won't need it some day, but for now he should at least get a better experience of what it's like to be human through me. And hey, since I'm studying learning, identity and simulation, the collaboration would be interesting for me too. So I suggest a partnership he can use my identity and body, with my full blessing and cooperation if he helps me learn cool stuff. And I'd present his knowledge and ideas (since it'd be in my name or identity anyway), and do my best to not make him/me look bad. It's a classic "dummy" movie, Cyborgo De Bergerac, but if I write it up well, it could make a pretty cool dissertation for me as it ties together issues of identity, learning, embodiment, etc.
posted by regardingjohn @ 9:41 AM 0 comments
Saturday, March 05, 2005: Curios
It's far past bedtime, but there's a good idea in surrounding oneself with inspiration and toys. This stems from a presentation I saw today. Michael Eisenberg (from U Colorado's Center for Lifelong Learning and Design (L3D) gave a short talk on learning Math and Science through engagement with crafts. Here's the abstract he supplied:
At the risk of a bit of caricature, most research in educational technology tends to focus on "screens, schools, and skills" -- that is, on the use of desktop computers in classrooms to convey well-defined academic skills. While there is nothing terribly objectionable about this "conventional style" of educational technology, there are alternative styles that deserve greater attention and emphasis. In our lab at the University of Colorado, we explore the ways in which technology can be interwoven with children's crafts. Much of this exploration is in contrast to the conventional style. Rather than work solely with "screens", we often use embedded computation and "intelligent materials" of various sorts in our designs. Rather than focus on classrooms ("schools"), our projects and prototypes often are geared toward informal settings. Rather than focus on isolated academic skills, we try to create full-fledged expressive activities for children.
Needless to say, this resonates well with me and my silly interests in physicality. A big part of it, of course, has to do with my own experience growing up with the toys my dad made for me like the "latch box" (I should find this and at least get a picture of it) and the "electric kit" he made for my older brother, and Legos, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, etc. Surrounding oneself with things like this, Eisenberg says, increases one's thought about them, and consequently, the chances of engaging with things. He tells the story of the researchers who figured out how the Venus Flytrap works -- that they weren;t even studying it, but had one in the office and started talking about it. Next thing you know they start figuring it out.... Back in the day, rich white Europeans would have Curio Cases, or rooms -- of things they collected from their travels and expeditions. Basically, these were little private museums. And they provided a lot of inspiration for budding scientists (as museums tend to do). Eisenberg says computer screens can't do this. He's right. But they're not as expensive.
posted by regardingjohn @ 2:59 AM 0 comments
Sunday, March 06, 2005: dourish - Where the Action Is
Chapter 4 in Paul Dourish's (2001) book is titled "Being-in-the-World" and it outlines the ideas of embodiment by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Alfred Schutz, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He first gives what he calls a "naive" definition of embodiment:
Embodiment means possessing and acting through a physical manifestation in the world (p. 100)and then offers a "more elaborated" definition:
Embodied phenomena are those that by their very nature occur in real time and real space (p. 101)
Obviously, I was "naive" when I approached the concept, but that's okay, Husserl had a similar problem in 1936, complaining about how math privileged a world of idealities over "the only real world, the one that is actually given through perception, that is ever experienced and experienceable -- our everyday life world" (Husserl 1936:48-49). So he suggests that two things happen in parallel: we see a rabbit, and we realize that we actually *see* a rabbit (as opposed to just imagining or remembering it) (p. 105). Hence arises phenomenology. Heidegger develops it, looking at Husserl's intentionality. He says that we need to be before we can think (opposite Descartes dualistic "cogito ergos um"), and he "transformed the problem of phenomenolgy form an epistemological question, a question about knowledge, to an ontological question, a question about forms and categories of existence. Instead of asking, 'How can we know about the world,' Heidegger asked, 'How deos the world reveal itself to us through out encounters with it?'" (p. 107). Interesting here, how the onus of action/revelation is on the world, and not on us [onus not on us -- heh!]