PostModern Dissonance

How much do we read online?

2008-05-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

Jakob Nielsen's latest article, How Little Do Users Read? has some shocking conclusions!

About 20% of the text on your site!!!

Wow, that sounds extremely low to me, but it sounds like he did a good job analyzing the data.

What does this mean for us?

Well, I think Steve Krug's advice to cut your content in half and then cut it in half again seems to be pretty accurate.

In general, I think it's important to be ruthless about putting your pages on the chopping block and getting rid of all the excess fat (Nielsen calls it Blah-blah text).

Your pages should only contain the most important information. That's right. No Welcome! No corporate fluff. No thanks for visiting my site. Just tell people what the site is for and give context to the other pages in the site (or, as Jared Spool would say, give them more of a scent of information). Help lead your readers down the path they're looking for. Help them to find what they're looking for.

Usability or User Experience?

2008-04-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

RE: Usability or User Experience?

I've been thinking about these terms recently anyway, so when I came across this article, I knew that I wasn't the only one.

Usability used to be the umbrella term, but it's been replaced with 'user experience.' 'Usability' has come to mean easy to use and tends to be mostly focused on usability testing and making a product usable.

User Experience is a broader term which takes other factors into account: how people are using the tool or web site and the Brand. The article uses a great example of Apple products: I love them too! My iPhone is a joy to use and it does everything so effortlessly.

My job title is actually User Experience Specialist II. I like the sound of that. Not only am I just conducting research to understand user needs, I am helping design the experience of using the product or site.

I think we can all think more broadly about the application of user research to experience because then you're getting more towards user needs and goals and what's not only functional, but pleasurable to use.

A step closer to the Matrix

2008-04-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

RE: Matrix-style virtual worlds 'a few years away'

Yup, you heard me... we're getting closer to the Matrix becomming a reality. That's kinda scarry, isn't it? With the brilliance of the Matrix Trilogy still in the back of my mind, it's a bit ironic that we're working towards even more photo-realism in virtual worlds.

Sure, the concept is cool. Who doesn't want to take a vaction on the beach for 5 minutes during an especially cold and rainy day at the office?

But one of the central messages of The Matrix is to break free from computer-mediated reality into REALITY. The real. I.e. not virtual.

I was reading a bit of Baudrilliard recently as well as some Emerson. I feel torn between the real and the imaginary, the virtual world of the internet and the real world of cities, the dream of living life on MySpace versus hiking in Nature.

OK, now don't freak out... I really don't want to live my life on MySpace, but for a lot of people, it's becoming the new social hangout.

I think the more we come back into reality and away from the virtual, the better off we'll be as a human race. I almost see this as a step back... regardless of how cool it is.

Moderation. Yeah, that's it. Let's just keep everything in moderation.

Problems with Walled Gardens

2008-03-31T11:50:00.000-07:00

A resposne to Jakob Nielsen:

"In 1999, I wrote an article "Metcalfe's Law in Reverse" about the problems of so-called walled gardens, where a service cuts itself off from the Internet and tries to add value by being closed."

On NPR yesterday, there was a segment on Bit Torrent and how it worked by grabbing only bits of content from disparate sources. A side note to the story was the certain ISPs (Comcast, actually) were attempting to block the traffic on their network for file sharing programs such as Bit Torrent.

Jakob Nielsen brought this same argument up back in 1999 and concluded that it will fail.

"Facebook and the current generation of social networks are trying to replicate the walled garden strategy that failed ten years ago. It'll fail again."
The idea is that by closing off the network, it will promote value, but as Metcalfe has shown, the larger network will prevail. Will it prevail in large corporations? When will we stop purchasing external systems that won't talk to each other and start integrating them into a cohesive user experience?

I think we need to be working towards integration, not exclusion.

Netiquette: Response to David Pogue

2006-12-22T10:49:00.000-08:00

Response to David Pogue's The Netiquette Diaries

I've had similar experiences in online communities where people have gone seemingly out of their way to be rude to me. At first, I was just hurt. Then something else occurred to me...

There is this sense that everyone and everything out there on the internet is there just for me-that we are somehow entitled to it because we have the ability to browse for information about anything we like at the tip of our fingertips.

This "My way right away" philosophy is causing our culture to expect this out of everything. What started as a sales ploy of Burger King became a national epidemic of selfishness.

On the internet, each of us are the most important thing and everything (and everyone) else are just there for our entertainment, enjoyment, criticism and disdain. It doesn't have to be malicious, and most of the time, I don't think it's meant to be-we've just come to expect that it's all here for us.

This mentality is not only found on the internet. American culture these days fosters it.

Two other comments resonated with me:

There are a lot of angry people out there; there are also a lot of stupid people out there.
Anonymity may be the culprit-it's much easier to say things when they aren't to someone's face.
Once we start being accountable for what we say and do on the internet, I think people will start being nicer to each other-without that accountability... well, you see what we get.

Response to: How Usable is Jakob Nielsen?

2006-09-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

In response to How Usable is Jakob Nielsen?

While I don’t hold Jakob Nielsen up to Guru status, I do find his comments accurate and thought provoking. In the realm of web design and usability, I believe it’s important to survey the entire industry, not a single person. Thus, we should all be reading as much as we can from several different sources in order to balance out our own views of current trends in web design and usability.

