" devices that collect the various traces of our being in the world, and submit them to the network for inspection and analysis. "
I’m thinking about the permission and authoritarian during the collecting and submitting. Sometimes we are facing them without being asked. Our acceptant of these devices on our own initiative- this behavior itself is tacit permission for some companies to collect and submit. But in another occasion, when people are given terms to confirm, most of them will skip the details and won’t look at it back unless there is problem emerged or their rights be infringed. But that’s already too late.
" Every networked device that goes unprotected in this way isn’t simply exposing its own controls. "
Put this circumstance into a “cyborg”. In the article, the part discussing the security problems, reminds of IoT implanted into human body, the symbiosis of human and IoT. Will the outbreak of the security problem expand the self-identifying of the boundaries and privacies. When everything is becoming transparent, what is unaffordable, unacceptable? And also how can they maintain their dominance over the control of “their own bodies” ?
" But once these prototype elements have been subjected to the extreme rationalization required by mass production, they become reduced to abstract ultra-miniaturized electronic components. Their modernist poetry, based on truth to materials, is lost. "
The miniaturization and mass production are like mysterious magics for our modern life. When people start to use designed, acknowledged, standardized package to parcel up the electronic objects, the phenomenon, prototype and more symbolic parts are covered, forgotten. I love the example author used here - the transistor - which is so tiny nowadays appearing in our daily life that at least me, already think it’s only a component - doomed to be a part of other larger size staff rather than a whole as itself.
" You will have no difficulty giving names to this sort of behavior These vehicles LIKE the source, you will say, but in different ways Vehicle 3a LOVES it in a permanent way, staying close by in quiet admiration from the time it spots the source to all future time Vehicle 3b, on the other hand, is an EXPLORER. It likes the nearby source all right, but keeps an eye open for other, perhaps stronger sources, which it will sail to, given a chance, in order to find a more permanent and gratifying appeasement. "
I'm amazed how author here are trying to explain the behaviors from vehicles. Use the worlds like "LIKE","LOVE","EXPLORER",which are very living-being-like behaviors. But these behaviors are just triggered by very simple structure. I'm trying to understand the hidden meaning from this explanation (or maybe metaphor).
" Let Vehicles 2a and 2b move around in their world for a while and watch them. Their characters are quite opposite. "
When author is describing the vehicles, a lot of interesting words are mentioned, like "characters","dislike","aggressive". Why? Why we are using these kind of words to describe vehicles rather than other objective and function-oriented description? This is the point I'm confused about when doing the reading.
" But, you will say, this is ridiculous: knowledge implies a flow information from the environment into a living being or at least into something like a living being. "
How we define knowledge? "Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts (propositional knowledge), skills (procedural knowledge), or objects (acquaintance knowledge)." Is the sensor perceive variables a kind of knowledge? To some extent, I agree.. Is "into a living being" necessary?
" The turn-of-last-century British artist William Morris once said you can’t have art without resistance in the materials. The computer and its multifarious peripherals are the materials. The code is the art. "
I feel amazed when author put out the thought - "The code is the art" since "The computer and its multifarious peripherals are the materials". It definitely is!! But I never think about this from this perspective. As the article developing, discussing more about the language, I believe, different language are also existing as a form of resistance themselves.(As various language having their different features and applicable situations.)
" When you speak to Siri or Cortana and they respond, it’s not because these services understand you; they convert your words into text, break that text into symbols, then match those symbols against the symbols in their database of terms, and produce an answer. Tons of algorithms, bundled up and applied, mean that computers can fake listening. "
I love the phrase "fake listening" here - still trying to put these "software" into creatures or even human-being like creatures(since they understand what human-being saying). And here, the explanation of their working routine though simple but actually are demystifying the relatively advanced software(or we might call it “algorithm”, lol). That's also why I pretty like this article, which, trying to disclose the code culture, the facts of coding...
" Style and usage matter; sometimes programmers recommend Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style—that’s right, the one about the English language. Its focus on efficient usage resonates with programmers. The idiom of a language is part of its communal identity. "
This part, somehow echoing the conference culture mentioned earlier(also relationships of power and hierarchy imbedded), prompted my questions about - how, how the style and usage are established; do they have standards; why community have preferences; why THIS book is specifically recommended; will people in the same team or company have their unique/own aesthetics(regulation)? Also this part of discussion reminds me of the gentrifications in article The Hacker Hacked. What’s the main stream? The meaning of communal identity?
" Our research into the legality of broadcasting sounds of the countryside over FM frequencies in Italy had been frustrating and inconclusive. Attempts to locate the relevant authorities over the month before we travelled had been unsuccessful, despite the help of a native Italian to guide and translate for us... But the situation in Italy was unclear. It seemed that either anything was legal, or nothing was. Given that our tests would take place only over a day or two, in a fairly remote village, we decided to risk detection and proceed with the trials "
Reading this paragraph actually made me really nervous and curious about what’s gonna happen later, in which case I started to imagine how people in this project, at that moment, are feeling. And all the challenges and difficulties mentioned in this chapter triggered me to think about what kind of methodology or strategy we should take in field experiments. Define the key point of the testing? Adjust the emphasis timely and appropriately? How to minimize or manage the risks?
" Our calls remained unanswered. People ignored the ringing phones, and if they did answer soon hung up. With several of our team observing the phone booths we were by now targeting directly, we realised that the phones were only answered when somebody was in the booth about to make a call anyway. "
Experiments, which need public or citizens get involved, seem more likely to be unpredictable and unsure. Sometimes we might have the prediction about how people are reacting to our work, thus we are designing or arranging our work in this way - while in the end people just go the reverse way. I feel this is quite a challenge for everyone trying to do these kind of public experiments. But I do appreciate how people in this project are trying to figure out the potential elements influencing the responses, and then trying to switch to a better solution to test if it works better. Though this Digital Boudoir is claimed as “almost complete failure”, the process of the experiment and the reason for failure are still thought provoking.
