Category: Theory

Resources

End-User Programming

Some links to notes and approaches on end-user programming, or the idea of software as programming environments fundamentally composable by users.

www.inkandswitch.com/

Paul Chiusano: The future of software

Questions towards technologies #3

  1. What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me?
  2. What habits will the use of this technology instill?
  3. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of time?
  4. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of place?
  5. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to other people?
  6. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to the world around me?
  7. What practices will the use of this technology cultivate?
  8. What practices will the use of this technology displace?
  9. What will the use of this technology encourage me to notice?
  10. What will the use of this technology encourage me to ignore?
  11. What was required of other human beings so that I might be able to use this technology?
  12. What was required of other creatures so that I might be able to use this technology?
  13. What was required of the earth so that I might be able to use this technology?
  14. Does the use of this technology bring me joy?
  15. Does the use of this technology arouse anxiety?
  16. How does this technology empower me? At whose expense?
  17. What feelings does the use of this technology generate in me toward others?
  18. Can I imagine living without this technology? Why, or why not?
  19. How does this technology encourage me to allocate my time?
  20. Could the resources used to acquire and use this technology be better deployed?
  21. Does this technology automate or outsource labor or responsibilities that are morally essential?
  22. What desires does the use of this technology generate?
  23. What desires does the use of this technology dissipate?
  24. What possibilities for action does this technology present? Is it good that these actions are now possible?
  25. What possibilities for action does this technology foreclose? Is it good that these actions are no longer possible?
  26. How does the use of this technology shape my vision of a good life?
  27. What limits does the use of this technology impose upon me?
  28. What limits does my use of this technology impose upon others?
  29. What does my use of this technology require of others who would (or must) interact with me?
  30. What assumptions about the world does the use of this technology tacitly encourage?
  31. What knowledge has the use of this technology disclosed to me about myself?
  32. What knowledge has the use of this technology disclosed to me about others? Is it good to have this knowledge?
  33. What are the potential harms to myself, others, or the world that might result from my use of this technology?
  34. Upon what systems, technical or human, does my use of this technology depend? Are these systems just?
  35. Does my use of this technology encourage me to view others as a means to an end?
  36. Does using this technology require me to think more or less?
  37. What would the world be like if everyone used this technology exactly as I use it?
  38. What risks will my use of this technology entail for others? Have they consented?
  39. Can the consequences of my use of this technology be undone? Can I live with those consequences?
  40. Does my use of this technology make it easier to live as if I had no responsibilities toward my neighbor?
  41. Can I be held responsible for the actions which this technology empowers? Would I feel better if I couldn’t?

(Do Artifacts Have Ethics, L.M. Sacasas)

Questions towards technologies #2

  • What is the totality of its effects, its “ecology”?
  • How does it affect our perception of our needs?
  • How does it affect our way of seeing and experiencing the world?
  • Does it foster a diversity of forms of knowledge?
  • What does it make?
  • What does it allow us to ignore?
  • Is it the least imposing technology available for the task?
  • Can it be responsive to organic circumstance?
  • Does it concentrate or equalize power?
  • Does it require a bureaucracy for its perpetuation?
  • Does it cause ugliness?
  • What noise does it make?
  • What pace does it set?
  • […]

(From 76 Reasonable Questions to ask about any technology by Jacques Ellul)

Questions towards technologies #1

  1. “What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?”
  2. “Whose problem is it?”
  3. “Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?”
  4. “What new problems might be created because we have solved this problem?”
  5. “What sort of people and institutions might acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?”
  6. “What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?”