It seems that this particular article was mostly a personal attack on Jakob-that he had conflicts of interest, that he doesn’t care about graphic design, that he has a bad writing style, etc. These personal attacks, while they may be true, don’t affect the content of his articles. I still think he has good things to say, though I would not base my entire opinion on usability on one person’s views, be it Jakob or Jared or Edward (Tufte) or Ben (Schneiderman)… (I could list several more here).

As for the argument of visual design, I completely agree. Jakob is entirely focused on usability-does the site work? If the answer is yes, then you’ve met his goal. However, there can be a marriage between graphic design and usability; form and function. I believe that as technical communicators, as web developers, as content owners, as graphic designers that is our job.

An interesting side note on the use of blue for links: Anatomy has shown that blue is the worst color to use because there are actually no blue cones in the fovea of the eye. This means that we can only perceive the color blue indirectly. When we focus on something, we use the fovea of the eye. The fovea allows us to focus on something about the size of a thumbnail held at arm’s length. We can only see blue using our peripheral vision, that is, outside of the fovea because we literally have NO blue receptors (cones) in the fovea.

Jakob should not have a “Monopoly on Usability Consciousness.” That doesn’t mean we don’t listen to what he says, it just means that we apply it with a grain of salt.

PostGrad Thoughts

2006-08-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

I've been realizing just how much grad school took out of me. Busy-ness seems to be part of the PostModern condition. Our lives are fast-paced whether we like it or not... or are they?

I've been recently trying to focus on simplification. Choosing activities that are meaningful and important to me, instead of just things that fill my time.

My Would-Be Dissertation Topic

2006-04-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

I am fascinated by how technology and culture interact in the 21st Century... dare I say, the postmodern age? ;-) It's a bad word in my degree as it's a science degree, based on conducting research based on observable facts, whereas we all have a different experience of the internet and a different relationship to it, (kinda phenominological, eh?)... the pathos of the inernet affects us differently and based on where we go, shapes our virtual world.

It is sometimes easier to talk to strangers than people you know. Social networking sites (SNS) make the initial connection easier-you can select based on pre-defined search criteria or interests (stated, assumed, or just "visual interest").

I think that when we find a REAL connection with people, regardless of how that connection started, we should embrace it. We can chat about the weather all day (as our society has grown accustomed to speaking of such banal things to strangers). I say, cut the BS, get down to what people actually care about, what REALLY matters, what people actually feel and need... and we'll get to a better place in our society.

Once a computer-mediated communication event occurs, each party decides on how much to let their "true" selves show and that determines future interactions. We're all under some kind of guise or another, but I think the more honest we are the better. The more we turn virtual communication into real world communication, the better off we'll be as well.

Online Worlds

2006-03-25T10:19:00.000-08:00

Online social spaces seem to be replacing physical meeting spaces for teenagers and 20-somethings. Most people don't go to coffee shops or bars to meet people anymore, they go online. Some MySpace groups are an online extension of an originally physical group that existed in reality-for many online groups, it goes the other way (group first, maybe meeting in the real world later).

I've done a couple term papers now on online dating and social networking-I'll eventually have them on my portfolio page (www.joshlamar.com/portfolio.htm), but until then, if you're interested, I can send them out to you :-)

I've been fascinated in looking at the role of technology in our lives and in our futures... we can't seem to get away from the internet and online communication is all but replacing "snail mail" (though not for some of you, I realize). This does produce a bit of backlash - I am very anti-media only because of the political economy of some big-wig at the top of Time-Warner telling the country what to think by his selection of what shows/commercials get put on TV... That really scares me. There's also the resurgence of letter-writing and coming back to nature.

I live in Downtown Seattle (Belltown, if you're familiar with the area-just south of the Space Needle). I couldn't get more urban in the northwest. I live amidst concrete and honking cars. I think that we have to be careful about how much we let technology and the media take over our lives and shape our thinking.

Spam and Double Spam

2006-02-17T14:30:00.000-08:00

OK, we all get spam and we all hate it. But today, I received double spam from four separate sources. That is, I got the same e-mail twice in a row from four different sources. My junk mailbox looked like this:

Spam A

Spam A

Spam B

Spam B

Spam C

Spam C

Spam D

Spam D

Pretty bad, eh? Is spam doubling with the speed of the rest of technology? This is so frustrating!

Friendster: Friend or Foe?

2006-02-16T23:25:00.000-08:00

Friendster-good or evil? Friend or foe? Danah Boyd’s paper, “Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networking,” posits we may know less about this beast than we think. An important distinction Boyd makes is that HCI conforms not only to the architecture, but to the “Social norms and values that emerge through extended use and diverse populations,” (Boyd, 2004). Basically, that there is a human element to the creation of software, be it on the web or otherwise. She recommends that designers “consider the extensibility of the usability of their creation,” (ibid.) that is to say, research how people actually use it.

In the case of Friendster, it seems that the original designers intended it to be for dating. That one person’s connection to another is inherently valuable and that we can utilize that connection to befriend others, second or third degree “friends” or potential dates by viewing the visible network of our friends. Ay, there’s the rub: by explicitly displaying everyone’s network, Boyd argues that we loose our ability to be the negotiating force between introducing our friends. From the perspective of political economy, we thus give up our power willfully in order for the greater good (sounds like Marxism on the Net, eh?) in order to be a part of the big online club that everyone’s a part of.

