2008/04/25

HCI(human-computer interaction )
-key point
People often interact with media technologies as though the technologies were people.

-related points: aesthetics & teleology
questions of aesthetics, goals and intentions
do objects, technologies and natural phenomena have goals and intentions?
or, do they just look like they have goals and intentions?
- related points: design
If we view objects, technologies and natural phenomenon as if they do, in fact, have goals and intentions, then we will design like an artificial intelligence researcher.
On the other hand, if we view objects, technologies and natural phenomenon as if the just look like they have goals and intentions, then we will design like a tool builder for human “users” or “operators” of our tools.
-history of HCI
-Q.what problem does Weizenbaum’s ELIZA system address or solve?
the artificial intelligence answer: it does (or does not) behave like a human and is therefore successful (or not successful)
the ethnomethodology answer: it is taken to be a like a person in a conversation and thus simply works like most other technologies in a social situation
-Johnstone’s “algorithm”
-ethnomethodology: a definition
Ethnomethodology simply means the study of the ways in which people make sense of their social world.
-Ethnomethodology differs from other sociological perspectives in one very important respect:
Ethnomethodologists assume that social order is illusory. They believe that social life merely appears to be orderly; in reality it is potentially chaotic. For them social order is constructed in the minds of social actors as society confronts the individual as a series of sense impressions and experiences which she or he must somehow organise into a coherent pattern.