Computation as a Medium

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Computation as a Medium

• Week 1
• LCC 2700 Intro to Computational Media
• Fall 2005
• David Jimison

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NMR Intro Inventing the Medium

• Engineers looking for a more coherent way of
  presenting massive information of postwar era
• Engineers looking for tools to help people to
  think more efficiently
• Engineers believe in the possibility of
  integrating our perceptions of the world
• Late 20th Century humanists (writers, artists,
  philosophers) disgusted with intellect and
  integrative ideologies
• Humanists fascinated with multiplicity of ways of
  seeing the same phenomena (Borges)
• Divergent approaches twist together to co- invent
  the digital medium

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A new medium!

• Happens rarely in human history

Writing 3500 BC Printing Press 1455
Photography 1850
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Computation as a Medium like Print

• Medium Format Genres
• Print book novel, history
• periodical newspaper, magazine
• Computer html page website, blog
• videogame shooter, rpg
• database payroll, archive

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Computation as a Medium like Print

• Medium Power of representation
• Print Don Quixote Effect
• Computer Eliza Effect

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Other models of computation

• Technology (like an engine in a car)
• Tool (like a pencil or slide rule)
• Appliance (information toaster)
• Transmitter of other media (network of moving
  bits)
• These are valid but more limited as an
  orientation for designer/inventors
• Medium is a more inclusive framework

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Advantages of the Media Model

• For both design and understanding
• Historical perspective, analogies to other
  periods of media transition
• Rich design palette from legacy practices
• Connects computation with other forms of cultural
  expression
• Focuses us on coherent form

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What is a medium?

• Something in the physical world that contains an
  idea of a person, place, thing, event, or concept.

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Media vs Technologies

• A medium contains (communicates) ideas through
  conventions of representation.
• A technology is a set of methods and materials
  for doing something, such as creating a media
  artifact.
• The computer can be thought of as an evolving
  medium that rests on a set of changing
  technologies.

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Converging Technologies/Converging Media

• Digital television/videogame console hooked to
  internet
• Telephone/camera/appointment book/music player
• Actors merging with animations in movies
• NY Times producing 1 minute videos on website
• NBC producing text and still image articles on
  website
• Google creating digital, searchable, networked
  library
• Replacement of paper, film, audio tape, vinyl
  records, video tape with digital formats

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A medium relies on

• Accessible Practices of Inscription
• Fixed Practices of Transmission
• Open Ended Practices of Representation
• These practices are always cultural and may or
  may not be technological
• Cultural all shared behaviors ,
  interpretations, and values beyond our biological
  endowment

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Inscription

• Intentional perceptible impression
• Impression may be temporal or spatial
• Impression may be auditory, visual, tactile
• Impression requires malleable material to receive
  and (perhaps) preserve it
• Impression requires a means of marking the
  material

What is a medium? Inscription Transmission -
Representation
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Examples of inscription

• Sounds made by vocal tract, impressed in the form
  of sound waves
• Cuneiform wedges on clay
• Hieroglyphics on papyris
• Roman letters on Trajan marble monument
• Moving images on film or videotape
• Electro-magnetic charges configured as bits

What is a medium? Inscription Transmission -
Representation
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Issues of Inscription

• Temporality (speech, film)
• Spatiality capacity, direction
• Ease of marking
• Persistence of marking (fired clay)
• Faithfulness of marking, copying

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Transmission

• Impressions conveyed from a sender to a receiver,
  from a creator to a perceiver
• Can be transmitted over time
• (preserved)
• Can be transmitted over distance
• (relayed)

What is a medium? Inscription Transmission -
Representation
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Transmission Involves Coding

• Telegraph model
• Message -gt Coded -gt Relayed gt Decoded
• Examples of standardized transmission codes
• Facial expressions
• Cries
• Phonemes of spoken language
• Alphabet
• 0000 1111
• Ascii

What is a medium? Inscription Transmission -
Representation
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Issues of Transmission

• Coding how well does the code capture the
  message?
• Alphabet with and without vowels
• Binary vs analog codes
• Noise how accurately is the code transmitted?
• Static on a radio signal
• Interpretation by receiver
• Does the receiver know how to decipher the code?
• Does the code mean the same to the sender and the
  receiver?

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Representation

• Assignment of meaning to the transmitted
  impressions
• Based on shared experience, conventions of
  abstraction, conventions of symbolic coding
• Always an act of interpretation from one
  consciousness to another (or same consciousness
  over time)

What is a medium? Inscription Transmission -
Representation
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Representation

• Based on an expanding set of meaningful
  conventions
• Set of lines interpreted as house, person, tree
• Alphabetic text interpreted as sounds, words,
  meanings
• Interface icons interpreted as buttons connected
  to actions

What is a medium? Inscription Transmission -
Representation
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Mature media have established conventions
30 minute format with commercial breaks Parents
and kids Foolish behavior Loving/fighting
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Established Media Conventions

• ?

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Established Media Conventions

• Paragraphs
• Lead paragraphs
• Headlines
• Mastheads
• News photo
• Byline
• Column
• Sentence
• Inverted pyramid structure
• Feature vs News vs Editorial

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Established Media Conventions

• Columns
• Capitals and small letters
• Spaces between words
• Initial letters chapter divisions
• Page numbers
• Tables of contents
• Indexes
• Title page
• Handwriting styles
• Typefaces

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Established Media Conventions

• Frame
• Information encoded by subject matter
• Color/BW
• Rule of Thirds

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Convergence breaks down coherence
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Birth of a medium
Arrival of the Train at Ciotat Station, 1895
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Q When was the digital medium born?

• A 1966 in Cambridge MA

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Media, Technology, RepresentationInventing the
Conventions of Coherence
Effie Briest, 1974
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Media, Technology, RepresentationInventing the
Conventions of Coherence
Great Train Robbery, 1895
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How to invent a medium

• Start with existing genres and import them to new
  formats
• Understand unique affordances of new modes of
  inscription and transmission
• Maximize these affordances for purposes of more
  powerful representation

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Summary week 1Computation as a Medium

• Other models of computation
• Advantages of media model
• Medium inscription, transmission, representation
• Media conventions bring coherence
• Convergence disrupts coherence
• How to invent a medium
• Next week HoH 3 and Eliza