By sid213 (January 25, 2009) (Reading 1)

Realism is the art of making reality, of knowing reality and knowing how to make reality. Reality will be changed… (Lyotard J.)

This are times where paranoia is spreading on the outcomes of technology development, where people believe it has gone to far. Lyotard in his trajectory on the development of the earth, and live as we now see it, invites us to embrace change. But not without questioning it. There is magic in the way that he narrates his fable by presenting the idea that the world is going to come to an end to let you calm… reality will be changed.

I have a Jehovah Witness friend, and we will go into long arguments, she will persuade me of the atrocities of the decade, and how it all points to the end of the world. This discussion always reminds me of a part of the movie “The decline of the American empire” by Dennis Arcand. A dialog says, “People go on about how we live in a violent society It comes up on TV all the time. From a historical perspective, that’s just not true. It’s a relatively peaceful age. Reporters get all worked up because of 10% unemployment. But in London in 1850 out of a population of one million 600,000 people were literally starving to death. That’s what I like of history. It’s so reassuring.” I found Lyotard’s reading realistic but in a weird sense reassuring.

It complements with Talbott reading, because it makes you question not the change or the inevitability of development, but how are we designing technology. I agree with him of how we want to build human-machine interfaces that are at the same time invisible. I want to keep his advise to remain conscious of the assumptions and unseen factors driving our thoughts and activity.

From Fogg’s reading, his concept where really straight forward, and it was really clear the definition of persuasion technology as interactive computing systems designed to change peoples behaviors or attitudes (he mentioned over 10 times).