Chapter 35

1985
Donna Haraway

• created the idea of a cyborg "socialist-feminist" as opposed to the image of the goddess, "the cyborg engages in the here and now"
• Haraway enjoys that the cyborg is not working towards regaining an imagined purity, but can embrace the boundaries of dualism
• her work had a large impact on "progressive scholarship in science and technology"
• "I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess"

It's an interesting idea to use the image of a cyborg for a new form of feminism. I would have to agree that I'd rather be a cyborg than a goddess, but I'm not sure I understand her complete perspective as it relates to feminism. I sort of see her ideas as pertaining to both genders, and I enjoy how she has embraced the dualism. If we can understand black and white but live in the gray I think we can be much more effective in working with society.

Chapter 34

1984
Sherry Turkle

• video games become hugely popular in the 1980's
• wrote The Second Self, which explained how different age groups worked with computers
• approached computer technology from a basis in psychoanalysis (human-computer interaction)
• understood the beginning of the "avatar"
• in her second book Life on the Screen, she explores how our interactions with computers can affect how we see ourselves and the world around us
• considered Dungeons and Dragons to be an important antecedant to many computer adventure games
• discovered that as much as designers would like, gamers are not as concerned with narrative and story-telling in their game-play

I'm sure it may be true for many gamers that the narrative is unimportant, but I feel otherwise. After listening to Noah Wardrip-Fruin talk about video game narrative, I feel like there is still hope. There seem to be many ways to improve the stories and dialogues in a game, and personally, I really enjoy video games with great stories. (This may, in part, be due to the fact that as a child I much preferred to watch my brother play video games, than to play them, so games like Final Fantasy were my favorites.) I'm much more likely to pick up a game with an interesting story line than the hundreds of games that all have the same narrative where you are given a weapon and must kill everyone you can find and steal their belongings, honestly I've had enough of those.

Chapter 33

1983
Ben Shneiderman - Direct manipulation

• proposed that it would be more effective to instruct the computer in a more graphic way, rather than command language
• this idea informed: graphical user interface, visual programming environments, and other systems
• direct manipulation: seems to imitate the outside world via metaphor/representation
• advantages of this system can be seen with graphical applications (Photoshop)
• uses images that we are familiar with to represent mostly equivalent computer programs/commands

Chapter 32

1983
Ben Bagdikian

• new media often over takes old, but sometimes they begin to integrate themselves
• 6 companies now dominate all of US mass media
  
• will all media become integrated into these companies, or will the expansion of the Internet overcome this
• more and more internet companies are preventing users from transmitting too much data, and often prohibiting public servers

This is my biggest fear! This is what my entire concentration boils down to, media is converging, we are losing the freedom and wonderful anarchistic democracy of the internet, what is going to happen to culture!? If I have to, I will work the rest of my life to overcome this ungodly monopoly of power over the media, this is not the way it works in every other country, it does not have to be this way in the US.

Chapter 31

1982
Bill Viola

• Viola is one of the "highest-profile of video artists"
• created "70 millimeter" video art
• video art: began as an exploration of the video medium as opposed to film, "reconfigured public and industrial conceptions of the video image"
• poetic approach to video
• created the Aspen Movie-Map - mapped onto a system that was familiar, with the challenge to create something new and surprising
• questions how we use language

I'm always for artists who question the everyday, who rework familiar concepts to create unfamiliar new ideas. Video art has always really interested me and it was really in its prime with the era of the "Happenings". I took a class at Gallatin where we were able to play around with video art and explore what happens when you stop trying to make a narrative and just enjoy the instrument; it was fantastic.

Trip to Chelsea

Our trip began on the Highline which is a favorite New York treasure of mine. I love that hidden in plain sight all throughout the city are these great cultural monuments and I'm particularly excited to see some of the art installations along the path. We passed the Gehry building on our way towards the first gallery and I was amazed I'd never really noticed it before. Autumn and I decided it should only be allowed for artists' studio spaces because corporate businesses wouldn't appreciate such great architecture. (Some day I hope this is true,maybe we'll at least have our studios there.)
Our first stop was the Postmasters gallery which when you first walk in seems pretty abstract. However, after the curator explained to us the exhibit and the concept of data visualization I was really intrigued. I loved each of his pieces almost purely as opportunities to alter my perspective. I love when an artist asks me to rethink the way I see the world. His piece representing the night sky of the battle of Troy was inspiring; the details that went into its creation were fantastic.
Next we went to see Bitforms, which was opening its new exhibit that evening. I was completely drawn in by its pieces that redefined space, text, and sound, again asking me to rethink my perspective. I was particularly pleased by one of the artist's play with typography by creating the giant vagina with multilingual text.
I think, however, that I was most impressed with the last gallery we went to see, Eyebeam. Especially for our generation which has seen much of our social lives turn into the "screen," it was so refreshing to see people looking for ways to bring it back out again while still maintaining our fascination with technology. It gives me so much hope that a place like this exists to put faith in artists, engineers, and inventors to come up with new ideas and challenge the status quo.

