NMR: Chapters 41-54: The Kindle

As an avid Oprah show viewer, I am always interested in the things she dubs as her "new favorite product."  This year, Oprah excitedly introduced the Kindle, Amazon.com's "revolutionary wireless reading device," which allows you to purchase books digitally and read them on a small six inch screen.  It is said to "look and read like real paper," whatever that may mean, and is being used by authors like Toni Morrison and Anita Diamant among others.  

This seemed very relevant to the chapter in the text regarding the end of books, the death of one of the oldest forms of media:  the printed word.  To me, the Kindle does not offer a user-friendly, more efficient way to read, but a move to destroy books as we know them today.  What does it say about our culture when we have to have everything digitalized and why do so many people consider things easier, or more efficient simply because it is computerized, or smaller?

NMR: Chapters 35 - 40

A lot of these chapters had to deal with, either directly or indirectly and more abstractly, how our general sense of communication is not necessarily challenged, but arguably altered as a result of digital new media.  In Chapter 39, "Towards a New Classification of Tele-Information Services," by Jan L. Bordewijk and Ben ban Kaam, the authors look at the different social roles and how they each interact with one another in the varied world of digital new media.  Having grown up, for the most part and at least during my formative years, in a highly technology based world full of instant messaging and email, it is difficult for me to step back and observe exactly how technology has negatively or positively affected the way humans communicate with one another. One thing I found interesting was to consider how different this same article would sound if it were written now, by someone in my generation.  Would the new communication forms seem beneficial, offering new ways to communicate, or would it be seen as dumbing down the way we talk and interact with one another?

54. The World-Wide-Web, Berners-Lee, Cailliau, Luotonen, Nielsen, Secret, 1994

• "Pool of human knowledge"
• The World Wide Web (W3) was created to allow people in remote locations to share ideas on a common project in a common space
• This extends both professionally in business and also domestically, by enabling personal information to be organized and distributed
• URI - address system
• HTTP - Network protocol
• HTML - network markup language 
• URI - Universal Resource Identifiers - "strings used to as addresses of objects on the Web"

53. Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance, Critical Art Ensemble, 1994

• This school of thought sees the powerful elite as the "primary beneficiaries of network technologies"
• The elite are now "fully cyber spacial"
• How can you act out/speak out in this new space?  What are its benefits?  What doesn't work with it?
• There is a large, underlying question as to "how, or whether, to use new media technologies for taking (virtual) action, rather than organizing and reporting (physical) action
• Virtual Sit Ins, "hacktivists," and "cyberhippies"
• Cyber activism allows for large numbers of people to be part of something that they may not e able to be physically part of
• There is significant questions to whether or not it is at all affective.

52. Nonlinearity and Literary Theory, Aarseth, 1994

• Obvious characteristics of electronic literature - issue of linearity.
• "this quality of nonlinearity is neither insisted upon by the computer nor precluded by print."
• Screens, by nature, create a sort of an "allure" that forced people to automatically put computer literature in its own category
• In reality, there are few differences between new media art and non-digital work
• "today's electronic textual systems are not so new when systems like the telegraph are considered."

51. Surveillance and Capture, Agre, 1994.

• Especially in our world today, issues of surveillance are heavily discussed.  The concept of TOTAL surveillance has always seemed somewhat unrealistic and science-fiction-esque
• In the panopticon (Jeremy Bentham) prisoners are watched from a tower and aware that they are perpetually watched and act accordingly.
• Agre thinking about the questions that surveillance brings forth (issues of privacy) and theorizes the capture model, which is "drawn from an awareness of the current methods of computer systems design."
• The capture model is integrated in every part of our lives through various masked objects (the web, ID cards, tracking devices, etc).  The computer knows, but you don't
• 1997 - collection edited by Agre and Rotenberg discusses where privacy is moving toward in the Web 2.0 world

50. Time Frames, McCloud, 1993

• McCloud showed "the way for contemporary thinkers who would seek to...[look at new media]" and is considered to be the "Aristotle of comics"
• He saw how the comic format worked
• Comics, he believed, were "sequencial art" 

49. The End of Books, Robert Coover, 1992

• By teaching a course in "hypertext writing," the author discovered that by students being able to write on the computer, they were being part of the move to the end of physical, tangible books.
• "High quality and copious literary output" came out of students being able to utilize hypertext and other computer/literary tools.

