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RR response

Ruofan brings up a good point about the tension between beautiful presentation and lack of clarity in the EMUI ad posted by Liping. I will say that the issue with the ad is not necessarily the complexity of the interface, but rather, the disjointed presentation. If we were to reference “Made to Stick” to review why the ad fails in communication, we would immediately notice the ad is not simple or concrete. Much of the frustration from viewing the ad results from a lack of clarity to what is being sold compounded by visual over-stimulation. There is an element of novelty in the stop-motion presentation, (what Heath would refer to as unexpectedness) but it is so disjointed from the core message it creates conflict. In one example outlined in the book, Heath tells a story of a television commercial that depicts a couple pulling up to a school parking lot in a minivan. As a boy holding a football helmet climbs into the minivan, followed by his two younger sisters, an announcers says “Introducing the all-new Enclave.” Dad starts the car and pulls away from the curb: “It’s a minivan to the max.” As the minivan cruises through the suburban streets the announcer lists benefits of the vehicle “full sky view, temperature controlled seats, it’s a minivan for the family on the go, etc.” The Enclave pulls to a stop at an intersection, the camera pans out the side window to reveal a speeding car barreling down the intersection and broadsiding the minivan. After an explosion of glass and metal buckling, the screen fades to black and says “Didn’t see that coming? No one ever does.” Another screen fade of the text is followed by “Buckle up… Always.”

Compare this to another example presented in the book of a marching band who is attacked mid performance by wolves. The result stirred conversation and is highly memorable (sticky) but ultimately serves no purpose because it is impossible to remember what the wolf-band ad was promoting. The buckle up ad works because its element of unexpectedness links directly with its core message. Likewise the EMUI ad would benefit directly from presenting the core message of “look how close this resembles the android interface” through an unexpected presentation. This is, in part, why I think comparing the ideas in made to stick to ‘truthiness’ is a mis-representation. Giving ideas these elements of stickiness does not guarantee you can turn a terrible idea into a useful one. It does however, seek to give great ideas an avenue to be better understood and accepted. Even if stickiness can be applied to non-useful situations (such as the marching band-wolves ad) that is no reason to dismiss it as a practical and useful method of structuring purposeful communication.

- Kees

#Week 13 rr kees

Pirate Response

For this last response piece, I will look a little further into the simplicity / complexity dichotomy that I called attention to yesterday. Brian has already illustrated the presentist issues that I think can be raised with Humanexus, so I will largely avoid them myself.

Humanexus does, however, provide a useful initial example of this dichotomy, presenting human communication before the 19th century as relatively serene and simple. Then, suddenly, the telegraph is invented and the complexity of a technologically mediated society is represented by a crescendo of noise – morse code, radio, TV, and other sounds blend together to overwhelm both the characters and the audience. After exploring different ‘conclusions’ to this evolution of noise, however, there is once again serenity as humanity floats up and out of the morass of modern times.

There is something to be said for this narrative, of course. It is something of a tired cliché to say that humans are bad at multitasking, but it remains true nonetheless. A desire to simplify the many multiples of technological interactions we may have on any given day is reasonable. What is dangerous, however, is the painting of these simple, cheerful interactions as superior to a more complex, morally ambiguous event. Consider Niwa, which I wrote on previously this semester. Niwa painted itself, with the same bright colors, smiling people, and upbeat music, as the simpler way to enjoy wholesome and healthy fruits and vegetables. However, as discussed in class, NIwa causes its own set of problems. Furthermore, studies have shown that food grown outdoors in more traditional urban gardens (as compared to Niwa) is both extremely nutritious and conducive to community building, as residents must work together to construct the necessary gardens. In this way, the complexity of modern society lies in social ties, not the technology that is purported to pull them apart.

#foodforthought

Final Response~ 11/16

The UI designs Liping and I posted made me think about the complexity of design is not necessarily attractive or even helpful to users. The video of Emuij (can’t remember the name…) by Huawei was so fascinating but no one could understand what it told. The touching functions of future car were so fascinating but most people will not be able to remember the many different gestures. Perhaps voice commands will be more practical in cars. Those UI designs that are too complicated to use, no matter how cool the technology is, will lose a large number of lazy users, because most people don’t want to waste much time exploring something unfamiliar and replaceable. Therefore, I think what matters to UI design is not mainly focusing on complexity but on humanization. Easy operation and direct icons will be helpful so that users will not be confused about how and what to do next. Of course, delicate interface is also necessary so that users will be attracted at first glance and desire to use it, but complexity could be improved only based on humanization.