(Neil Postman)

Umberto Eco on Macintosh vs. DOS

https://jowett.web.cern.ch/jowett/EcoMACDOS.htm

VisiCalc

Early spreadsheet software, to be considered the first “killer app” for Personal Computing and the first application that convinced people to invest in whole systems (the Apple II). First software that went through a whole software career cycle, until its decline fueled by competitor “Lotus 1-2-3”. Also notable for its good documentation at that time.

http://www.bricklin.com/history/sai.htm

Ted Nelson / Concepts & Prototypes


1965, Side-by-side connected comparison of parallel documents


1972, Transpointing windows


1999, PYXI viewer by Ka-Ping Yee


2014, OpenXanadu by Ted Nelson and Nicholas Levin

Key concepts
Xanalogical structure
Parallel documents / Transpointing windows
Annotation
Deep links
Deep versioning and re-use (transclusion)
Xanalinks
Stretchtext
Intertwingledness

Links
http://ted.hyperland.net
http://xanadu.com/xUniverse-D6
http://xanadu.com.au/ted/XUsurvey/xuDation.html
http://xanadu.com/XUarchive/htn8.tif
JS implementation of Stretchtext
ZigZag database system

Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization

http://datavis.ca/milestones/

Pens as “natural” input

Fidelity and minimal latency as the thresholds for analogueness of digital media?

http://www.wired.com/

Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. / John Keats

Medieval Books / Erik Kwakkel

Nice blog about medieval book culture and reading practices. Especially interesting for example a post about bookmarking techniques.

http://medievalbooks.nl

Future Tools Blog

http://blogs.lgru.net/ft/

Notes for a Liberated Computer Language / Alex Galloway, Eugene Thacker

“We worry about the imaginary, supplemental alphabets starting with letter twenty-seven. This is the impulse behind our notes for a liberated computer language, to re-introduce new noisy alphabets into the rigid semantic zone of informatic networks. […] We consider there to be little difference between living informatic networks and the universal informatic languages and standards used to define and sculpt them. If the languages are finite, then so, unfortunately, are the life possibilities. Thus a new type of language is needed, a liberated computer language for the articulation of political desires in today’s hostile climate of universal informatics.” (“The Exploit: A Theory of Networks”)

http://r-s-g.org/LCL/

culturemachine.net

Free journal for culture and theory.
http://www.culturemachine.net

Big Data

“The Petabyte Age is different because more is different. Kilobytes were stored on floppy disks. Megabytes were stored on hard disks. Terabytes were stored in disk arrays. Petabytes are stored in the cloud. As we moved along that progression, we went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to — well, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies.

This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.”

“The End of Theory”, Chris Anderson in WIRED (+ weitere Kurzartikel zum Thema)

http://www.wired.com/

I read where I am

Book and website with essays about future forms of reading. Free to read online.

http://www.ireadwhereiam.com/

Myriahedral Projections

“A myriahedron is a polyhedron with a very large number of faces. For this reason, we call the results myriahedral projections. In step 2 and 3, this myriahedron is cut open and unfolded. The resulting maps have a large number of interrupts, but are (almost) conformal and conserve areas.”

http://www.win.tue.nl/

Serendipity Engine / Enquiry Machine

“Each of the components of The Serendipity Engine will highlight problems observed by digital theorists, designers and technologists with the way the Web currently works – linguistic barriers, echo chambers – by proposing one vision of how the technology can be re-tooled to increase serendipitous encounters.”
“[…] the aim is to render visible other factors that could produce more inclusive digital technologies that better-represent being human in code.”
“[…] render visible the labour of knowledge making.”

http://katjungnickel.com/
http://theserendipityengine.tumblr.com/
http://alekskrotoski.com/

…das Fremdeste paarend und das Nächste trennend…

Friedrich Nietzsche

http://www.gleichsatz.de/

Prototype theory / Labov Experiment

Labov investigated the borders of words and concepts and the working of categorization in everyday communication. In a study drawings of “containers” with different formal characteristics where shown to participants. They had to assign them with either “cup”, “bowl” or “vase”. The decision gradually changed when they where asked to imagine the object filled with flowers or mashed potatoes for example. The categorization seems to be context dependent and fuzzy. Prototype theory in general states that we imagine categories of things around a strong member or representative of the category. It often refers to Wittgenstein’s concept of “Familienähnlichkeit” (family likeness).

http://fak1-alt.kgw.tu-berlin.de/
http://pyersqr.org/

Gerhard Dirmoser

Theoretical occupation with diagrams, forms of order, forms of thinking and transformation in own diagrams.