Friendster assumes that we will all accurately portray ourselves in order to create meaningful connections. However, this is problematic, because of the nature of the site, you create a profile once and then it continues to exist in time-fixed. Stuck. When in reality, we are fluid, ever-changing beings who may be one person online one day and another person tomorrow. The profile reflects the best in us-or the self that we want to portray online to others.

It was interesting to read about the two people users fear to find: the boss and the mother. As generation Z all have cell phones, it makes sense that they all have Friendster accounts! Just the other day, my 13 year old sister sent me a friend request on a very similar social networking site, myspace. How could I deny her? She is family-not necessarily a “friend,” but it would be considered socially inappropriate to deny a family member the right to take place in a site where “friendship” is so loosely defined anyway. I look at my friends on Friendster and many of them are actual friends. It has become a way for me to keep in touch with long lost friends-and generally, that’s a good thing. However, I do have some people on there that are not “real” friends. (And it is similar on myspace, which I use more frequently because I’ve gotten so many random e-mails from girls directing me to their porn sites-yes this actually happens, regardless of the sexual preference stated clearly in my profile!)

Alas, I digress. Generation Z may have mothers and bosses on Friendster, but I haven’t had that experience yet. As a newly self-actualized Generation Y PoMo, my parents are not hip to the jibe of Friendster yet (I plan to search for my boss later this evening, by the way). I did get an e-mail last month from an ex-girlfriend, (yeah, a long time ago!) and it made me feel very uncomfortable and vulnerable. This profile is out there for the world to see-and people will find it. This reflects one of Friendster’s inherent flaws: assuming the value of reconnecting with long lost friends. Not everyone wants that. It also brings us back to the issues of trust and anonymity on the world wide web.

Another important PoMo moment for me when reading this paper regarded context. When we read profiles out of context, we can misinterpret them so that it becomes, “Less about truth than about social appropriateness,” (ibid.). How could I deny my sister’s friend request? How could I ignore a sincere letter from a long lost girlfriend that I’d rather not remember in order to promote peace in society by reacting in an acceptable way (rather than stating my real feelings-do we ever do that online?). This reminded me of semiology and the big critique of postmodernists of the postmodern world: that we are surrounded by a bunch of signs without a significator. All symbols, no meaning.

Fakesters. I had no idea! I suppose this is because I mostly have actual friends on Friendster, but it makes sense. Another website, memetika, actually promotes concepts in profiles, termed, “memes” (see question and below). MySpace actually has band profiles that you can add (Tori Amos has one-FYI).

Questions for Discussion
• “Is anything actually real?” (The postmodernists will answer, “No.”) Are we forever at a loss to believe anything we read online? Are online profiles a “necessary fiction” because of the representation of the better parts of ourselves and the repression of our quirks?
• Do you believe in Friendster’s mentality that friends of friends are more likely to be friends or date? Or would you prefer a different mentality?
• Compare/contrast www.memetika.com to Friendster (See Appendix 1, below). Does changing the reason for bringing people together from shared friends to common interests change anything or is it just another variation on the same theme-a leitmotif worthy of Wagner?

Wiki's for Courses?

2006-01-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

I'm in a course in Human Computer Interaction right now and we're using a Wiki for collaboration. I'm using it for my project to understand how to best use it in an academic setting. The following links are very interesting:

Wikipedia has some interesting info on wikis themselves: Wikipedia.
History Flow from IBM is also very interesting.

Meta Forms

2005-11-30T23:47:00.000-08:00

Johnson goes on to talk about a "meta" form of commentary. In the past hundred years, we've moved from the victorian novel of storytelling to the meta discourse of commentary on other mediums. Television about television. Books about books. Commentary about events. As Johnson puts it, "The infosphere is now part of our "real life" - which makes commenting on it as natural as commenting on the weather."

Thus, we have programs like Talk Soup on E! (or, anything on E! as Johnson points out) which give the highlights of talk shows of the week.

This phenominom exists on the Internet as well. We have websites about other websites. We have standards organizations such as the www.w3.org (the world wide web consortium) who dictate web standards for browser companies and developers to code to in order to create a better online experience.

XML is a meta language-that is, a language about how to write languages for the web. It seems like everything is moving towards XML now. The benefit is standardization of form, but what information does it give us?

We're back to decision theory-how do we trust sources? What information do we believe? What do we do about information overload?

Technology Break

2005-11-30T23:11:00.000-08:00

I've recently had a technology break. It's called Thanksgiving!

I think I actually went two days without checking my e-mail, which seems to be a record of late. We're soo hooked on technology that it's hard to imagine life without it.

Steven Johnson agrees with me on this last point. As I was reading more of Interface Culture this morning, I was struck by the following passage:

"We are fixated with the image not because we have lost faith in reality, but because images now have an enormous impact on reality, to the extent that the older image-reality opposition doesn't really work anymore. This pattern of renunciation and acceptance has a long history. New technologies invariably posess the aura of unreality at their outset, and then march steadily toward the natural world."

This is soo true. New technology comes in and it's odd and strange and we have to get used to it and then it becomes part of reality.

The Interface

2005-11-19T15:08:00.000-08:00

Steven Johnson's "Interface Culture" poses a lot of interesting ideas. This is the book that I'm working on now...

I think the most interesting so far, is that Johnson believes that the Interface is one of the greatest inventions of the century-one that fundamentally changes the way we look at reality.

