A 10 minute version of my talk about how we are now creating context itself, and the challenges that brings. Given at WebVisions Atlanta & NYC in 2011-2012. Related blog post here: http://www.inkblurt.com/2012/01/20/the-contexts-we-make/
3. To us in the room, youāre āhere.ā
online room
To people online, youāre āhere.ā
So where are you right now? just think about that a second.
>>
To those of us in the room we look over and see youāre here. With us in the room.
>>
But on Twitter, or instant messenger, or facebook -- wherever else youāre communicating at
the moment -- youāre āthereā
This isnāt just an idle thought. These words matter because they indicate the way we
cognitively comprehend reality.
4. Where is āhereā in this tweet?
Check out this tweet ... āIām here. Is anybody here?ā
How do you interpret this question?
Where is āhereā here? She could have arrived at a restaurant and is asking if her friends are
there yet. Or she could be asking if anyone she knows is looking at Twitter at the moment.
Notice I referred to even the statement as āhereā -- as if itās a place. āLetās look at what this
person is saying āhereāā
5. Reality hacking.
Context
āFountainā | Marcel Duchamp ~ 1917
Recognize this?
>> This was named by art experts as the most inļ¬uential work of art of the 20th century.
Not because of its beauty, but because it signaled & partly catalyzed a rift in how we think
about culture. Duchamp and friends grabbed a urinal and signed it with a fake artistās name,
and entered it in an art show. It didnāt get in -- but then they publicized the āinjusticeā of
being rejected so widely it became famous, and started conversations about what the nature
of art really is. Who decides it?
>> And it was all done by adding a bit of language to an object. By changing its context.
>> Itās a sort of reality hacking. Why?
6. flickr - uicdigital
Information changes how we experience the physical.
Because information changes how we experience the physical world.
Look at this photo -- thereās information everywhere in this scene.
>>The lines on the road tell us where to drive; the traffic light is a virtual barrier that affects
our behavior; the road signs give us a layer of instruction that adds meaning to the city
around us. without the information here, it would quite literally be a different place.
7. flickr - aokkone
More pervasive; more immersive.
Now look at today.
When youāre using a GPS, where are you driving?
Your brain merges the information from the device with what youāre seeing in the windshield.
They become essentially the same.
So now weāre in even richer information environments.
9. Information makes places,
kind of like this picture makes a pipe.
If you could smoke the pipe.
This is the famous Magritte painting -- it says āthis is not a pipeā
The picture deļ¬nitely shows a pipe but itās not a real pipe you can smoke.
>>Information is kind of like this in the way it makes places.
>>Except for a key difference that, with
Information, you can smoke the pipe.
10. photo: http://cjsd.blogspot.com/2008/03/day-d20-
died.html
Recognize this? Itās a home-made dungeon for Dungeons & Dragons.
This is an information environment -- but itās only barely part of the physical world. Itās all
just information. But we experienced it as feeling very real, with real consequences and
meaning with our peers.
Ok whatever -- thatās D&D. Canāt take that seriously right?
11. US Constitution
Some immersive
information
frameworks
arenāt physical at all.
archives.gov
What about this?
How is this all that different from a D&D ruleset?
Some people got together and wrote an information artifact, just words on pages, but itās the
framework the United States has existed within for over 2 centuries.
Information is real, and it creates contexts that can have powerful effects on the reality we
live in.
12. āBeaconā āBuzzā
Which is why people get so upset when some of the places they live in suddenly change their
rules. Without representation, without explanation.
What did these two platforms get so wrong?
They assumed that, just because the environments they created were digital -- informational
-- the rules of physical social context didnāt apply. They oversimpliļ¬ed or ignored some very
complex things about how people really live.
They treated these designs as software engineering solutions, rather than life solutions.
13. āFriend?ā
For example, they warped what the word āfriendā means.
Sure, itās just language.
But used as an entity in a relational database, behind a massive platform where millions of
people conduct big, meaningful slices of their lives ... it becomes more than just a word.
It becomes architecture.
14. In the information dimension,
language is architecture.
In the information dimension, language is architecture.
15. vs
flickrcom - shimonkey flickr.com - anirudhkoul
Obvious difference.
For example, in physical space, thereās an obvious difference between a little nook in the corner of a room where you can
whisper to someone, and a stage in front of thousands of people where a microphone will announce what you say to all of them.
Whisper image CC http://ļ¬ickr.com/photos/shimonkey/447924817/
Crowd image CC http://ļ¬ickr.com/photos/anirudhkoul/2046282436/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
16. D vs @
flickrcom - shimonkey flickr.com - anirudhkoul
Not so obvious.
But on Twitter, all it takes is D vs @ to make that difference. It changes from requiring a big, physical
change to a tiny alphanumeric slip.
The information environments weāre creating are littered with these dangerously thin barriers between
contexts.
Whisper image CC http://ļ¬ickr.com/photos/shimonkey/447924817/
Crowd image CC http://ļ¬ickr.com/photos/anirudhkoul/2046282436/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
17. Weāve always lived in language.
abcdefghijklmn
opqrstuvwxyz
abcdefghijklmn
opqrstuvwxyz
Map = Territory
Now we live in software.
photo: http://cjsd.blogspot.com/2008/03/day-d20-died.html
Weāve always lived in language -- since the earliest beginnings of civilization, itās been part
of what makes us people.
>> But now we also live in software, which is language made into architecture. Places we
inhabit.
>> The map has become the territory.
So, in a weird way, the D&D geeks won ... we all live in their dungeons now.
18. Existing Context
online room
The Context we design.
We arenāt just designing for existing contexts anymore.
We are designing the context itself.
And the more that information dimension pervades our physical space ...
19. What we make for the āscreenā changes the world āoutside the screen.ā
Existing Context
room
online
The Context we design.
The more weāre actually designing all human context.
>>What we make for the screen changes the world outside the screen.
20. Actually, weāre turning the world into the āscreen.ā
Actually, weāre turning the world into the screen.
21. We donāt fully understand
what we have wrought.
I donāt think we really understand what we have made. We keep going as if everything we do
with this technology just has to be great, but we end up making mistakes and wondering how
we screwed up.
23. Be aware of, and understand, the problem.
The ļ¬rst step is just to be aware of the problem. I think this is an area of design that we
havenāt fully come to grips with yet. So letās keep working on that.
24. Task
Task Need
Cognitive
Physical
Situation
Task
Task
Need
Need
Emotional
Task Task Task
Task
āScenarioā
It all comes back to understanding the whole person, and the whole contextual situation in
which they live and where their needs come from.
>>We have to be careful that weāre not so focused on the individual task weāre designing
for ...
>> That we ignore the incredible ripple effect it has, and how it alters the reality that person
is living in.