48. You Say You Want a Revolution: Hypertext and the Laws of Media, Moulthrop, 1991

• Hypertext - "a technology for creating electronic documents in which the user's access to information is not constrained, as in books, by linear or hierarchical arrangements of discourse."
• 1945 - Bush creates Hypertext to build the Memex machine in hopes to organize large amounts of knowledge
• AI researches made the first hypertext narrative, a computer game called Adventure
• Print favors site of auditory interaction.  Hypertext does not utilize one sense, rather, it is more cognitive.  It is all about "connection, linkage, and affiliation"

47. Seeing and Writing, Bolter, 1991

• Author looks at how the history of typography and printing relates to the way in which we think about the way writing on computer screens moves around/is altered.  
• How are changes in new media influencing the way we thing about and experience reading and writing
• "Remediation"

46. The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat, 1991.

• 1997- Ultima Online launches (a graphic, virtual environment/role playing)
• People looking at the site were fascinated by why users enjoyed killing one another so much
• How do computer-mediate communications effect our environments, both virtual and physical
• How far are these/should these worlds be extended?

45. Cardboard Computers, Ehn and Kyng, 1991

• What happens when everyday computer users can no longer create or use their own created tools and designs?
• The design process must keep the user in mind at all times
• These authors are known as the heads of "the Utopia project,"  which has decided to work with users from the start of designing
• Utopia was started in the early 1980's and the project believed that "new media tools shoudl be designed for the quality of work they produce"

44. The Fantasy Beyond Control, Hershman, 1990.

• 1979-1983 Hershman's Lorna is thought to be the first interactive video art installation
• The piece was a a woman, Lorna, sitting at home watching television.  The person looking at this had a remote, as did Lorna, and operate the remote to make choices (mock survey, selectable objects) all of which could branch out into more general narratives of the piece.
• Her work was both installation and performance
• Language of video and film was reintroduced and situated for a more interactive world

43. The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems, Nichols, 1988

• Those working in digital new media fields often "borrow insights and tropes from other forms," "discourses and examples."
• Nichols was attempting to rewrite Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," but write it for the digital age.
• 1936 - Benjamin's text
• 1988 - Nichols text
• Benjamin was speaking at the age in which video was rising, and Nichols during the age in which video games and simulation media were starting
• Nichols examined why such interactivity was popular:  freedom, pleasure, etc.
• What are the effects of simulation?  Good?  Bad?

42. Siren Shapes, Joyce, 1995

• Web-version of "hypertext" is much more limited then Nelson or Engelbart's ideas of hypertext were
• There is still a lot of potential for what hypertext can do, will be used to do, in the future
• Joyce thought of hypertext in two different environments:  "exploratory" and "constructive"
• Constructive hypertext are "flexible representations of thoughts, stories, arguments, and everything else for which we use media."
• Exploratory hypertexts are "former constructive hypertexts, now being experienced by a user/reader who is not an author of the work."  In other words, it is what the constructive is created for.

41. Plans and Situated Actions, Suchman, 1987.

• Author looked at how people attempt to accomplish their goals
• Her theories led to changed in the way people thought about and discussed artificial intelligence
• She believed that the way we've approached thinking about AI is "misguided" because we think of it in human-terms, in other words, instead of thinking of AI as a separate entity, we are theorizing about it naturally in relation to how our own, real-life brains work/act.
• Navigation looks at the difference between "the planning and situated action perspectives"
• Interactive Artifacts looks at what interactivity means and who AI can be looked at historically
• People and machines have to be seen as separate entities

40. Mythinformation, Winner, 1986

• Positive social change does not naturally come about solely because of a computer's availability
• Author asks "what the social goals of..." the computer revolution will be?
• He gets rid of the common myths that 
• "People are bereft of information"
  
• "information in knowledge"
  
• "knowledge is power"
  
• "increased access to information diminishes unnecessary social hierarchy and increases democracy
  
• "The transitions accompanying computer technologies may have some democratizing potential--but this potential must be identified and worked toward."  This is not something that will happen naturally as a result of the technology simply being present
• Three major concerns:  The surveillance issue, the chance in human sociability, and the 'rhizomatic' nature of computers.

