dourish ch 5

Quickly now ...

"This chapter has two goals. The first is to open up
the notion of embodiment and explore the set of ideas that it brings
together.
In particular, the notion of "meaning" that featured so
strongly
in the last chapter needs to be examined more closely. Just what
aspects of
meaning are important, and how are they conveyed through embodied
interaction?" (p.
128).

Ok, that's cool.

• three aspects of meaning:
  
  
  
  • ontology: (the study of the nature of being and
    categories of
    existence (p. 103)) an emergent phenomenon of describing one's
    reality, that
    arises and is revised through experience, closely tied to
    epistemology (the
    study of knowledge (p. 103)). Dourish suggests ontology can be
    designed (p.
    130), but I think he means redesigned or
    modified.
  
  
  • intersubjectivity: the problem of sharing ontology
    between
    two or more people -- difficult because we all have our own
    unique perspectives
    (epistemic frames? (shaffer?)) based on our unique empiric and
    social
    experiences in life. Dourish talks about this sharing from
    designer to
    user, between users through the system (eg. email, or IM), and
    I'd suggest
    that a third is from user to designer (in iterative design at
    least).
  
  
  • intentionality: what was meant. That with which the
    road to
    hell is paved. the disconnect in intersubjectivity. Franz
    Brentano (discussed
    on p 136), spoke of original intentionality (what the
    person
    meant) and others (Dourish?) speak of derived
    intentionality
    (what others thought the person meant). (If you've ever been in
    a loving
    relationship where people got hurt, this is all pretty jargon
    for pretty
    intuitive stuff.) Dennett (1987) says it's all derived, and
    based on
    Lucy Suchman's (1987) href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/
    index%3Dstripbooks%26field-keywords%3Dlucy%20suchman%26results-
    process%3Ddefault%26dispatch%3Dsearch/ref%3Dpd%5Fsl%5Faw%5Ftops
    -1%5Fstripbooks%5F7117809%5F2/102-6558293-8461750">Plans
    and Situated Actions, I'd bet that others would
    agree, that
    even the original actor (actant?) often only considers
    intention after the
    action.
  
  
  
  


• Intentionality, then sets up a relationship between embodied
  action and
  meaning (p. 138), which brings up the notion of Coupling
  -- maintaining
  the relationship. For example: I turn a key that starts the SUV
  that burns
  the gas that's made from the oil that's under Iraq that worries
  Bush that
  starts a war that kills or maims my neighbor's son. Coupling makes
  me the
  problem. Buddhist's get this. They call it karma. Maybe
  that's the
  angle Varela and company take, but I won't find out this
  semester...


• of course it's not that simple, because one's focus shifts
  throughout the
  process. So, for example, when I want to go to the corner store,
  I may
  not think about my neighbor's dead son, but instead think about how
  nice
  it would be to have a cold Coke quickly. Or when I turn off the
  SUV, I may
  think about saving money rather than cutting down on pollution.
  


• I act on things, through things, and
  focus on
  different points of the coupled chain of happenings, depending on
  the context
  (p. 141).


• Dourish touches on Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live
  By and
  the role of metaphor in how we describe our world (ontology).


• I'd say that intentionality is the place where symbolic IP
  understanding
  of embodiment varies from Dourish's, but Doonesbury's handling of
  the Apple
  Newton's handwriting recognition (derived intention) at least
  partly -- although
  it doesn't address the emotional aspects/consequences of it.


• embodied interaction is both a basis for an approach to design
  (discussed
  in ch6), and a stance -- a way to use existing embodied
  understandings
  of technologies in the design of new ones (a seat in a car is
  recognizable
  as a seat because of the body's understanding of chairs). The
  desktop metaphor
  in computer GUI is another example.


• "The goal throughout is not to propose a theory per se of
  embodied interaction,
  but rather to build a foundation for analysis and design" (p.
  153) --
  great, no theory.