Also, I want to say the project shown by Norbert at the beginning of yesterday’s class was amazing. It combines elements all around the world and reminds me of my family. I remember in the video one couple sitting one the bed and playing their own devices without any communication, which reminds me of my parents. After dinner, they sit on different ends of the sofa, playing card games without talking to each other except when they meet in the same room of the game… In the past, the idea of physical proximity and attentional proximity were seen as one and the same, but now the notion of “where I’m with” and “where my mind is” is being transformed on the back of wireless technologies. Essentially, attentional proximity on the back of this technology has been disjointed from physical proximity.

Soundart

https://www.facebook.com/tunecollective/videos/1021591434559873/

R Response - Humanexus

Discussing the Humanexus film, which attempts to describe a large portion of human existence in a few minutes, there are a number of comments that can be made about the film’s attitude towards history and technology. I should disclose, of course, that as a millennial I fall into the social group discussed and criticised. I am also highly introverted, prefer solitude, and dislike being outdoors so I am not capable of commenting on this in an unbiased fashion (I would have been an amazing focus tester for the Nature Valley advert).

As I mentioned, I find the emphasis on the present’s problems as somewhat myopic, as all of the technologies seen before the modern era would have prompted the questions “Is this what we want? What do we want?” to those living at the time. Complaints about the decline of civilised and moral standards appear to be ubiquitous throughout history, with the most recent past example of television having since largely gone by the wayside, likely because there are few living now who did not grow up on TV. Cultures change and humans adapt to those changes. Assuming our basic needs are met, humans are quite stable in happiness over their lifetimes and so if the film’s dystopia were to occur, our descendants would likely not think of it as such.

Aside from this rather more cynical approach, I think that another reason why younger students would respond quite poorly to this film is a dispute over the conceptualisation of socialising. An issue I’ve seen numerous times in sociological and educational pieces decrying millennial social attitudes is that millennials generally disagree with many of the pre-established notions of friendships and socialising. This relates to the strong-tie / weak-tie issue, where millennials seem to not possess a normal amount of close relationships because the measures for strong-ties do not work in the internet medium millennials use. When they are presented with research saying they are socially isolated it directly contradicts their own perception of themselves, after which they dismiss whatever the speaker is saying.

Aside from this digression, I think one thing that I would have liked in the film is more of a sense of wonder and awe at how remarkable the emergence of communications technologies really were back when they developed. It is so difficult for us to conceive of a world without language or writing that it would have been appreciated for these technologies to not seem like a deterministic progression but like the revolutions that they were. The restraints of space and time were shattered by the development of writing alone, allowing us to communicate a message to the other side of the world long after our own deaths. Moreover, the film does cheat somewhat by complaining that modern technology isolates us without granting that writing had the potential to do so as well. The old man writing on his scroll could easily have been depicted as withdrawn, but was not. This misses the opportunity to foreshadow (which would have been an interesting parallel between written and spoken language) but it also misses the opportunity to observe that the social problem discussed in new in ubiquity, but is not a completely new phenomenon.

A new UI design of phone

AR Storytelling (with video)

http://www.technavio.com/blog/augmented-reality-is-changing-the-way-we-work-learn-and-tell-stories

An innovative concept of touch interface for cars in the future

Network Effect explores the psychological effect of Internet use on humanity.

“To create Network Effect, Harris and his co-creator Greg Hochmuth, a data scientist who worked at Google, Facebook, and Instagram, culled 10,000 videos from the Internet. They used Amazon Mechanical Turk workers to target one-second clips of people performing actions, and then created landing pages for a slew of ultra-basic verbs (think, “chew,” “open,” “swim”). They then wrote a custom string of code that queries Google News and Twitter, to pull in Internet activity including those key action words. As the clips flash by on each page, those nuggets of text scroll by underneath, like aBloomberg News terminal ticker.

There’s a bottomless well of activity to voyeur through inNetwork Effect. Harris and Hochmuth built in untold layers of data, so you can leave the verb-based pages and attempt a deep dive on, say, the gender breakdown of people tweeting about stretching, or the reasons people say they’re praying. “Attempt,” because however interested you are, you’ll barely scratch the surface: the site imposes a time limit on you, based on the average life expectancy in the region attached to your IP address. The message, if you need it spelled out, is to stop staring at a glowing screen and go live.”

