Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

Some thoughts from the post Here Comes Everybody -

Clay Shirky

TV, Cognitive Surplus, and Wikipedia

A talk by Clay Shirky called Gin, Television, and Social Surplus. Following on themes from his book, Here Comes Everybody, he tells a story that goes like this:

" We gained lots of free time (a "cognitive surplus") in the 40s and 50s because of shorter workweeks. We squandered the surplus by watching TV sitcoms and the like. Now we're finally waking up from this "collective bender" and putting our energies into better things, like editing Wikipedia.

I have a number of problems with this story. First of all, did we gain free time in the 40s and 50s? I'm not an expert, but what I've read about work life has said that Americans are working more hours now than they did at the beginning of the 20th century, not less.

Second, is the time now spent editing Wikipedia or doing other things online really coming from time formerly spent watching TV? In other words, even if there's a negative correlation between TV viewing and online activity, correlation doesn't imply causality.

Third, who's to say which of these activities is more valuable? Shirky has a couple of fairly simple rules for assigning value. Producing is better than consuming -- so writing a blog or posting to a mailing list is better than watching TV or reading. Activity is better than inactivity or passivity -- playing World of Warcraft is more valuable than watching a movie.

I think those rules are awfully simplistic and don't seem to get at the heart of what's valuable. Some TV shows and movies are far more sophisticated works of art than are most video games. Reading a book can be a much more efficient way to deepen one's understanding of a topic than debating it online. Even an adolescence wasted watching Gilligan's Island (an example of Shirky's) might reward you later with the creative juice to launch a career writing postmodern novels.

It's wishful thinking to believe that all of these new technologies will bring forth some great creative and intellectual bounty. We've already got hundreds of millions of blogs -- how much have they really changed things? How important is Wikipedia, really? If it disappeared tomorrow would anyone be truly inconvenienced? I doubt it -- Google would turn up another source or you'd go look in the library if it really mattered. Yet think of all the energy and hours that have been put into Wikipedia. The return on investment just doesn't seem that impressive."

Why blog this?
Its interesting perspective of the social move of free time and maybe in a way not to take technology as the great hope but as a tool. For me its the perspective of understanding and acknowledgment of technology as a tool that is important for my own work.

Quote to capture work upgrade & other pieces

"[The] dynamics of computational artefacts extend beyond the interface narrowly defined, to relations of people with each other and to the place of computing in their ongoing activities. System design, it follows, must include not only the design of innovative technologies, but their artful integration with the rest of the social and material world. The value of artefacts on this view lies less in their intrinsic features, than in their contribution to particular social-material landscapes." " -- Lucy Suchman

• Some useful discussion from the IxDA site:

Some thoughts on Interaction Design and the Agile Environment from IxDA may have some useful points and diagrams for continuing work

Interaction Design in an Agile Environment -This may also be useful also for future evaluation of research use

Metaphors- A discussion with some of the books in the area and some current PhD work, may be useful in providing insight in when and when not too use metaphors and the cognitive process behind it.

Measuring User Experience - With a discussion on best practice to Measure User Experience,based on 4 key pillars: 1) Branding; 2) Usability ; 3) Content and 4) functionality. Can ignore branding, remaining 3 may prove useful for evaluation later on.

• Stumbled across a very good blog, entitled “The Restless Mind through putting people first feed useful posts from blog.

The design of everyday relationships

MIT Professor Donald Schön [observed] that design is a “conversation with materials.” In many ways users have become “materials” as much as participants. We not only engage them explicitly through interaction design to create discrete features, but also in aggregate as social systems and platforms amplify their implicit actions to create value.

The siren call of the system
Well-designed systems are not, in fact, designed. They are the product of evolution. […] Systems, like narratives, take time to reveal themselves to their authors. Changes in technology, consumer preferences, and markets take years to play out. It’s not clear from day one where the system will go or how it will adapt. […] Systems are so rarely produced because they take time and time is one resource companies don’t have. Most die long before the system is revealed.

Apple and the enigma of innovation
What makes Apple special isn’t design. Or process. Or talent. It’s fear. Fear of the man who is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. (And sheathed in titanium. An engineer slaving away on the iPhone SDK isn’t concerned about the industry, his peers, or his boss. His relentless pursuit of “system elegance” is simply an animal’s instinct to avoid pain, manifested largely during the senior management review.


And insight into a designers mind....?

View from Microsoft on the future of human computer interaction

A agenda set out from Microsoft research in line with some thoughts of my own
Blogged on/from Putting people first link

Report from Microsoft Research and the future of human computer interaction

"Moving into the 21st century, there are murmurings in the research and design communities signalling the need for a change: a change that puts more emphasis on placing users –people—front and centre in that agenda; a change that is less about pervasive, “smart” computing and more about technology that enables and recognizes human values.

This new agenda raises all kinds of key questions: What is the role of technology in the 21st century, or what would we like it to be? How as researchers, designers and practitioners should we orient to this role? What are the key questions for Human-Computer Interaction as we move forward? What are the new paradigms and research agendas that emerge as a result? What are the human values we are designing for, and what does this mean for the evaluation of technology?"

Why blog this?
How can I can address and understand these type of questions and the nature of them in context of my own work, lots more to think about....

Fantastic quote from front of report

"The question persists and indeed grows whether the computer will make it easier or harder for human beings to know who they really are, to identify their real problems, to respond more fully to beauty, to place adequate value on life, and to make their world safer than it now is."

Norman Cousins – The Poet and the Computer, 1966

Also On the website of Microsoft Research Cambridge you can read a really good interview with Richard Harper, the conference organiser.

Harper on developing technology: “For many years, technology has been developed, and then society shapes it and polishes it. Now, society’s hopes and goals and people need to be involved in the process of developing technology from the outset, because it makes a big difference to what the technologies end up becoming. There’s no longer a line between technology and invention and development and society, no longer a line between what the technology might do and what the user can do. What human endeavor might be and what social endeavor might be must be considered from the very bottom of the firmware in devices and in the infrastructures that link different devices right through to the GUI on the outside.”