verum factum: making the world with language | andrew hinton #iias15
TRANSCRIPT
PRESENTED BY
Andrew Hinton | @inkblurt IASummit Italy, October 2015
VERUM FACTUMMaking the World with Language
WHAT IS “SHOPPING CART”?
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WILL THE REAL CART PLEASE STAND UP?
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=
Business rulesSoftware services
User behaviors
InterfacesSerial processes
What parts of “cart” do you mean?
All of these involve language.
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Physical Object
Virtual Object
Design is obsessed with tangible, visible objects...
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“That’s just semantics...”
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Language is a real medium for making.
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ENVIRONMENT
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Language is physical.
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Wikipedia
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“Vico’s Philosophy of Imagination” - Verene & Berlin, 1976
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Ecological Psychology
James J. & Eleanor Gibson
Radically empirical approach to understanding perception & behavior.
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Affordance
James J Gibson
“Dispositional properties of objects and events that provide opportunities for action to complementary organisms.” - Sabrina Golonka, PhD
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Invariants
That which does not change in the midst of change.
James J Gibson
ENVIRONMENTwikimedia
Invariants
ENVIRONMENTwikimedia
What manner of invariants?
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Words Pictures Symbols …
Language is environment.
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WE LIVE IN MAPS
CONTEXT CONTROLS CONDUCTTHE WAY WE SHAPE OUR ENVIRONMENT SHAPES OUR LIVES
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LANGUAGE MAKES MAPS THAT ARE TERRITORIESENVIRONMENTS WE INHABIT TOGETHER
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Organizational diagram of the New York and Erie Railroad, 1855
LANGUAGE IS ENVIRONMENT
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Language is “a form of mind-transforming cognitive scaffolding...”
... “Simple labeling adds a new realm of perceptible objects.”
- Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CantileverScaffold.jpg
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LANGUAGE IS THE INTERFACE WITH COMPLEX HUMAN SYSTEMS
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Language is invariant only by convention. Many layers of “meaning.”
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VARIANT!
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“elevator”“button”
over a century of cultural invariant
convention[context]
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Understanding Context, Andrew Hinton, O’Reilly Media 2014
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Wikipedia
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wikimedia
Digital agents, behaving invisibly.
APPROXIMATE INCREASE IN ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLEXITY OVER TIME*
Complexity added to human
environment
No big whoop.
OMG PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!
What’s complexity?
We’re so modern!
Learn a new app? Uh. Ok.
I have no idea what my phone is doing.
I have no idea what my house is doing.
Time
Olden times Fin de siècle
* according to Andrew Hinton’s feelings on the subject.
Industrial Revolution
“Information Age” 21st Century
THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “NO UI”
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wikimedia
Interface (Machine to Machine)
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Interface (Machine to Human)
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https://www.google.com/patents/US8558759
From Google’s patent for telling a digital agent you “love” something.
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Captured from Twitter on September 22, 2015
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Mashable
XBox reading user’s skeleton & heartbeat
APPROXIMATE INCREASE IN ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLEXITY OVER TIME*
Complexity added to human
environment
No big whoop.
OMG PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!
What’s complexity?
We’re so modern!
Learn a new app? Uh. Ok.
I have no idea what my phone is doing.
I have no idea what my house is doing.
Time
Olden times Fin de siècle
* according to Andrew Hinton’s feelings on the subject.
Industrial Revolution
“Information Age” 21st Century
Often, the assumed answer to complexity is simplicity.
THE “CLOUD”
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Interviewer: What do good information architects do?
R.S. Wurman: They make the complex clear; they make the information understandable to other human beings. If they succeed in doing that, they're good information architects. If they fail, they're not.
http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=334428
The answer to COMPLEXITY
is CLARITY… not mere “Simplicity.”
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IA “Composition” …
Your mission … Go forth and composea better human world.