. In some ways, this suggests that just as the dualism of mind/body is a false on, so too is the dualism of body/world (see Mar.01.05a entry). Dourish pipes in here, explaining that Heidegger's talking about Dasein, or "being-in-the-world" (chapter title), "emphasizing the way in which being is inseparabvle from world in which it occurs" (p. 108). He then suggests that the dualism is Dasien/World. Heidegger's distinction here is zuhanden (ready-to-hand) and vorhanden (present-at-hand), which strikes me as formalism or structuralism (as I naively understand them to revlove around being presently conscious of, or focused on, the structure of things). Dourish uses an example of a computer mouse as an "invisible" extension of the hand until it moves off the mouse pad, then he has to think of it, and reposition it. I would use the Mac vs. PC example here, where for me, the Mac "gets out of my way" and lets me write, but on a PC I have to work consciously *through* its structure. Ditto for html, or any other unfamiliar Discourse). Heidegger says the mouse would not exist for us if we didn't have to deal with it (this reminiscent of Maturana's frog not seeing dead flies). Schutz takes it to the next level, looking at the intersubjectivity of our individual experiences, as they are mediated by others. We assume others are rational actors like ourselves: an assumption based on our own experiences (p. 113) -- ala von Foerster's "Man in the Bowler Hat"). Consequently, we tend to trust them -- more-so even than ourselves. Who's sane in an asylum? Merleau-Ponty adds layers of complexity, by turning the body into "neither subject nor object, but an ambiguous third party" (p. 114). Dreyfus (1996) explains Merleau-Ponty's three versions of embodiement: "the physical embodiment of a human subject, with legs and arms, and of a certain size and shape; the second is the set of bodily skills and situational responses that we have developed; ans the third is the cultural 'skills' abilities, and understandings that we responsively gain from the cultural world in which we are embedded. Each of these aspects, simultaneously contributes to and conditions the actions of the individual, both in terms of how they understand their own embodiment (the 'phenomenolgoical body') and how it is understood by others (the 'objective body')" (p. 115). In other words: Mar.01.05b. Clearly, there's a disconnect between my ideas and Merleau-Ponty's, even though the words suggest a parallelism. For example, I feel that perception is located in the mind, of which the body is an important part -- not an ambiguous third party. When MP says "A theory of the body is already a theory of perception" (1945:203), I interpret it to be a matter of self-perception/awareness. Having explored the phenomenologists, Dourish looks at embodiment in his field, Human Computer Interface (HCI) by examining the work of J.J. Gibson who gives this cool quote: "One sees the environment not just with the eyes but with the eyes in the head on the shoulders of a body that gets about" (Gibson 1979:222). He came up with the concept of "affordances" -- how chairs are designed to be particularly suited for *our* sitting, not for rabbits or horses. Donald Norman (1988, 1993) builds on affordances, as does William Gaver (1991, 1992). Then Dourish introduces Michael Polanyi (The Tacit Dimension (1966), suggesting that embodied skills fit under this heading (see Feb.16.05). Polanyi suggests the terms proximal to describe sensory impressions, and distal to describe our interpretations of the impressions -- these are the "first and second terms of tacit knowing" (1966:13). Dourish then refers to the work of Clancy (1997), Lave (1988), and Suchman (1987) (Mar.01.05 was big day of thinking for me). Dourish ends the chapter's summary moving to (my uderstanding of) a Jim Geeian perspective of embodiment. Wittgenstein started with a focus on the interactions between the individual and the world. In his second phase of writing, in Philosophical Investigations, he shifts his understanding and places meaning more Gee-ward towards the social practice elements of language, looking less at a statement's inherent (or even personal) "truth" and more at its social appropriateness.
posted by regardingjohn @ 5:57 PM 0 comments
Thursday, March 10, 2005: socio-spacial design
My friend Amy is studying Landscape Architecture, and currently working on a map of space in a cultural place (this phrase is not accurate). She went to the library this morning and diagrammed out the lounge area, with sitting tables, couches, coffee tables, etc. I was very interested and overly animated about it, of course, because it made me reflect on a similar project I did for an "image-based research" class a few years ago, where I walked all over campus and Madison taking pictures of "chairs" (loosely defined as places where humans sit). Putting the photographs next to each other, one can see stark differences in culture and "intention" between them. For example, the granite bench with the engraved quote nestled in an old grove of trees has a much different purpose than the chairs in the lecture hall, or the unwieldy stools in the grab-and-eat-and-get-out lunch place, or the pews in the church (actually the bench and the pews are pretty close). And I sit now on a fairly plush leather couch at Ground Zero and contrast that to the stiff, if-you-want-to-stay-get-a-room couches in hotel lobbies. Different chair design offers different levels or aspects of a "sitting" affordance (to use J.J. Gibson's term), some for sitting comfortably, some for meditating, some for conversing, some for waiting, some for eating quickly, some for eating slowly, some for reading, some for listening to a lecturer -- all while "sitting". And this is just "chairs" -- think of all the other "social" aspects of our physical environment, and their designed effects on us. So, factor in lighting -- for reading, or staying awake, or romance, or security, or way-finding, etc. And do the same with other furniture, wall coverings, wall hangings (paintings, photographs), flooring (carpet vs. bamboo vs. Maple vs Oak vs. Pine vs. concrete vs. tile), pavement, siding, ground cover, trees. So, I think I'm on to something in looking at Design as one of the threads (along with Discourse, and Experience) in the theoretical braid of my educational research agenda, but as I mentioned during my presentation, I'm not sure how that braid is woven together yet. Alas.