"We live in a society that is increasingly shaped by events in cyberspace, and yet cyberspace remains, for all practical purposes, invisible, outside our perceptual grasp," (Johnson, 19).

This rings true-we can't really perceive cyberspace except via the interface-another artiface between us and the computer. Unfortunately, we can't directly contact the computer in its language of 1's and 0's, we must have the interface there to translate for us.

Is something lost in that translation? If so, what?

We perceive reality instead of from our own senses, but through an itermediary-the interface. It all goes back to Vannevar Bush's Memex device and the concept he invented of the quick access to documents. And later on, the invention of the Mouse by Doug Engelbart. The mouse, as Johnson put it, "Allowed the user to enter [the electronic] world and truly manipulate things inside it, and for that reason it was much more than just a pointing device," (p. 22).

Now, even when we look back at the past, we view it through the medium of the interface, which ironically makes us feel closer and more at one with the computer (Johnson).

Videodrome

2005-11-13T16:36:00.000-08:00

David Cronenberg's Videodrome offers an interesting critique on the work of Marshall McLuhan.

To start, here's a link to the IMDB entry: Videodrome.

Aside from some more obvious things, such as Professor O'blivion as Marshall Himself, the film asks some very interesting questions about the effects of media on society.

The main character, Max Renn, watches a film (called Videodrome) depicting graphic acts of violence. Everyone who watches this film suffers from a brain tumor and Max ends up going crazy and killing himself. (Sorry to those out there who want to watch the film!). Is media really that immersive? I think it can be-look at the internet. It only gets more immersive as we get into virtual reality. It's interesting that this critique would come out mostly criticizing television, which has now become almost passe.

Other horrific events include Max's delusions of an opening in his chest to insert video cassettes. It's almost like we literally insert media into ourselves. It's sick to ponder how infiltrated we are with mass media culture.

What does this have to do with McLuhan? Everything.

Questions to ponder:

- Does graphic violence shock us out of our complacency or does it contribute to our delinquency?
- Does Media affect us unconsciously or do we allow it to affect us?
- In terms of decision making, how do we as a culture promote questioning the source of information?
- Why do we believe things from media on "blind faith"?
- Are things more or less real because they are on television or the internet?
- How much validity should we give information we come across via mass media?

Anatomy of the Electric Crowd

2005-11-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

Eric McLuhan, in "Electric Language" goes into looking at crowds. "All mass audiences are electric crowds, and vice-versa," (p. 143).

I think this is very interesting from the Technical Communication perspective. What is the point of audience analysis? Maybe I'm missing his point. He posits a few more interesting ideas:

- All mass audiences, regardless of numbers, are the same size.
- Everyone in a mass audience becomes everyman (and thus no one).
- All members of every electric crowd are disembodied, discarnate.

Hmm, very interesting. There is something about the internet that anonymizes us-that treats us as if we are all the same. It brings up questions for me about the "personalized" web experience. Can this really exist? Is it even possible?

Electric Language

2005-11-11T12:07:00.000-08:00

Eric McLuhan's "Electric Language" is a great book. I've been reading it to see how he extends his father Marshall's thought. Eric saw the beginning and evolution of the internet and can apply his father's thought aptly.

The first idea I'd like to address is the new "mistress of the web." Is it arachne or penelope?

Eric begins by explaining how Athena has been the reigning goddess in the past as she is the goddess of rationalism and wisdom. With the advent of the "electric age," we need a new goddess.

Arachne

Arachne was an excellent weaver who challenged Athena and won. In anger, Athena turned her into a spider, forever weaving a web.

She is the goddess of the content of the web-not reigned by thought, but by gut reaction... "Instantaneous, unreasoning, participational knowing works here, finding our Western accustomed detachment cumbersonme and ponderous." (p. 8)

Penelope

The wife of Odysseus, after years of his being away entertained suitors. She said she would choose one after finishing a shroud. She would weave all day and take it out by night.

She personifies constancy, prudence and resourcefulness. She concerns herself with the present whereas Arachne focuses on the future outcome of the contest.

As Eric sums it up:

Let Arachne, then, serve as patroness and guide ot those nomadic hunters who wanter or surf the webs and nets. She spins tales and casts eloquent images to seize the gaze and stun her prey. She is the huntress and the patroness of those who would seek to exploit the net for goal, profit. She is the left side of the brain on the net; Penelope is the right side. Let Penelope reign as patroness of this new state itself, not a city-state but a global state with the gossipaceous character of a small village, even as the kingdom of Ithaka was small, but no less royal. Urban and orbal... The net and the web are themselves encyclopeidias, culture-poems of corporate - anonymous, unanimous - authorship.

Eric McLuhan

2005-11-11T11:59:00.000-08:00

Eric McLuhan is the son and intellectual successor of the famed Marshall McLuhan. He teaches at the Univ of Toronto. Here's a couple links to get you going:

Meet Eric McLuhan

McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology

McLuhan Global Research Network

Marshall McLuhan Offical Site

Related Links

Hot and Cold Media

2005-11-06T15:26:00.000-08:00

Marshall McLuhan differentiates between hot and cold media.

"A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in high definition. High definition is the state of being well filled with data." So, basically, a high definition image, such as a photograph. Hot media require little viewer/reader participation as they don't leave many gaps to be filled in by the viewer/reader. Thus, low audience participation.