" Standing near large coat racks hung with cards making various statements soon made us feel uncomfortably exposed. We found ourselves embarrassed by some of the slogans. They seemed the product of religious fanaticism (‘treat others as you would like to be treated’), crude political protest (‘people ignore us in the Bijlmer’), or of a naive vulnerability (‘I am afraid’). We began to realise that the best slogans were slightly ambiguous or detached in tone (‘I am from another country’), or were particular and personal statements (‘I like a few drinks once in a while’). These seemed to escape classification into known forms of public display, invoking curiosity and imagination rather than immediate dismissal. "
When I saw the images attached later, I realized this statements were truly displayed as obvious and powerful slogans. Through the embarrassment, I started to inspect how the directness or the ambiguity embedded in the slogans are influencing the perceptions, feeling and reaction from the audience( or passerby here ). In some way, the directness shrinks the distance between the content and the audience, by strongly expressed emotion or honestly unfolded standpoint. While the ambiguity in these slogans, are more like bait, waiting for audience hooked and expanding their imagination or suspicion. There is a detour between the contents and the audience.
" Prototypes provide the means for examining design problems and evaluating solutions. Selecting the focus of a prototype is the art of identifying the most important open design questions. "
The author gave a rough model of what prototypes prototype - role, implemention, look and feel, which I found quite useful applying into my future design process. In my past experience, especially when I'm working with multi-disciplinaries, I might face the difficults to convey my ideation correctly or accurately. I feel like how to identify the most important question also determined on who are you talking to (which author also mentioned in the artitle). For example, if I'm communicating with the technologist, i might use storyboard(more like a "role" prototype) or a simple mockup. If we are showing our ideas to teachers(they are mostly engineering background), we might make a "implemention" prototype focus on explaining how we develop or run our project. And during the visit to FROG DESIGN SHANGHAI last month, I got to know that they also make a lot of prototype for internal discussion，discussion with clients，or with customers. They may make several prototypes at the same time, with different people involved - designers in different field, design technologists...
" Is a brick a prototype? The answer depends on how it is used. If it is used to represent the weight and scale of some future artifact, then it certainly is: it prototypes the weight and scale of the artifact. "
This is the part I didn't expect - a brick as a prototype. Also similar examples mentioned later - storyboard as prototype and even pizza box as prototype. These examples vivdly show how significant for a designer to correctly, accurately use tools or medias to explore or demonstrate the "artifacts".
" Implementation prototypes can be hard to build, and since they actually work, it is common for them to find their way directly into the final system. "
That's what I'm thinking about!! I feel like a implemention prototype is more like a initial version of the artifact(or project in my preview experience), and seems it is already in the half way of the accomplishment and the team just need to do more iteration and testing.
" The internet promises open access to information and online assembly for individual computer owners. At the same time, it serves as a tool for corporate monopolists and government surveillance. "
Totally agree with this point of view. And I do believe this is what's happening in our daily life. Chinese government are using the health code, which is generated from people‘s medical records, travel history and even more personal information, during the pandemic. This special form of surviliance and regulation seems be normalized after several months‘ education. Showing the code（maybe goes far beyond the health) will be regarded as obligation to maintain the safety and stablity of the society. Privacy will compromise with the public interest.
" Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about the systems –about the world – from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things. "
I feel like this is also one of the Methodologies in design field. Dig deeper into the object, system, behavior and then deconstruct them，to figure out what‘s behind, what's inside them. And then the knowledge, rules, principles, conditions can be applied on your own designing process - to rebuilt object, system, behavior.
" The search for unusual detours – through a sewer system, for example – is exhilarating because you see things that you’re not supposed to be interested in. Your curiosity takes you to places where you don’t belong. It thus becomes an assertion of individual defiance of social norms. The byproduct of such exploration is pragmatic knowledge, the disruption of standard patterns of thought, and also dealienatio – you see what’s behind the interfaces that surround us, coming closer to the reality of our social worldn. "
I really love it when author is using "detours", "byproduct" during the discussion. I feel like these elements are compositing a negative space for our society - which is about the unspeakables, the invisibles, the untouchables behind our social norms. From there we generate what people think as "new", "inspirational", "genius".
" Open design, particularly in regards to digital hardware and software heralds new possibilities for artists, scholars and interested citizens to engage more fully in a simultaneously conceptual and material critique of technologies and information systems in society. "
Nowadays our daily lifes are profoudly influenced by and closely related to digital hardware and software. However in the traditional industries, these works are mostly developed by the expertises, which means the further impact and implication of their developments, reflecting on the society, might be despised, or even neglected. The joint effort from multi-disciplinaries and the wider public, can reassess the previews works - trying to erase bias, inequality - which may led to better design in our digital era.
" I call this work ‘critical making’ in order to highlight the reconnection of two modes of engagement with the world that are typically held separate: critical thinking, traditionally understood as conceptually and linguistically based, and physical ‘making’, goal-based material work. I see this as a necessary integration for a variety of reasons: first, as a way of overcoming the ‘brittle’ and overly structural sense of technologies that often exists in critical social science literature... "
Just highly agree with reason1!!
" What differentiates critical making is its attention to the interwoven social and technical aspects of modern life – what theorists call the socio-technical – rather than being primarily about technical expertise or functional knowledge about the natural world. "
When I started to know something about critical design and speculative design, I tried to make some physical props to build up my scenarios. However, as these design being "dealing with the aesthetics of the use of new technologies in the context of electric"(from Introduction to Speculative Design Practice), seems that it is difficult for us to put technologies aside. Trying to use them as a medium/approach in the design practices seems becoming inevitably important.