CHAT 2010: User Driven: Does Size Matter?

Panelist Paul Jones took control of the discussion early, and didn’t let go. Seizing on moderator Paolo Mangiafico’s contrast between “lean back” (large screen: broadcast consumption) and “lean forward” (small screen: conversation participation) modes of media interaction, Jones pointed out the awkward middle space that the panel discussion itself occupied: a simulation of a small conversation being shown to a large audience. Jones stepped down from the stage in order to address the audience more directly.

Two of the panelists, Russ Pitts and Ross White, followed him down. Panelist William Shaw and Mangiafico stayed behind on stage, creating a visual contrast that corresponded roughly to the positions that the panelists took on new media. Jones, Pitts, and White all seemed open to the value of audience participation and social media; Shaw emphasized that the William Blake Archives, the project on which he works, is a “large screen” project designed to provide high-resolution tools to the lone scholar, whether professional or amateur.

Here are a few of the many points Jones made in his near-total domination of the talk:

The paradox of the mobile internet is that it doesn’t matter where you are, but it matters more where you are. The Internet closes distance and levels geographical distinctions, but because you’re accessing the Internet on a mobile device, the people you’re communicating with can’t assume that your physical body is tethered to your office or home. People on the mobile Internet spend a lot of time talking about where they are and what’s going on around them.

Print has a reputation for stability when compared to online media, but in fact print is highly unstable—multiple revisions, versions, and translations of most texts exist. [As I’m interested in text as a visual medium, I would add printings, layouts, type settings, etc.]

There are three populations happy with Kindle: 1. people who need large print books; 2. people who travel a lot; 3. people who do a lot of book editing and reviewing (so they don’t have to carry a bunch of books and manuscripts around). These are not necessary the audiences that Amazon imagined. We don’t know what people will do with the iPad until they’ve had a chance to do it.

Small-screen talk is more important than large-screen talk. People listen to their friends rather than to authorities; studies have shown that intimate settings and peer status create trustworthiness. By being aware of these tendencies, we will be able to make the truth stick in a world with too much information and no recognized experts.

Editor's note: I was unable to find an online presence to link to for William Shaw.

New feature

Instead of link roundup posts, I’ve decided to stream my most recent tech-related links on the sidebar to the right.

This should see quite a bit more activity than the mainbar. Given the subject matter and my actual posting frequency, I’m beginning to think that my initial goal of three posts a week was too optimistic. I can see to it that the links list is updated more or less every workday, and I will continue with my roughly once-per-week posting frequency.

Reflections on a haircut

When I arrived at the philosophy program at Boston College, I noticed that an unusual number of men associated with the department—both graduate students and professors—groomed themselves in one of two distinct styles, both of which struck me as somehow more “philosophical.”

The first was to allow one’s beard to grow long and unkempt. Unlike the unkempt beards I had seen on undergraduates at NCSU, this was not a token of laziness or disregard for one’s personal appearance. The individuals wearing beards were otherwise impeccably well-groomed, and oftentimes found in class wearing suits. I came to call this look “The Socrates.”

The second look was to be completely clean-shaven, and wear one’s hair gelled back and up, in order to create the illusion that one’s head was several inches taller than it really was. I called this “The Derrida.” My hair was kind of already going in that direction, and I thought it looked like a good, modern look for a man in a philosophy program, so this is the style I adopted.

(After finishing up at BC, I wore my hair down with a loose part for several months. I never really liked it, so I’m back to The Derrida, or the “Wall Street hair” as one of my coworkers calls it.)

Having formulated these observations, I recently enjoyed reading Barthes’ “The Iconography of the Abbé Pierre” in his Mythologies collection:

The Abbé Pierre’s haircut, obviously devised so as to reach a neutral equilibrium between short hair (an indispensable convention if one does not want to be noticed) and unkempt hair (a state suitable to express contempt for other conventions), thus becomes the capillary archetype of saintliness...

For among priests, it is no due to chance whether one is bearded or not; beards are chiefly the attribute of missionaries or Capuchins, they cannot but signify apostleship and poverty... Shaven priests are supposed to be more temporal, bearded ones more evangelical...

Barthes worries about the overconsumption of these signs, in place of true justice and charity. I think this is a legitimate concern. But I have also noticed that in our socially constructed world, truth must come with a little bit of rhetoric in order to find a foothold.

What does all this have to do with technology? Consider the industrial design explosion of the last decade. There are quite a lot of individuals who find it all a lot of fuss with no substance. If your box works well, who cares what it looks like? These are the folks who would never buy an iPod, because you would have to be an idiot to shell out for one when you can get a player that has more storage space for less.

But the market disagrees with the theory that an iPod is worth less than a SanDisk. The iPod signals to others, among other things, an appreciation for Apple products, for fashion, and for modern design. Your choice of mp3 player may not play a role in determining your identity, but it does play a considerable role in communicating your identity. It has value, in short, as a Barthesian myth.

If you need confirmation of this theory, just count how many times in a day your friends and coworkers emote—either in disgust or appreciation—at the personal appearances, affections, and possessions of people they don’t know, or know only marginally. The things we surround ourselves with have utility not merely in pursuing our individual tele, but in pursuing our goals as social actors, as well. This is common sense, but too often disappears from discussions of an artifact’s utility as such.

One to keep an eye on

Writer and comedian Stephen Fry has a new technology column at the Guardian. In his first outing, “Welcome to dork talk”, he objects to the distinctions so often made between between humanists and technologists...

Well, people can be dippy about all things digital and still read books, they can go to the opera and watch a cricket match and apply for Led Zeppelin tickets without splitting themselves asunder. Very little is as mutually exclusive as we seem to find it convenient to imagine. ... So, believe me, a love of gizmos doesn’t make me averse to paper, leather and wood, old-fashioned Christmases, Preston Sturges films and country walks.

... and between design and engineering.

What do I think is the point of a digital device? Is it all about function? Or am I a “style over substance” kind of a guy? Well, that last question will get my hackles up every time. As if style and substance are at war! As if a device can function if it has no style. As if a device can be called stylish that does not function superbly.

There is, I think, a growing consciousness of this last point. The “utility” and “efficiency” of a technological solution are often touted as if these were virtues unto themselves, and not a means to a greater end. The engineer who cannot appreciate aesthetics is like a miser who dies with millions but without having ever known a single earthly decadence.

There are some who would justify design by tying it to the bottom line. While it is true that beauty can grease the wheels of functionality, and that pretty things sell, I think this approach has it backward. Aesthetics is the end; functionality is the means. There is no objective reason why we should bother to go on living at all—we do so out of sheer preference, out of our aesthetic appreciation for living over dying.

Utility cannot be divorced from fancy. As we have struggled for decades now with poorly designed, nearly unusable, “utilitarian” computer technology, we have gradually come around to acknowledging the importance of taking pleasure in design.