Just as I finished this paragraph, the dog agent that resides on my desktop irritatingly asked me if I wanted to amend a feature of Word or turn it off completely.  This is a perfect example of an annoying little personal agent that is residing on my desktop.

Johnson begins the chapter by wittingly having us envision the story line on the short story “The Sand-Man” that was written by E.T.A. Hoffman.  The theme of this short story is the description of the eventual danger and allure of mistaking machines as humans.  A perfect segue into agents.

KEY IDEAS: What is an agent?  Agents can take multiple forms.  They can be the cute little dogs that reside on the desktop or can be as impersonal as a browser window.  Agents can perform tasks as simple as emptying the trash can to traveling the internet, communicating with other agents, only to return when they have located the information requested.  In short, agents can be classified in three types:  1) Personal 2) Traveling and 3) Social agents.

The use of agents may appear to be highly useful and harmless as they work for us to gather information we request.  These so called beings can be programmed to take on a life of their own, however, and anticipate our needs and wishes.  The most sophisticated agents that Johnson describes in this chapter will become anticipatory to our needs and may even perform tasks like making an appointment with a nutritionist after it has scheduled several pizza deliveries for you over the past few weeks.  They might even roam the Internet using the RPC (remote procedural calling) protocol; lodge themselves within a server or host of servers to glean information that you request.  As it locates information it transmits back to you long after you have gone on to doing other tasks.

The author warns that these agents could become counterproductive to our society and, in time compel humans to become less aware of their own needs and desires since they will be submitting to these agents.  Johnson focuses on the work of Jaron Lanier and his description of agents and counter-agents-both the intrigue of agents to the macabre.

Lanier focuses his criticism on the more intelligent agents rather than the personal agents that are performing routine tasks or tasks that are based upon mathematical constraints.  These agents, in Lanier’s view, are not likely to change the “future of culture and society.”  Once the agent begins to anticipate our needs, the consequences could begin.  Just as you receive junk mail at your doorstep that is targeted at your specific personal tastes, you begin to develop junk e-mail tailored in the same manner, only using more sophistication in the development of your personal tastes.

Johnson states that beyond personal taste, agents are beginning to infiltrate the more nebulous realm of taste and aesthetics.  Logically, software can determine that you like softball because you frequently visit fastball.com.  The agent can then begin to send you updates and news items on breaking news concerning softball.  The problem will begin when the agent starts to tell us what we like and dislike based upon logical “assumptions” that it is creating from our past history.  Will agents get smart or will humans just get more stupid?  This is a question that Lanier is posing through his objections to such intelligent agents.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: This was a very interesting chapter involving the use of agents in interface culture and design.  It is definitely on that could create a good case for some alarm and concern at the direction agents are taking humans on their travels in cyberspace.  I wonder just how much projection does occur as we interact with these agents-I am going to monitor my interactions more closely in the future

A key idea in this chapter is how using a word processor changes how one writes.  “the computer fundamentally transforms the way we conjure up our sentences, the thought process that runs alongside the writing process.”  I used to compose in my mind, then put it onto paper. Sentences were only as long as I could remember them. Now with on-screen composition, sentence structures are more complex – the thinking and the typing processes began to overlap.  “The textual revolution may well be the Great Leap forward of interface design circa 2000.” A new role for computers in understanding text.  Instead of organizing ones computer files based on special orientation, what about organizing files based around meaning? Pattern-recognition V-Twin search engines could be used within the personal computer to organize storage of documents based on ‘likenesses’; multiple aliases allow for multiple connections for storage.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: There are two main areas in this chapter that I keyed into as human computer interaction conduits. First, Johnson chronicles his process of moving from writing in ‘long hand’ to using the computer for brainstorming through revision – a complete process. This change in his process has resulted in a very different, and far more complex written product. With the added opportunity that email affords, this too has changed the process of communication resulting in a new form of dialogue.

