By sid213 (February 18, 2009) (week 4 non-human post,week 4 reading response)

Is difficult to know where to start from, so I will do in a chronological order giving a personal opinion and some thoughts that came on each of the sections of the readings assigned this week.

Regarding the Ambience Intelligence readings, from the Information Society their scenarios are even though still science fiction, they do come to certain realities. I try to remember how things where in 2001, where back at that time I didn’t still have a laptop. I was sending long emails through my hotmail account. And my main source of information was television, when I didn’t depended on a cell phone… dependency and needs are malleable.

I have to bring up the article of Invisible Tools that we read from Steve Talbott. These scenarios make emphasis in the controversy of invisible technology, “embedded”. This article does not discuss this; the scenarios are about technology being invisible. They got right the idea of connecting with people, localizing you. Their emphasis also in Identity, Community, Network, Permission, Suggestion, Teleprescense, Negotiation.

What most caught my attention was in the third scenario there is the moment where the person buys her necessary goods and the “Smart Fridge Screen will be Blank” As if this is the peak moment that you look forward from technology. I recognize this feeling a lot in the present time… example of music. This weekend I had that relief feeling after organizing all my music, but actually buying a program to do it for me, naming many orphan files. It seems that in our days, satisfaction comes with organizing information, seeing things clean, cleaning your desktop seems more pleasant than cleaning your room.

In the readings about sensor networks, the two visions of open computers are really different, from one side one gives the open-source approach and the other one a business-oriented model. Open source is pretty efficient but it cannot hold itself. I do believe we are coming into an open source model but we need to find a business model for it, which we have still not be able to find.

The Blogject or objects that blog concept seem really similar to that of Spime, I don’t understand how it differentiate from it. A Spime is a “location-aware, environment-aware, self-logging, self-documenting, uniquely identified object that flings off data about itself and its environment in great quantities”. What I understand is that the Blogject is when this devices acquire certain agency. What I found pretensions is the need to give it such a name. More because it limits agency to bogging that I consider a really specific activity.

About human communication protocols I found interesting the criticism of Norbert Weiner regarding our interactions to machines in comparison to animals. What made me think that if we can get really attached to pets, such as dogs, cats, hamsters, fishes, we can create a relationship to any system. This sound cold minded, but if I can love my fishes… How can’t I love my laptop?

Communication Protocols is what most interest me about technology, the way we can facilitate communication with the help of it. This reminds me of “For our dear husbands” on of the first projects I developed together with Meng li, in which we created a clock that will dial women’s period and will let man know when it was coming. It also allowed keeping track of other emotions. It served as a medium of communications between couples.

In this same line when we created this clock Meng and me try our best to give our object a personality, even tough many argued it was not the best one. This object was not inanimate. I think this can be seen a lot in ITP where stickers or desktops are applied to our computers to give them a more human… personality. As if they are alive. I associate the job of a designer as the one of not only given aesthetics and functionality but awakening personality.

For last about the question: Find something non-human.

I work in a small cube, we are four people cohabitating this small space. I often hear friendly complaints about some whistling and noises that come out of my mouth. I’m a graphic designer in this office and when I’m working in my designs I find the need of a sound animation to my interaction with the design problems.  When I draw a circle a specific sound will come, as when I’m painting. The most interesting is when I’m aligning objects. The same with organizing files, I cannot be in such an inanimate world, so when I carry my objects to one to another side, the sounds of Mac are not enough. I need a drag sound that I will recreate.

So if I could work in something is in creating my own sounds to interact with my computer the sounds that I will like to hear, that are in my imagination, or that my experience tell me they should sound like.