Cold medium, on the other hand, is low definition, and high in audience participation. The telephone, speech, books, newspapers - these all require more participation on the reader's part.

We live in a culture of increasingly more hot media and fewer and fewer cold media. Books are on a downward spiral as the internet takes over everything.

The internet can be both hot and cold, actually. There are few sites with ONLY text-thus it has to be hot to some degree. Though image quality may leave a bit to the reader to interpret at times. I think cinema is the quintessential hot medium as it gives the audience a lot of inofrmation-it is replete with information.

What does a culture focused on hot media turn into? How is our search for knowledge affected by making this distinction?

Ads as News

2005-11-06T14:44:00.000-08:00

In "Understanding Media," Marshall McLuhan makes the statement that, "The ads are by far the best part of any magazine or newspaper. More pain and thought, more wit and art, go into the making of an ad than into any prose feature of press or magazine."

This holds the ring of truth-much more thought is put into advertising than any banal thing a news pundit can say... and yet, I often feel violated and cheated by ads.

McLuhan reasons this is because, "Ads are news. What is wrong with them is that they are always good news. In order to balance off the effect and to sell good news, it is necessary to have a lot of bad news."

Well, there you go! It makes sense.

He goes on to say that the newspaper is a hot medium, which has to have bad news for the sake of intensity and reader participation. So, it has to be bad news.

Why does it have to be bad, though? Why can't we just tell things like they are? Oh yeah, political economy... the multi-billionaires decide what gets printed anyway. Maybe we need to take all news with a grain of salt.

New Media Frustration

2005-11-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

Well, I have two posts from last week that didn't get posted. They were both about Marshall McLuhan and they were pretty interesting. I posted them via my "Widget" on my Mac OSX Tiger iBook G4, which I love and have not had any problems with thus far.

Alas, I now have two blog entries bumbling around in cyberspace (or do I?) and they have not found their way home.

The Internet/the Web/New Media/Technology X work great when it works, but it's frustrating when it doesn't. Isn't that the way it is with everything? For some reason, we expect some kind of permanence to things on the web, but it is never permanent. For the time that my postings existed in my head and on the screen, they were great and interesting, but now, they're lost.

How much of our culture, once we move everything over to the web, will become lost? Forgotten? Or simply not remembered because it's written down somewhere?

I know basically what I said, but I can't quite recapture it.

What means do we have of preserving information for the future? What are the "lessons learned" from this event? Here's a few:

- Technology doesn't always work the way we think it does.
- Back up posts before posting. Keep at least one other record of it.

Is that all I learned? I know that the web is not permanent, but I trusted my information to the program...

Computer as Window

2005-10-24T22:01:00.000-07:00

In Manovich's introduction to the New Media Reader, he states that, "All culture, past and present, is being filtered through the computer, with its particular human-computer interface," (p. 16).

Not only do we experience the present through the lens of the computer, we experience the past.

We look up facts and information about the past on computers. We, in essence, "see" the past through the lens of the computer screen as it is our point of entry to that information.

The computer has taken over so many aspects of life today. I come home from work on a computer and I get on my computer...

The computer is also a window into the future (mixing metaphors here!). We can look out at the past and also look towards the future. The future certainly involves the computer. I can't see any other way.

I think an interesting question for the future is how will we utilize the computer in the information age? How will we deal with information overload? How will we decide which information to use and which to discard?

I'll look at some of these questions more after I read Information Anxiety later this quarter.

Technology as Art

2005-10-24T21:55:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting points from the New Media Reader was the comparison by Manovich of new media to the Art movement of the 20th Century.

The idea is that technology is the greatest work of Art of the 20th century. Modern Art and technology have progressed at the same time (and Manovich details more of that interaction in his introduction).

Technolgy as Art.

As a web developer, I can certainly see a kind of perfection in code. There is something very satisfying about creating a web page with good, clean code. Nothing extraneous, just simple code. I'm sure that many programmers feel the same way about coding as well. It is simple, efficient, yet still creatively evoked.

In HTML, there are often a few different ways to do something and if you add CSS on top of it, there are even more options.

Writing good code is like composing an intricate symphony (I'm also a composer). With so many options and varities of instruments and pitches, there are many "right answers" to the question of how to do it, but a good coder will do it artfully.

The Big Picture

2005-10-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

I just came across "The Big Picture" on CNET News.com

Wow! This is very cool

Wiki 3

2005-10-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

Postscript

Another interesting topic that Daniel Pink raises is the criticism of wikis as too "anti-elitist."

Wikis are THE quintessential post-modern document. Endlessly in flux, co-authored by potentially all of humanity where all voices are counted equal.

There is no formal review process for what's posted, but it's immediately fixed. Pink notes that there were postings about the Tsunami only 30 minutes after the event whereas print encyclopedias can take months to update their content.

Speed is certainly something that is really nice in this regard.

Plus, the post-modernist in me loves it.

WiKi 2

2005-10-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

RE: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.html?pg=1

Thanks to Professor Dave Farkas for the Link.

Wikis as documents of the future. Wired did this article on wikis that brought up a lot of good issues which I'll outline below.

1. Should we trust an online encyclopedia that allows for everyone to edit it? Or, as author Daniel H. Pink poses: "Is wikipedia a heartening effort in digital humanitarianism - or a not-so-smart mob unleashing misinformation on the masses?"