The story Johnson communicates about determining the author of Primary Colors and how the same process was used to determine the order in which Shakespeare’s works were written and performed open new avenues for textual analysis. The explanation of uncovering an author’s patterns, vocabulary tendencies and other contextual clues are both exciting (wearing my archival hat) and of concern. If this technology develops sufficiently, the whole concept of anonymity will be in question. Culturally, we may have shifted from respecting the thoughts independently of the author’s identity. Are we then also  questioning the value of the nome de plume?  Pen names have been used through history to protect those who would otherwise be persecuted or discriminated against. The messages may not have been shared if it was known we could uncover the author.

Johnson discussed the web surfing metaphor.  Like flipping through the cable channels, the user is passively clicking to see what’s on.  Links are between loosely related sites, that one sifts through to find items of interest.  The author shows his disdain for this metaphor.  He laments the way it has dominated world-wide web use and design.

“Web surfing and channel surfing are generally different pursuits; to imagine them as equivalents is to ignore the defining characteristics of each.”

“But what makes the online world so revolutionary is the fact that there are connections between each stop on a Web itinerant’s journey.  The links that join those various destinations are links of association, not randomness.”

“These new versions (of Netscape and Microsoft browsers) between them unleashed more than a hundred new features, according to press materials that accompanied them. There were upgrades for Java support, new animation types, sound plug-ins, e-mail filters, and so on.  But not one of these new features – not one – enhanced the basic gesture of clicking on a text link.”

Johnson then developed a bit of the history of links as a literary device.  They are synthetic devices, bringing ideas together.  Reminiscent of the writing of Dickens, who used links of association.  Dickens weaves partial epiphanies and half resemblances into the fabric of the novel.  The web has failed to use links to do this synthetic work.  The possibilities of hypertext language, developed by Vannever Bush, that emerged in the early 1990′s have generally been overshadowed the less well thought out, more random kinds of links.

“As the word suggests, a link is a way of drawing connections between things, a way of forging semantic relationships.”

“To see the relationship between a street orphan and a baroness, you needed a little magic, a little artifice.  And to the link of association – leading us inexorably toward a secret history of heritage and inheritance – became the stock device of the Dickensian novel.”

“The imaginative crisis that faces us today is the crisis that comes from having too much information at our fingertips, the near-impossible task of contemplating a colossal web of interconnected computers.”

“Bush’s proposed solution (the Memex) should probably go down in history as the birth of hypertext, at least in its modern incarnation.  Only he chose to imagine the “links of association” connecting all that data as “trails” not links. … Bush’s system was closer to those half-resemblances of Dicken’s novels; links of association, tantalizing, but not fully formed.”

Johnson concluded by giving some Recommendations for How Links Should Work on the Web.  Links can be used in richer ways.  They can be used to draw new relationships by connecting things might not be immediately obvious.  Links can replace the linear way that a novel reads with multi-dimensional narrative.  The author designed FEED, an online cultural magazine.  This magazine included two sections – document (the primary text) and dialogue (online commentaries on the primary text).  He also discusses Suck.  Suck is an irreverent site, where contributors use hypertext to communicate and link in such a way that the author interacts with the text, linking in mid thought, and taking the reader on excursions that add to the reading experience.  The possibilities of hypertext language, developed by Vannever Bush, that emerged in the early 1990′s have generally been overshadowed the less well thought out, more random kinds of links.

“Suck’s great rhetorical sleight of hand was this: whereas every other Web site conceived of hypertext as a way of augmenting the reading experience. Suck saw it as an opportunity to withhold information, to keep the reader at bay.”

” … They (Suck) used hypertext to condense their prose, not expand it. … They didn’t need to spell out their allusions; they could just point to them and leave it up to the reader to follow along.  They buried their links mid-sentence, like riddles, like clues.”