Writing

Print Writing vs. Computer Writing vs. Sticky Writing

Why not, a classic

I’ll post something that actually exists later, but the pedant in me wants to complain about the Made to Stick reading. The word creativity is used here in an odd fashion. While I normally approve of intersubjective understandings of reality, words need to actually mean something to effectively communicate, and creativity doesn’t actually mean anything here. Especially in the example of the Israeli ad test, they use creative, but creative by the standards of common usage, and common usage is not reliable at finding real definitions. If creativity does not possess novelty, why are we using this word? Optimised is perhaps a better term.

I would also like to note that communication that preys upon humanity’s cognitive biases might meant he communication is effective from a memetic sense, but that gives no guarantee that the information provided is in any way true or rational. Survival of the fittest does not have room for truth, only truthiness. Actually, sure, let’s just watch that clip.

Wearables

http://www.onionstudios.com/videos/new-nike-running-app-tells-you-what-youre-really-running-from-2154

Purchase your own MaKey MaKey Original Invention Kit here: http://www.amazon.com/MaKey-Original-Invention-Kit/dp/B008SFLEPE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369157179...

In response to Ruofan’s reading. They mention Makey Makey, and I’ve always liked this example of how it is used. A new meaning to the term ‘tasty beats’. Or maybe ‘sick beets’? Idk there’s bound to be a bunch of rotten puns here. - Kees

#fruitpuns week13 kees

Tumblr...why did it have to be Tumblr...

There are many places I could take the conversation about historicity and ahistoricity – coming off of watching the most recent Republican Primary Debate one of the most immediate concerns is the use of historical events as justifications for political arguments. While such appeals are usually more respected than, say, an appeal to authority (and the claims made tonight were largely completely erroneous), it is still dangerous to make even a reasonable historical claim out of context because of the nuance of the matter – accurately assessing a historical event or artifact can be difficult. I think Brian is correct in his assessment of the “House of the Future” and Corning promotion, but the RR group might as well complicate the arguments of the R group.

On its surface, the “House of the Future” is the view that people in the 1950s had of what life in the future might be like. However, it is an advertisement, and so one must question whether this is a vision of what the future might be like, or of what the producer of the advertisement would like the future to be like. Even more accurately, it may be what the producer of the advertisement would like people in the present to believe that the future will be like. It’s turtles all the way down after that. Further, it is, as Brian rightly points out, what American middle class whites think the future might look like. Many assumptions are made about the socioeconomic value of that future, a point I made on Monday by heckling the video. I encourage interested readers to take a look at this video as a case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dTaYXBYPTM

Here we see what Britons in the 1960s thought the future might be like. But, again, what other motivations might exist? This is a BBC production, after all, so the vision might not be as clear as it seems now.

#THEFUTUREISNOW

Week 12

I’ve recently been throwing around the idea that necessity isn’t the mother of invention, but rather laziness is. It started off as more of a joke than anything else, but as I observe the direction of recent developments in technology, it becomes more salient, at least to me. Aside from the obvious economic gain in promoting technological advancement in the name of capitalism, most of the motivation behind any sort of progress seems to be to make life a little easier for humanity. There is a distinct lack of discovery in the name of necessity, and when there is the possibility of some sort of break-through, either medical, societal, or otherwise, it usually turns into a way to make money instead of helping the human race. For example, the guy who decides to sell HIV medication for $750 per pill isn’t trying to save the human race with new discoveries or advancements. He’s capitalizing off of the desperation of AIDS patients because he’s a drug dealer. Why would this guy want to contribute to research aimed at making a cure or vaccine (an advancement that would be a redemption in the name of necessity as far as I’m concerned) when he can make so much money from the treatments? The entire internet seems so shocked at the fact that this guy is only concerned with making his money, but that’s what capitalism is for. Charge people way too much for medicine, and new iPhones and fuel, and all of the other crap that no one actually needs, so they stay complacent, poor, and better yet, sick. Some would say that it’s a cynical worldview, and I don’t necessarily disagree, but I also think that there is an obvious imbalance in discovery in the name of necessity/progress, and “discovery” in the name of the all mighty dollar disguised as “convenience.” Patents and copyright laws were intended to promote innovation and culture in our country, and to ensure that the people at the front lines of those discoveries would be able to make a living while continuing to innovate. Since then they have been bastardized and twisted to benefit the corporations who innovate to the point of overwhelming wealth, then do everything in their power to maintain the status-quot in their favor. If real innovative progress is to be made in areas that have the opportunity to actually change the world, or at least the human race, then it will have to be made by a society that places more value in those things than they do in money.