2 "Are well-intentioned amateurs any replacement for professionals?"

3. "Is charging nothingfor knowledge too high a price?"

These are very good questions! I'll try to address some of the issues Pink raises and look at possible answers.

RE 1 - Digital humanitarianism vs. Misinformation. I think the answer is both. There are very well-meaning contributers out there and there are some with malintent. The good thing is that wikis are very self-correcting (as Pink points out). Wikipedia allows you to keep certain pages on your radar so that you can be informed when they are updated.

The flip side of that coin is that there are some people out there that have edited many pages. For example, as Pink indicates, Bryan Derksen has updated around 40,000 articles!

Personally, I don't know Bryan, so I don't know how much I trust him. I can say the same about just about anyone who contributes to wikipedia. Personally, I take much of it with a grain of salt.

RE 3 - I'm getting here anyway, so, I'm talking about these out of order...

Is charging nothing for knowledge too high a price? I think maybe not. I mean, it's being offered for FREE from a stranger. I'd give it slightly more weight than talking to one stranger on a bus because of the opportunity of millions of people to "fix" incorrect facts.

This brings me to 2.

RE 2 - Replacement for professionals? No, wikipedia is not a replacement-or, at least, it shouldn't be.

There are many wonderful things about it, for example, the speed of updates are almost instantaenous! However, it can't replace a professional.

Pink goes on to talk about the process of encyclopedias over time-from the one man expert, such as Aristotle, to the group of experts that created such encyclopedias as Britannica.

If you want an expert opionion, ask an expert. Google has a service that does this-it costs money, but if you want an answer that you can be sure to trust, you have to pay for it.

If you merely want an answer to a question and you aren't basing major life decisions on it, wikipedia will do. If you're writing a scholarly term paper, it's a great starting place, but not a basis for information. It can lead you to other works and ideas, but I don't know that we're culturally to the place to start referencing it in papers (unless you want to get a good idea of what most people think about something).

New Media and the Computer

2005-10-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

After reading the two introductions from The New Media Reader (www.newmediareader.com) I feel like I finally got a clear and concise definition of "New Media" from Lev Manovich's Introduction, New Media from Borges to HTML:

New media are computer-based artistic activities.

This was an "Ah-ha" moment for me. After reading about what new media is and isn't, it finally dawned on me that this broad definition may be the most working definition I've found.

Manovich tends to look at new media in binary terms: New Media vs. cyberculture, for example. New media vs. the artistic world. New media vs. print media. New media vs. cinema.

The one thing that combines all "new media" is the computer. The computer not only holds/stores all new media, the computer creates and combines new media.

The computer allows for endless variation of media and the web is the supreme example of the beauty of endless combinations of media: pictures, text, movies, powerpoint slides, blogs, message boards, wikis... informative websites, personal websites, consumer websites... each fulfilling a different purpose, coexisting, infinitely available to people around the world and existing amongst everything else in a web or a matrix or a potato root system...

Media within media...

2005-10-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

When we watch movies on a website, we focus our attention on the film/music video/etc. even though it exists in the grander media of the website... we interpret based on what we focus on. We allow for the blending of media and the subverting of one media (film, in this case) under another (the internet).

Interestingly, the internet can subsume all of what we currently think of as "new media" ... what can't be new media that isn't on the internet?

Language of New Media Part 2 - Information Hierarchy or WWW Model?

2005-10-05T23:24:00.000-07:00

Manovich's Language of New Media (p. 16) distinguishes between information hierarchies and the World Wide Web model.

Hierarchy assumes a logical ordering and a distinct place. However, information on the WWW is all equal. Everything is connected to everything else and thus of equal importance.

The question of authority came up in my Knowledge Management course the other day... you can get information from a database or from the help of a reference librarian from a scholarly journal. This information has authority and has been "approved" by intellectuals in the field ... it carries more weight than a quick answer on google. However, google will bring you the most timely information, of course, you have to decide whether or not the source is trustworthy.

Language of New Media

2005-10-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

RE: Lev manovich's The Language of New Media
http://www.manovich.net/LNM_SITE_NEW/lnm_main.html

Manovich has a lot of interesting things to say about new media and how it became new. The computer plays a pivotal role in the creation of new media:

"The computerization of culture not only leads to the emergence of new cultural forms such as computer games and virtual worlds; it redefines existing ones such as photography and cinema." (Manovich, 9).

The computer transforms old media into the new. It seems like all media is now seen through the lens of the internet. We relate to media and information in terms of google, immediately accessible and infinitely deep.

Everything is online now as well. We can find everything online now.

Manovich focuses on how language functions in new media, by this, he means the, "Emergent conventions, recurrent design patterns, and key forms of new media," (ibid. p. 12). I like to think of media as language... the concept bears some time to ponder. Language is a vehicle by which we communicate with each other. It is also a set of grammatical rules and structure. Language is a finite way of trying to describe the indefinite, or the unspeakable.

Media takes over where language leaves off. A sonnet can only say things that are within the limitations of the language imposed upon the thought or idea. A picture can communicate many other things that may or may not have the same intent as the photographer, but that same argument works for the sonnet...

As a good postmodernist, I'll posit that we'll always have differing opinions on the "right" or "correct" or "intentded" interpretation of a work of prose just the same as an image or a film.