Chapter 30

1981
Theodor H. Nelson

• proposed a universal electronic Publishing System and Archive, similar in function to Bush's Memex device
• give everyone the ability to produce their own documents and connect them to anyone elses public documents, with the ability to edit any version of any text, theirs or others public files
• envisioned a company who would be in charge of running this network and each member of the network would pay a small fee to access each document, in the same way we pay the utilities companies

My first impression of Nelson's text was that he seems extremely condescending. I just wanted to say to him stop blabberng about how we might not understand or want to take the time to read through and just say what you want. If I've taken the time to start reading, why are you trying to deter me? "Suggestions are welcome, if you are sure you understand the design first." This kind of statement made me care so much less about his really intereting archival ideas. What Nelson has come up with is very complex but also complete in that, if this program were fully developed it could easily be implemented.

Chapter 29

1980
Richard A. Bolt

• Bolt created a program called "Put-That-There" which inspired combined speech and gesture input, embedded computing and a computer interface that is more like spoken conversation
• provided a way to view data on two-dimensional screens in a three-dimensional simulation
• developed multimodal interfaces to communicate more effectively with the computer in a more humanistic way
• if voice recognition becomes popular it would change the way we use and understand computers
• he created an entire room "the media room" at MIT instead of simply a desktop that one would sit in front of to apply his multimodal experience
• with voice-gesture conjunction the user can use pronouns

This is an incredible system. I would love this kind of voice-gesture recognition for my own computer, or at least a voice and joystick since I don't have an entire wall to display upon. I still don;t know why voice recognition hasn't taken off because it would be a lot more efficient if the technology were advanced enough.

Chapter 28

1980
Seymour Papert
Mindstorms

• worked to create an environment in which children could use computers as learning tools
• was inspired by the work of Jean Piaget called "constructionism"
• learning in a self-directed, self-motivated way through his programming language LOGO which we began in 1967

I love that the computer can be used as a learning device for kids. Games and interactivity have always been the best way to teach children, at least in my experience, and when children feel like they are in control of the situation they are more willing to actively participate.

Chapter 27

1980
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

• introduced rhizomatic writing - which they did not intend to feature a specific medium or even style, only to describe certain texts
• challenged readers to "reconsider dualism" and according to Foucault, "to be radical without being sad"
• a book is an assemblage of lines articulated and divided with various rates of flow
• attempted to quantify literature "There is no difference between what a book talks about and how it is made. Therefore a book also has no object"
• literature is about dichotomy and reflection it branches out like a tree

It would be hard for me to agree completely to the ideas in this article that I can ascertain and the rest is mostly a blur. I don't feel that all literature can be interpreted without meaning, doesn't that disrespect the author in some way? I can see where they're going with this idea, as a way to make all mediums connected by their innate structure and composition, but I'm not sure how interested I am in removing all meaning from a given work, I would feel cheated.

Chapter 26

1977
Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg

• envisioned the importance of the notebook computer with their Dynabook vision
• understood the computer from a totally different perspective than their peers - believed it would one day be a device used by "educators, business-people and poets" alike for computational and creative purposes
• their ideas were used to create the Star computer by Xerox Systems Development Division
• the interface designed for the Star was later incorporated into Apple's Macintosh
  
• helped to create the Ethernet cable, the mouse, the laser printer, and WYIWYG printing standard for today's computers
• Dynabook: handle all information-related needs (Iphone : check), a programming and problem solving tool, interactive memory, text editor, medium for expression
• the dynabook would allow for human-computer interaction, for the medium to be affected by the user; to be responsive
  
• imagined that there would be no delay in response time
• imagined that children should also be able to use this device

It is incredible that these people had the foresight to envision today's laptop or iphone-like device. They sought to create a computer that could literally be used by everyone, and that everyone's specific needs and wishes could be met. At the time, this would have been incredibly far-fetched but I'm glad they pursued it so that we can have this kind of technology today.

Chapter 25

1977
Myron W. Kruegar

• considered the "father of virtual reality"
• first rejected by and then later accepted by the art community for his innovations which seemed purely technological at the start
• his "aesthetic concerns" were not as easily accepted by the computer world
• believed that "response is the medium"
• meaning is created through interaction with the specific computer system
• technology can be used, not just as a problem solver, but to generate and inspire ideas
• encouraged scientists, artists, engineers to work together

It's true that we still don't often see the connection between technology and aesthetics but I think that we are definitely working towards that goal. There are more and more fields, and types of new media that are incorporating all of these ideas, which we saw very clearly in the exhibits we visited in Chelsea where art, science, and technology come together.

Chapter 24

1976
Joseph Wizenbaum

• discussed the negative consequences of his own technological designs
• urged other scientists and technologists to "take responsibility for the use of that which they discover and develop
• created the "Eliza" system from 1964-1966, which ran a set of scripts called "Doctor" which impersonated a psycho-therapist
• Wizenbaum feared that applications like his that would employ human language would blur the aapropriate functions for technology in a negative way
• the Eliza program inspired others to create other psychiatric simulations lie Kenneth Colby's Perry and Depression 2.0

As Turkle described, I do not believe that programs like Eliza distort our view of humanity because it did not possess enough variability to actually fool someone, but I wonder if a program was created today to act as a therapist would we be able to make a believable one? How would this affect us if we could actually treated and diagnosed by a computer?