Hi Orkan,<br>
<br>
An aside to the discussion--<br>
I see a parallel between your point about needing to understand the
technology we use (flash drive example is great) and a need to
understand the science behind our relationship to climate change.
Maybe these two needs for understanding (and their current timing) are
related in some way?<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
-Matt<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/23/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Orkan Telhan</b> <<a href="mailto:orkan@media.mit.edu">orkan@media.mit.edu</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>Hi everyone,<br><br>Following Jessica and Dave's review, I also would like to comment on<br>the 'Architecture and Situated Technologies'. I only attended the<br>symposium on Thursday and Friday, but generally had a good time in
<br>these quite intense sessions.<br><br>A couple of things I found interesting:<br><br>Desire for the underspecified (e.g., interaction models, buildings).<br>Desire for transparency.<br>Desire for quantitative research without abandoning qualitative methods.
<br>Metrics of evaluation (how do I know if this art project or this<br>building is good?).<br>Ability to understand and simulate while being able to observe what<br>is left behind in "universal" models.<br>The immanent and complex relationship among of economy, power,
<br>control, ideology and technology.<br><br>I think we observed many concerns raised by cross-disciplinary<br>people. It is becoming more and more clear that we are moving beyond<br>the traditional debates among technophiles and cynics. The producers
<br>of technologies vs. their consumers. The audience and the speakers<br>were broad and people were wearing multiple hats as opposed to their<br>traditional labels: architect, media artist, designer, scientist,<br>theorist... etc.
<br><br>However, while the culture of debate was intense and improving, I am<br>not sure how informed people are about each others field. For<br>example, while we all are striving for transparency in technology, I<br>am wondering how many of us are ready to handle the extra burden of
<br>choice and information overload. And more important than that, how<br>are we going to tell what kind of transparency we really want from<br>technology?<br><br>If I am going to copy my 'word' file from my flash drive to my
<br>desktop, how much do I need to know about the code exchange between<br>the drive and the computer? In a glimpse of a second these devices<br>run thousands of lines of code and other than a blinking green light<br>at the end of your drive, you almost see nothing about this very
<br>complicated process.<br><br>Perhaps this is an extreme case and yes, transparency is still good.<br>But while we are proceeding to the next stages of these debates, I<br>feel like we also need to learn and understand more about the
<br>technologies we are talking about. At least to inform each other<br>about what we really want to extend the scope of these discussions.<br><br>Thanks again to Omar, Trebor and Mark for the organization. The<br>symposium was quite stimulating.
<br><br>cheers,<br><br>Orkan Telhan<br><br>--<br>Sociable Media Group<br>MIT Media Lab<br><a href="http://web.media.mit.edu/~orkan">web.media.mit.edu/~orkan</a><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (
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