Manovich also talks about how we exist in an "information culture" (p. 13) that includes the ways information is presented in different cultural sites and objects including road signs; displays in airports, train stations, television menus, graphic user interfaces, layouts of books and magazines, interior design as well as interfaces and software platforms and applications... (ibid.) It is mind-numbing when you start to think about how much information we are given on a daily basis!

PoMo and Hypertext/web theory

2005-10-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

This blog is going to be taking a more specific direction. I'm taking an independant study course in hypertext/web theory and postmodernism. I created the syllabus myself and I'm very excited about it. If you'd like to read along with me, please download it here:

http://www.joshlamar.com/Documents/TC%20599.doc

I'll be posting thoughts about the various readings here. Please feel free to comment respond and let's start a dialogue :-)

- Josh

iPod-ization

2005-08-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod.

I got it a month ago to replace another mp3 player that I never got the hang of. The UI just drove me crazy and I could never figure out how to do anything, even after I tried reading the instructions.

So, I got an iPod. It also made sense because I got my iBook a few months ago and simply love it. I thought it would be great to have an iPod so that I could have all the cool integration wtih iTunes-I'm very satisfied.

The great thing about it is that I can listen to music anywhere and I can carry around enough music that I can pretty much listen to whatever I want at any time.

Examples of times that I need to listen to music in public:

- On the bus when someone is talking loud on the cell phone.

- On the bus when someone is talking loud to someone else (possibly the buss driver)

- On the bus when someone nearby is rude or odd

- Downtown when I really can't handle being asked for money yet again (Sidenote: I bought a shirt that states, "I carry no cash." This has proven rather effective).

Basically, I can now use music to tune things out that normally make me a little crazy.

I suppose it's another way of dealing with information anxiety.

Then, I think about how I felt when I saw people with headphones on when I was on the bus without headphones... or even seeing people in stores or walking down the street. I feel like they have chosen to close themselves off from the rest of the world, which they have. They "go within" to some other place provided to the via technology instead of dealing with the issues of the world.

Now, I'm one of them.

I don't know how to feel about this. I think I feel bad because I could be missing out on some human interation (you know, that thing that we do with each other... without the computer between us?).

But how often do we meet strangers anymore anyway? For me, I'd have to say: not often.

This is a problem with technology... we shut ourselves off from society, from the world, from ourselves, from other people and from new people.

Isolation is the impetus for the iPodization of America.

We are so bombarded with people, things, media and advertizing that we do need to isolate ourselves... we just also need to reconnect with each other in a real sense.

Lyotard and the Inhuman

2005-08-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

I just finished a book on Lyotard and what he calls the "Inhuman." It was fascinating for one and gets at one of the postmodern tensions that I've been dancing around in my blogs here:

Technology and its relationship to society.

Where do we draw the line between human and machine? How much of ourselves can be computer before we become a computer or a cyborg? Is it "right" or "moral" to do so?

What about pacemakers? they prolong our lives, but we are dependant on the machines to keep us alive.

How about life support? Again, we wouldn't be alive without them if we needed them, but what kind of a life is that often? We can prolong life of coma patients for years.

How much do we let technology come into our lives? How often do we accept that we are becoming more and more depandant on machines for not only our "productivity" but our lives?

This is what scared Lyotard. His message was one of warning to the earth to think about what could happen.

Machines could start taking over. When artificial intelligence becomes artificial life... this is totally starting to sound Matrix-esque.

Here's a suggested movie list:

- The Matrix
- The Animatrix
- Matrix Reloaded
- Matrix Revolutions
- A.I.
- Vanilla Sky
- Johnny Mnemonic
- Gattaca
- I Robot
- Bicentennial Man

These films play with these questions. Interesting how so many films have come out in the past few years that deal with the issue of the quality of human life versus the quality of artificial life.

They all have a different take on it. in the Matrix, for example, machines have taken over the world. In Vanilla Sky, they have just taken over someone's brain and extended his life.

The really interesting question for me is how do we draw a line between human and inhuman? How much technology is good for us and how much of it causes us to become dependant on the vary machines that might one day take us over?

Internet Everywhere

2005-07-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Microsoft just announced that they were setting up free WiFi in a 600 acre park in Redmond, WA.

Now, you can go to the park and check your e-mail on your laptop.

Hmm.

I think part of the postmodern condition is to be overwhelmed by technology and to need to escape it. How often do you hear people say that they, "Need to get away from it all," or they, "Want to get back to nature."

People may not be so overt as to say they need to get away from technology, but sometimes they do say this.

What is it about our world today that causes us to need to get away from it? Is it technology? Or, is it the constant connection with the rest of the world? The unavoidable interconnectivity of the global villiage?

We are too connected to information and to each other. We need to "get away" from it just to find ourselves again. Because in the global viliage, we are no one, but in a forest of trees, we are the only one on earth.

What does WiFi in the park have to do with this? Everything.

As soon as we start plugging in to technology in our places of commune, we start missing the point of nature or of getting away. Pretty soon, we can't get away from interconnectivity and then what do we do?

The innate nature of virtuality is immersive. We get online and we stay there for a while because we're in control of what we do and where we go. And we can connect to others virtually via chat and e-mail. We can do just about everything online: we can get the news, connect with friends and family, we can date online and even have sex online. We can order a pizza to be delivered, get new music on iTunes and order movies on netflix.