posted by regardingjohn @ 11:55 AM 0 comments
Sunday, March 13, 2005: dourish ch.1
Since I so enjoyed ch. 4 of Where the Action Is, and since it paralleled (or promised parallels to) much of what most interested me in Michael Eisenberg's research, and because I sense hints of the same three pillars (or components, or axes?) that I use to structure my own research, I've decided to read the rest of the book, starting from the beginning. And the beginning calls for recognition of Computer Science as a philosophical enterprise (p. viii), that focuses more on interactions than procedures -- not just what is being done, but how it's being done (p. 4). Dourish chronicles the history of Human Computer Interface (HCI), from mechanical to electrical to symbolic (textual, graphical), and speaks of computer design as it pertains to our realities, touching on peripheral attention, pattern recognition and spatial reasoning (p. 6-14). He calls for an increase in tangible and social approaches to computing as it leads to more embodied interaction (p.15-23). And this history sort of hinges on the same pillars I use in my theory of learning, which is to start in the Discourse where we're comfortable, use design to engage us there and to lure us into new experiences that bend and relocate the centers of our Discourses. Of course the HCI are less interested in changing us, and more interested in changing the computer to be "easier" for us. As computer interfaces undergo transformation, however, we also change. At it's most extreme, we learned to "think like a computer" when programming, to convey our thoughts via DOS commands or menus and windows, through a mouse and keyboard, in PowerPoint's bulleted phrases, to "$p34|< 1337" in IM "conversations". In any good interaction both parties change. It is both interesting and unfortunate that he doesn't give succinct definitions for either "tangible computing" or "social computing" but loosely ties the former to distributed computing, augmented reality, tangible bits, and ubiquitous computing, and glosses over the latter as "trying to incorporate undersandings of the social world into interactive systems" (p. 16), with promises to delve further into each later. Both, he asserts are part of the key to embodied interaction in computing, which is what the book is all about. Will my exploration of this book help me further develop my theory of learning, or pedagogic creed? Stay tuned...
posted by regardingjohn @ 4:21 PM 0 comments
dourish ch.2 - tangible computing
A history of what could be, starting at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) with ubiquitous computing: computation by the inch (badges, pagers, coffee cups, etc. all over the place), foot (paper-sized, per person), and yard (desk or whiteboard, per room) (p. 30); EuroPARC's digital desk (p. 33); virtual and augmented reality devices; Universty of Toronto's reactive room (p. 38); MIT's Tangible Bits and their metaDESK, Phicons, geospace, ambient room, illuminating light, and urp (p.43-48). Through these examples, we see that one aspect of tangible computing is that control is distributed or decentralized. Just as writing a note is a coordination of hand, arm, paper, pen, desktop, (etc.). Tangible computing is also generally not *a* unique new device, but entails features or extensions embedded into the design of something we are already familiar with (p. 50. The name badge, for example, is still a name badge, but takes on other computational affordances like Star Trek communicators. The metaDESK starts with the idea of the desk (comfy in our Discourse) and designs the opportunity for new experiences through it. See why this stuff is interesting to me? Can you say: "Discourse-bending Design Experiences (DbDE)"? Secondly, tangible computing moves away from ordered sequence -- it no longer requires the user to follow a rigid "program" (p. 51). Thirdly, tangible computing relies heavily on "the physical properties of the interface to suggest its use" (p.52). This is Gibson's (1979) affordances in action here. Finally, Dourish sums it up:
"...the essence of tangible computing lies in the way in which it allows computation to be manifest for us in the everyday world;a world that is available for our interpretation, and one that is meaningful for us in the ways in which we can understand and act in it (p.53)
posted by regardingjohn @ 5:07 PM 0 comments
Monday, March 14, 2005: Schema, Flow, and spiritual practice