PERSONAL REFLECTION: At first, I was taken back by the critical tone of the chapter. It seemed that Johnson had little good to say about how hypertext links are being used today. As I read on, it occured to me that this very direct assault was intentional in order to jar the reader into considering alternatives to “traditional” uses for links. It’s made me thing about reinventing my techniques of communicating with web documents.

http://www.timeandplaceworkshop.com/

Steven Johnson contrasts interface evangelists as he develops this chapter.  He applauds the use of windows as an effective interface, even though he sees that the spatial dimension of windows is “just an illusion, or the illusion of an illusion”.  It is most useful for the discrimination of information, or shutting things out, since “surplus information can be just as damaging as information scarcity”.

The use of windows did not create a new consciousness, but it let us apply our existing human structures to digitized information.  This is evident in mode-switching. This imposes a fragmented and  disconnected experience, but could also help us to see multiple viewpoints.

Even though Johnson clearly shows that the use of windows contributed to an historical evolution of the organization and interpretation of information, he notes that there are some modifications that could possibly allow designers to focus on advertising vs. editorial, and opinions vs. news.  Windows that open out onto other windows (frames) might be used to gravitate us toward the designer’s choice of content.  It may be in the past that we utilized our own information filters.  “Today’s browsers alter the look-and-feel of the data they convey; tomorrow’s will alter the meaning of that data, by emphasizing certain stories over others, or by punching up sections that are particularly relevant to the reader”.

Sherry Turkle, in Life on the Screen shares Johnson’s view that windows has the potential to be used as a propaganda tool. In this work, she generalizes when she says that “we construct our technologies, and our technologies construct us and our times.  Our times make us, we make our machines, our machines make our times.  We become the objects we look upon but they become what we make of them.”

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Even though Johnson consistently notes the limitations of windows in this and other articles, he seems to have the depth of understanding about the historical development of computer technology as it is driven by human need. He also points out that the intended need a product was designed to address might not be what it ends up being used for. Variations on the intended use, or exaptations, naturally occur as problems arise that a tool intended for something else can solve.  Modifications then might be made to the original tool, and technology evolves.  This theme appears throughout the book, and to me is encouragement for designers and users to be problem-solvers and users who are never satisfied.

Architecture reflects more than just a tool to use, therefore establishing the importance of the design of the desktop. “Each design echoes and amplifies a set of values, an assumption about the larger society that frames it.  All works of architecture imply a worldview, which means that all architecture is in some deeper sense political.” (p. 44)

The desktop is a metaphor, allowing it to function as user-friendly tool. “Alas, the desktop metaphor has as many limitations and conceptual blind spots as its command-line predecessors.  Only these restrictions come from being too faithful to the original metaphor itself, extending the original desktop into more fully realized 3-D spaces, into office buildings and living rooms.” (((p. 57)

The importance of the metaphor concept and how it affects all levels of computer design.  “Metaphors create relationships between things that are not directly equivalent.  Metaphors based on complete identity are not metaphors at all.”  When one thing becomes another it is essentially a simulation.  The value in the desktop as a metaphor is what it can do beyond a traditional physical desktop. (p. 59)

The broader implication of desktop as a metaphor is.   “Organized space implies not just a personal value system- as in the religious order of the Gothic cathedrals- but also a type of community.”  This provides a means for gathering.  “That alone suggests that spatial metaphors of the original desktop will expand into more vividly realized environments over the next few years, environments designed specifically to accommodate gatherings of individuals separated by geography.” (p. 62)

I read most of the first chapter of Steven Johnson’s book entitled Interface Culture:  How New Technology Transforms The Way We Create & Communicate.  The basic idea so far is that today’s idea of an “interface” in the minds of most people would automatically trigger a mental visualization of icons & colors, etc.  Whereas this is correct, it’s because of the GUI’s popularity today, and rather an idea of a more specific aspect of interface, that being ‘user-friendliness’.  The interface in it’s most elemental definition is basically a medium for a machine or tool & its user to successfully communicate with one another.

Johnson points out that many discussions focus on how interfaces help us work by adapting our ways of thinking and our real-world metaphors, but tells us that on the contrary, we should look at how our thinking and world view are altered  by our computer interfaces.