The only thing we can't do online is actually have another real live physical person next to us. It is a solitary effort and one that separates us as much as it connects us.

This separation is part of the fragmentation of the post modern condition. Our lives are fragmented into little tiny boxes. Or big boxes like, "online life" and "offline life."

Our online life is overtaking our offline life. It scares me when technology gets so immersive that we can't get away from it without unplugging. It has to be an intentional choice to get away from technology and to unplug. But that is one choice that I don't think we're good at making yet.

Realism vs. Romanticism

2005-07-12T22:48:00.000-07:00

The tension between realism and romanticism is tricky.

If you are too realistic, then you don't dream... you don't feel as much as you think and understand. However, realism-true realism-helps us to see things clearly. This buddhist concept of seeing clearly is much more difficult than it sounds and monks have spent lifetimes discovering how to truly appreciate and live in the NOW. Realism is a vehicle by which we stop dreaming and start seeing the NOW for what it is-exactly that. We are often so blinded by our own worldviews that we can't seem to find any other view than our own. For example, the President can't seem to understand that half of the country thinks he's an idiot for going to war and he just keeps rationalizing it with the same dumb excuses. (Sorry, maybe politics befuddles the matter to much here).

On the other hand, Romanticism gives inspiration to appreciate the NOW in a deeper, fuller way. The romanticists focused on the drama of the self. They were very self-important whereas the realists see their place in the world as insignificant, or at least, for what it is. Romantics see the world for what it could be. The dreamers give direction to society, but this direction is only pertinent when they have a firm grasp of what is really going on... and I mean going on in the real world, not just what is going on in their heads.

Thus, I must argue that the answer is not one or the other... it's both that are needed. I have hope that tempering realism and romanticism as a culture will help solve the evils in the world.

- Josh

Cognitive Dissonance 2

2005-07-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

I found another quick answer:

"Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas, and it may be necessary for it to develop so that we become "open" to them."

Taken from:

ATHERTON J S (2004) Teaching and Learning: Cognitive Dissonance and learning [On-line] UK: Available: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm Accessed: 23 May 2005

I initially posted a reply to my own post with the above... I think that's silly. So here it is in the power of my voice.

Electronic Life

2005-07-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

Yeah, sometimes, we need to have electronics. I'm thinking about music at the moment.

I'm a composer. I play piano and I sing. I also love to listen to music of all genres (well, almost). I get immense pleasure from sitting and playing the piano. I could even do this when the power is out. I feel like we should all do something each day that can be done when the power is out.

I remember once a while ago, the power went out and everybody in my family freaked out. I have to admit, it was rough to not be able to check my e-mail, but still I like to read as well. Books are another thing one can do without electricity...

Anyway, I digress.

So, reading books and playing piano-fun things to do and they are without electricity!

HOWEVER, I still need electricity. I really want to be ok without it, but I suppose that isn't possible these days.

I actually really like the fact that I can use my computer to listen to other music. Recorded music while I type my blog entry from my dashboard widget. Especially music that I can't play on the piano. I do get joy from this as well.

Balance is the key. I'll probably say this a lot. Temperance.

Information Overload

2005-06-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Information Overload affects us all. We have an overabundance of data coming through our lives. Data in, data out. We also produce a lot of data. But how much of it is important? Even more interesting, how do we decide between good information and bad information?

I wish that we were taught this in school. I certainly wasn't, but I was in the early generation of people who lived through the birth of the internet and actually remember it.

In 1992, I was 12 years old and in junior high school. By the time I was in high school, in 1994, everyone was talking about ICQ and the WWW. Soon, mp3s were around (and FREE, remember that?!?!?) and I got my hotmail account and suddenly, I was connected. I have been so ever since.

I wonder about the quality of that connection, however. Yeah, I work with people all over the world now in my job as an international site manager at Microsoft, and yeah, instant communication is important, but it's my whole life!

I want to stop the instant everything-Sometimes... I know we need it and that's important. But when is off time? I come home from working on a website to check e-mail, IM friends, work on my website and play with my new computer. I also read books and go to school, but not all of that is pleasure. Sometimes, just watching a movie is the most relaxing thing, but even that is technology-related.

Technology brings us closer, but it also isolates us. Maybe going for a walk is the best thing I can do for myself sometimes... or going for a run.

***

For more information, see Richard Saul Wurman's "Information Anxiety."

PostModernism and Cognitive Dissonance

2005-05-23T21:15:00.000-07:00

What is PostModernism?

We all have our own view of the world. Each view may be alike, but it is unique to each of us. Our collective views are equal-there is no single right answer but a plethora of answers. There is no black and white, there is a multitude of grey. PostModernism is tricky to explain and it is vague. It refers to the current era of philosophy-that is, after the modernist movement at the beginning of the 20th Century. Modernism was fueled by intellectual elitism and snobbery. PostModernism is a reaction to Modernism stating that all opinions are equal and valid.

PostModernism or Post Modernism or PoMo is also connected to social constructivism or social constructionism, which states that we construct meaning socially, that is, with each other, instead of in our heads. Things are defined by the culture and the consensus of the population and not by rationalism. We "agree" on definitions of things. There is no single intrinsic nature of things.

What is cognitive dissonance?

I found a pretty good link on this on AFirstLook. You can also find information on Wikipedia.