dourish ch.1

Since I so enjoyed ch. 4 of Where the Action Is, and since it paralleled (or promised parallels to) much of what most interested me in Michael Eisenberg's research, and because I sense hints of the same three pillars (or components, or axes?) that I use to structure my own research, I've decided to read the rest of the book, starting from the beginning.

And the beginning calls for recognition of Computer Science as a philosophical enterprise (p. viii), that focuses more on interactions than procedures -- not just what is being done, but how it's being done (p. 4). Dourish chronicles the history of Human Computer Interface (HCI), from mechanical to electrical to symbolic (textual, graphical), and speaks of computer design as it pertains to our realities, touching on peripheral attention, pattern recognition and spatial reasoning (p. 6-14). He calls for an increase in tangible and social approaches to computing as it leads to more embodied interaction (p.15-23). And this history sort of hinges on the same pillars I use in my theory of learning, which is to start in the Discourse where we're comfortable, use design to engage us there and to lure us into new experiences that bend and relocate the centers of our Discourses. Of course the HCI are less interested in changing us, and more interested in changing the computer to be "easier" for us. As computer interfaces undergo transformation, however, we also change. At it's most extreme, we learned to "think like a computer" when programming, to convey our thoughts via DOS commands or menus and windows, through a mouse and keyboard, in PowerPoint's bulleted phrases, to "$p34|< 1337" in IM "conversations". In any good interaction both parties change.

It is both interesting and unfortunate that he doesn't give succinct definitions for either "tangible computing" or "social computing" but loosely ties the former to distributed computing, augmented reality, tangible bits, and ubiquitous computing, and glosses over the latter as "trying to incorporate undersandings of the social world into interactive systems" (p. 16), with promises to delve further into each later. Both, he asserts are part of the key to embodied interaction in computing, which is what the book is all about.

Will my exploration of this book help me further develop my theory of learning, or pedagogic creed? Stay tuned...