RR Week 12

I would like to build on Brian’s idea of “a vision of the future that lacks any insight into what the future may bring to anything besides convenience.” As mentioned, a large part of this is due to it being a vessel for promotion of a material, but I would not go so far to assume it suggests an aversion to change. The interesting thing about predicting future technologies or culture shifts is that it walks a line between speculations of ‘known unknown’ and ‘unknown unknown’. There are things we know we don’t know: such as communication could be more efficient, we just don’t know how best to improve our interactions or what ramifications these changes might bring (such as the Google car morality issue we discussed). Then there are things we don’t even know that we don’t know. The absence of an example here is the example. This is in way of saying that it is difficult to oppose an idea that is impossible to perceive. Or rather, the opposition itself is not difficult (in terms of ability to perform) but any alternate idea cannot be considered as ‘opposing’ because it holds no relation to the original idea in the moment. Of course this is not in direct relation to the example of the nuclear family, as other forms of family existed and could be perceived, but some empathy should be given to past versions of society (and even past versions of ourselves) when we consider their/our response to certain ideas. To jump back quickly to the idea of convenience, what is technology other than convenience? (I am not suggesting that there is no alternative purpose, just that I am curious what other comparative terms can be used.)

I also wanted to throw in a small thought on Tyler’s Sin City reading, I was sad that his reading escaped mention in class. The silhouette styling in the comic book does an amazing job of leverage negative space, depicting the space around an object rather than the object itself to add emphasis or create an alternate meaning. One salient example is the hole (no black ink was used) left in the protagonist’s chest to signify and add emphasis to his scar. I tie this into our discussions from past classes in a point Kyle brought up on a thought Alex mentioned: it is just as important to think about what an idea or theory is not to better understand what it is. (Sorry for butchering via paraphrase).

- Kees

#RR response Week 12

R Response

Norbert made a comment that I found interesting about the House of the Future: namely, that it didn’t look particularly futuristic for being a “House of the Future.” Partially I think that this is based on the house being made almost entirely out of plastic, which doesn’t look spectacular at the best of times (at best, plastics can mimic the look of nicer materials). I think also that there is something more important, though, about the past’s concept of the future.

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” is a popular quote, but not one that is easily remembered. While it is important to embrace our shared humanity across time, it is important to remember that certain time periods had drastically different norms and hopes. Looking at their visions of the future are an excellent way to examine these differences. It is no coincidence that the Fallout games did so well after shifting from being a game series themed around just the post-apocalypse to also being about what sort of culture could dream about the 1950s and 1960s American vision of the future.

The “House of the Future” demonstrates a vision of the future that lacks any insight into what the future may bring to anything besides convenience. This is largely due to it being a commercial, but it also shows a blindness in the 1950s to any need for change. The family of the future was effectively the same as the family of the present, just with nicer home appliances. Why would the current family want to change, after all? America had just saved the world and everyone was upper-middle-class, white, and living in the suburbs with 2.5 children. This is obviously false, but if you watch educational and promotional materials from the 1950s and 1960s one could be forgiven for thinking that the entire country was a suburb like Pleasantville (an excellent film, by the way).

There is something similar in the Corning promotion, as well, where everyone is an upper-middle class professional, but the Corning promotion also demonstrated that in this future, there is effectively no reason to have face-to-face interaction and that everything can be done via glass. Space is utterly shattered as a restriction for communication, and so behaviours have changed.

These utopian visions display far more about the cultures that create them than a promotional piece would normally indicate. The House of the Future and the Corning Glass World both emphasise convenience, but the House of the Future seems strangely static. Its creators wanted a future made of plastic, and it appears as mass-produced and lifeless as we normally think of plastic.

Addendum: There are amazing educational videos on Youtube from the 1950s that show more of their vision of the future and their culture of nuclear fear. Search for Young America Films, which was affiliated with McGraw-Hill textbook publishers and produced many educational films that show very odd (or horribly offensive) attitudes at times.

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