39. Towards a New Classification of Tele-Information Services, Bordewijk and Kaam, 1986

• Authors considered the social role of new types of digital media
• Tele-information systems are based on both digital telecommunication and computer technology and effect interpersonal human communication
• What are the power positions of human communication?  How can we classify information by their social roles? 
• Four information passages:   Allocution, Conversation, Consultation, and Registration

38. Two Selections by Brenda Laurel, 1986

• Author takes a more classical approach to computing 
• She thought of computers in theatrical terms and believed that The Poetics offered insight to understanding computers
• She believed computers should be examined from a humanistic perspective 
• Author believes, "technologies offer new opportunities or creative, interactive experiences, and in particular, for new forms of drama"
• How can drama be helpful in understanding and examining computing

37. Using Computers, Windograd and Flores, 1986

• Chapter comes from Understanding Computers and Cognition 
• Winograd heads the Human-Computer Interaction program at Stanford University
• Authors offer a critique of artificial intelligence and how it is affecting the way that humans naturally, without the computer technology, think.
• They use German philosopher Heidegger's approaches to "uncover a rigidity within analytic computational models"
• The authors believe that "the essence of intelligence is to act appropriately when there is no simple pre-definition of the problem or the space of states in which to search for a solution."
• We should think of computers as tools
• What have we gained from computers culturally?  How can we create a positive direction for new media development
• Ontological Design - looks at human interaction and communication in specific situations

36. The GNU Manifesto, Stallman, 1985

• Free software - enabling users to access/use software tools
• When companies decided to charge for software, people backlashed and people were suddenly living in a "less free environment"
• It appeared that more and more computer users were unable to use the software tools that they used, even created, and unable to change them unless the companies lifted licensing restrictions.
• Author created the MIT AI Lab in response to this issue and created a "new free community" called GNU
• Brought into question licensing issues, intellectual property issues, copyright issues and "copy-left"

35. A Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway, 1985

• Author's text looks at imagined personalities 
• "Haraway's cyborg is a socialist-feminist mythology that is not founded on belief in an idyllic past or overarching unity"
• The cyborg is progressive and exists solely in the present "the here and now"

34. Video Games and Computer Holding Power, Turkle, 1984

• 1980's - video games became a major fixture in popular culture 
• Turkle's The Second Self looked at how video games were an effective way of examining how different groups of people interacted with a computer
• Author thought about computing and its effects from a psychological standpoint:  how computers allow people to create personalities that are different from their real-life personalities 
• Games play both a social and psychological role and how we interact with games, and computers in general, influence the way we see and think about the world around us

33. Direct Manipulation, Shneiderman, 1983

• Direct Manipulation:  "instead of employing a command language to instruct the computer, the data being processed is exposed and accessed in a more graphically representational way" -- instantaneous graphic/visual feedback is given for every action 
• These concepts informed visual programming, notably video/arcade games 
• Examples of direct manipulation systems:  Display Editors (non-linear editing systems), VisiCalc (financial forecasing program which enables you to do multiple calculations in one worksheet), Spacial Data Managements, Video Games (Pong), 
• Using graphic representation does not always improve efficiency

32. The Endless Chain, Bagdikian, 1983

• Author was thinking about the obvious ways new media was trumping (and even somewhat replacing) the old media
• "We should be entering an era of dissolving hierarchies and empowered individuals"
• Old media and new media are "increasingly compatible and comparable," and often times are quite similar to one another.  The author considered the idea of the two media forms (old and new) morphing and created one singular system, rather than existing as two separate entities
• Author released The Media Monopoly (1983) which predicted issues of "media concentration" (as a side note, such predictions having become quite true -- note the conglomerations that own news - there are only 6 companies that own over 95% of all our news sources)
• Six firms dominate all of America's U.S. mass media - AOL Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corp, Bertelsmann, and General Electric 
• "There is an urgent need for broader and more diverse sources of public information.  But the reverse is happening"

31. Will There be Condominiums in Data Space, Viola, 1982

• Video artists like Viola have enabled people to think about digital new media in broader terms
• In the 1960's artists began thinking about the specific attributes of video, thinking about cameras, editing programs, image synthesis interfaces, screens, projectors, etc. All of these things, which seem inherent to thinking about videography, have been changed as a result of digital new media and videography combining
• Viola is one of the most famous video artists.  His fame allowed him to create what many have termed "70-millimeter video art," in which video's cheapness is not a concern and rough production quality is not part of the finished product

30. Literary Machines, Nelson, 1981

• Nelson believed that, eventually (and quite soon after the publication of the article), people would be reading and writing almost everything "from and to" and "world-spanning computer network" (precursor to the world wide web)
• This network would allow users to create their own documents and connect them to other public documents published on the network
• Storage capabilities would allow for users to visit any version of one document from multiple points in time in the network's history
• Xanadu:  the ultimate archive, combining "the benefits of anarchy with a strength derived from an initial, powerful central design"
• It would be a "vast free sharing of information" - a "digital library," a "new public commons"