“Formfragen als Ordnugsfragen” (PDF)
http://gerhard_dirmoser.public1.linz.at/

Pattern Language / Christopher Alexander

A collection of 250 situations / scenarios / pattern of problems in architecture and urban planning. Images, texts and diagrams explain each situation and propose solutions. Structured in three parts from macro to micro (towns, buildings, construction). Meant as an instruction of modular solutions with the effort to enable more lively, integrated and beautiful architecture.

http://www.patternlanguage.com

The use of a diagram enables us to create a new way of relating to the unknown, of unfolding the dynamics of orientation in the world.

Alexander Gerner in “Diagrammatic Thinking” in “Atlas of Transformation”

Visual Proof


1 + 3 + 5 + … + (2n − 1) = n^2

Diagrams and their potential to make mathematical relations evidently visible, to proof them solely (previous knowledge assumed) by visual means.

http://www.billthelizard.com/
http://mathoverflow.net/

It has to be about making other forms of reality imaginable and thus possible.

Composite Photography / Francis Galton

Multiplied photographs used as a method to constitute “deviant” social groups in the 19th century. Francis Galton for example tried to construct visual evidence of universal physiognomic characteristics of jewish or criminally accused people to argue for his problematic theory of inheritance. Visual methods are exploited to construct and affirm a social order.

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/

The city is not a tree / Christopher Alexander

In his essay Alexander distinguishes to structural principles, the rigid “tree” and the “semilattice”, that allows for intersections between elements. He argues that people tend to reduce complex issues conceptually on trees, that it’s even impossible to think in the “semilattice”. He is concerned about the dangers of this conceptual reduction he also sees in architecture and design projects.

Part 1, Part 2

“eine gewisse chinesische Enzyklopädie” / Jorge Luis Borges

“die Tiere, die sich wie folgt gruppieren:
a) Tiere, die dem Kaiser gehören,
b) einbalsamierte Tiere,
c) gezähmte,
d) Milchschweine,
e) Sirenen,
f) Fabeltiere,
g) herrenlose Hunde,
h) in diese Gruppierung gehörige,
i) die sich wie Tolle gebärden,
k) die mit einem ganz feinen Pinsel aus Kamelhaar gezeichnet sind,
l) und so weiter,
m) die den Wasserkrug zerbrochen haben,
n) die von weitem wie Fliegen aussehen”

Aus “Die analytische Sprache des John Wilkins”, 1966
Zitiert im Vorwort zu Foucaults “Die Ordnung der Dinge”, 1974

Radical cartography

“Something about how maps can reveal everyday practices of power.” Some examples of critical projections and mapping techniques.

http://www.radicalcartography.net/

Who gains from this construction of reality?

Toys, Tricks and Tools

“Es wird gespielt, getrickst und getan — und zwar mit allerhand Werkzeug. Wann wird aus einem Gestalter ein Ingenieur der nur auf Grund seiner Apparaturen, Erfindungen und Kniffe ein Versprechen auf Individualität abgeben kann? Ist die Herstellung einer Maschine, einer definierten Herangehensweise der konzeptionelle Befreiungsschlag gegen eine glattgedachte Allgemeingestaltung? Oder ist sie bloss ein Kunstgriff um sich aus der Verantwortung zu stehlen? Sind Gestalter moderne Alchimisten? Wie kritisch auch immer man sich diesem Thema nähern mag, unbestritten bleibt, dass diese Toys, Tricks und Tools eine Faszination ausstrahlen die weit über die simple Stilsicherheitsfrage hinausreichen.”

Designblast 2011