dourish ch3 (continued)

Abstraction is the principle of using the same object for multiple purposes. (e.g. clone computers, emulators, etc.). Implementation is the opposite. Abstraction hides implementation (p. 82). Abstraction is the "black box" of UI. Files are stored in directories that look like "folders". One of the problems that Dourish has studied is how to add accountability (discussed earlier) to the abstraction. Or, in other words, how does one make the abstraction make more sense, and show what led to the abstraction. I have an example from Mac OS X: when minimizing a window, the "genie effect" shows the window being "sucked" into the dock. The abstraction of the how the window gets stored on the dock is animated. Without it, the transition from workspace to dock makes little sense. With it, the physical experience of putting something away is mimicked visually (and audibly with the vacuum sound).

Lakoff and Johnson, in Metaphors We Live By speak of physical space as an important metaphor that we use to organize out thoughts. Harrison and Fourish instead argue that place is more appropriate -- focusing the on the physical vs. social differences between the words (p. 89). What is important in space is the activities (social) that happen there. So while a dining room and seminar room are similarly configured, different activities happen there that are appropriate to the CoP in the space. Dourish refers to Erving Goffman's (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life . Anthony Gidden's (1984) Structuration Theory uses a "Locales Framework" to do a similar thing, employing the five components of Foundations, Civic Structure, Individual Views, Interactional Trajectory, and Mutuality (p. 93).

Since human activity has traditionally taken place in a physical medium, the metaphors of the physical medium have transferred over to the electronic mediums, but electronic metaphors will be developed.