29. Put-That-There, Bolt, 1980

• Focuses on multimedia computer interfaces which combine both speech and gesture
• Put-That-There also threw in the idea of more spoken conversational techniques
• Bolt used 2-dimensional screens to offer a new view into a 3-dimensional space
• He did not focus solely on one area of communication 
• His ideas challenged previously held notions of computer-human interaction "in which these two types of space are experienced by the user as one"
• These interfaces let a personal communicate/interact with a computer by using "speech, gesture, gaze...and facial expression"

28. Mindstorms, Papert, 1980

• 1980's were considered to be "the home computer era," where computers were finally part of an "average" families everyday life in the home, not only the office
• Having computers in the home prompted the children in the households to become active participants in the technology, leading to home video game consoles
• Computers were both productive and instruments for learning
• Papert was working to try and create ways for children to learn by programming
• LOGO (1967) :  children can take complete control of their home computers and learn about "mathematics through the experience of mathematical concepts"

27. A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuz and Guattari, 1980

• Author's "literary machine" incorporated essays written from a specific perspective of "if I were using these terms, this is what I would mean"
• Rhizomatic writing- often used to describe hypertext
• Authors' work challenges readers to "reconsider dualisms" 

(I had a lot of difficulty getting through/understanding this article)

26. Personal Dynamic Machine, Kay and Goldberg, 1977

• Authors predicted the power of the personal computing notebook -- what it would do for the world and its users
• Ideas for the computer notebook were developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) which was led by Kay
• The original concept was that the personal computer notebook would be a "general purpose device, with educators and business people and poets all using the same type of Dynabook" - a multi-disciplinary system
• The authors believed that computers could be (and should be) used by all different groups of people (even children) regardless of one's interests or computer skill level

25. Responsive Environments, Krueger, 1977

• Considered "the father of virtual reality" 
• 1976- created a new computer interface:  a glove that monitored hand movements (created at the Electronic Visualization Lab @ the University of Illinois
• He had both aesthetic and technical concerns throughout his career
• Thought about art and computer science in similar disciplines 
• Steered away from traditional ideas of "content"
• Critical technical practices - a practice that makes technological artifact with arts and culture in mind

24. Computer Power and Human Reason, Weizenbaum, 1976

• Author programmed Eliza, the first and most famous chatterbot
• Eliza brought into question a lot of issues of ethics regarding technology and the possible dangers of what he himself had created
• Author was a huge proponent of inventors/technology experts taking on responsibilities for the potential dangers their creations may have on the larger world
• Eliza (1964-1966) ran a series of scripts which impersonated a psychologist 

23. Soft Architecture Machines, Negroponte, 1975

• Developed new ideas for the digital world where the user was thought of as being "empowered," not hindered by technology
• 1985- opened the MIT Media Lab (looks at future media/computer applications that aim at many fields of study
• 1967- author founded the Architecture Machine Group @ MIT
• The group aimed to create new ways of managing data and large amounts of information spatially instead of numerically or alphabetically (in a list-form)
• Intentionalities - author puts forth 3 levels of consciousness that a computer system should try to have 
• He did not believe in the classic idea that many hold regarding computers; that they are "experts" with "spacial knowledge"

22. Theater of the Oppressed, Boal, 1974

• Author was jailed for his beliefs/work he put forward
• Boal's goal:  to create situations which would involve interaction around every day people's every day problems
• He focused on many oppressed people in South America (Brazil, at first)
• Fled to Argentina and later was forced into exile in Europe where he began to think of his new ideas/concepts as "taking on not only the 'cop on the street,' but also the 'cop in the head'"
• His techniques had obvious therapeutic goals (The Rainbow Desire)
• 1992- Boal ran for office in Brazil and won 
• Boal took his theatre troop with him and began to create political action/new proposals using his own performance techniques aimed at helping the normally ignored
• Reminiscent of "Happenings"

21. Computer Lib/Dream Machine, Nelson, 1974

• Article is considered "the most important book in the history of new media"
• often referred to as the "first personal computer book"
• Book is a combo of two separate books bound in the middle - there was the "computer lib" side and the "dream machine" side
• "Computer Lib" questioned/"challenged" what computers were being used for/what they could be used for
• "dream Machines" focused on "media and design" (the author believed this section to be more significant than the "computer lib" section
• Nelson believed that "computer experiences were media to be designed" and should be thought of as actively engaged in thinking about the user - the "human-computer interaction"
• Nelson believed that all types of new media "experiences" should be placed in a "radical, open publishing network" (precursor the world wide web)