Following up, Amy had asked of my disciplined spiritual practice, and I didn't really answer. What I got out of Richard Bach's Illusions, way back in the day, was that spiritual practice might best be a private thing, so I've tried to take a "live and let live" attitude since then -- only really falling out of it when evangelicals try to save me. I hadn't really reflected on my "practice" much; I just *did* things in life. Could I call it a "spiritual practice" if it's so much a part of my life that I don't even really think of it? Maybe not, since a big component of what I believe is "mindfulness". So here goes a list of things that I'm automatically mindful of, but not mindful of being automatically mindful of: I breathe when paddling; when sitting up straight; when bike commuting; when stretching; when walking Seymour; when picking up his poop; when sitting in the sun; when watching the lake; when recognizing friends across the street or room; when hearing their voices; when being yelled at; when alone in a room of strangers; when blogging or painting or drawing or reflecting or thinking; when understanding how two or more things or people fit together; when ice cream melts on my tongue; when Seymour falls asleep, dreams of rabbits, and kicks me. There are a thousand more mindful moments in my life. When I'm not mindful, and there are plenty of those times, I get tense, worried, upset, tight-jawed; or bored, melancholic, forgetful. Actually, "forgetful" sometimes fits in the "mindful" column too, but maybe better fits a third state -- flow. When I'm in "flow" I'm both mindful and not. I'm mindful at a level above procedures. It's the "Schema" stage of expertise. It's a beautiful place to be where the mechanical actions of my body cease to require conscious cognitive energies. I like being there.
posted by regardingjohn @ 10:47 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, March 29, 2005: dourish ch3 - social computing
Whereas his chapter on tangible computing looked at the intersections of the individual and computer design, this chapter focuses on how sociology informs the computer design (broadly defined to include physical and interface design). As such, it is heavily "Intro to Ethnogrphy".
[NOTE: While this may be new and significant in HCI, it's foundational for me, as I hold that the major precepts of our lives are socially-constructed and thrust into our individual lifespace. Thus, much of our individual "meaning-making" energy is spent embodying them. One might say that an answer to the question, "What is the meaning of life?" is accepting or embracing societal's expectations. I believe there are other, more challenging (and "better"), answers though.]
It gets interesting again for me when he starts to apply the use of ethnographic methods to technology, for example, in drawing attention to the distinction between work process and work practice (p. 62) through the examples of fligh controllers and a print shop. In analysis, he brings up Lucy Suchman's (1987) Plans and Situated Actions, where Suchman suggests that Sociology had rendered the "planning" paradigm innacurate. We do not create a plan and follow it. At best, the "plan" we create is merely one of several guides. Other, often more influential, guides are co-constructed in the shifting and unstable situations we encounter. (It is this co-construction with others, where the social computing will happen, but this comes later). Dourish introduces Ethnomethodology as a study that "turns its attention to the detailed analysis of actual practice, often drawing on ethnographic materials, and attempted to find, within them, evidence for the ways in which people achieved orderly social conduct" (p. 75). In other words, it asks why people on their own reconstruct the social order they are situated in.
posted by regardingjohn @ 9:40 AM 0 comments
Thursday, March 31, 2005: big name in "flow" (and its problem)
Mihaly Csiksczentmihalyi says:
Commencement of learning something is a flow situation – everything is new and flow absorption is present as one struggles to master the skill. As one progresses, either boredom will ensue because there is no more challenge (the skill has been learned at that level) or anxiety occurs because a bigger challenge than we can cope with presents itself. Either way, one wants to get back to flow, either by overcoming the anxiety challenge by becoming more skilled, or taking on a challenge that will overcome the boredom, thus getting back into flow at a more complex level.This seems to fit nicely alongside Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. On the other hand, stopping to reflect on a problem (sometimes caused by hitting a brick wall) often helps a person examine their understanding, and perhaps help "internalize" (another Vygotskian term) the learning. How much of what we know/understand comes from "just doing it" and how much comes from reflection? Clearly both aspects are involved in knowing, but maybe this points to a distinction between "knowing" (e.g. mulitplication tables) and "understanding" (e.g. mathematical concepts that undergird multiplication tables). Or is meaning (like many other things) a continuum?
posted by regardingjohn @ 8:18 PM 0 comments
