Ben Kraal

[…] machines already strike back at us even when they are stupid. How much more will they strike back when they have become smarter?

[…]

This is a problem of design: What should machines be like if their striking back is not to cause us pain? Or, better still: if it is to do us some good? What should the stone jackals be like if they are not to tear us apart and if we ourselves are not to behave like jackals? Naturally, we can design them in such a way that they lick us instead of biting us. But do we really want to be licked? These are difficult questions because nobody really knows what they want to be like. However, these issues need to be addressed before one can start to design stone jackals. (or mollusc clones or bacterial chimeras for that matter).

Or Spimes, or networked bags or …

And these issues are more interesting than stone jackals and supermen. Are designers ready to address them?

[Quotes from “The Lever Strikes Back” in The Shape of Things, Vilem Flusser, 1999]

[...] email, a medium that combines distance and intimacy in a way that can only be compared to traditional Catholicism’s old confessional booth—that dark and cozy place in which sinners used to pour out their hearts to a barely discernable silhoutte on the other side of a screen.

I Sing the Body Electronic, Fred Moody, 1995

This Hitachi ad for “hard drive bling” could well be the cheeziest viral ad ever. It’s passed through “so bad it’s good” and has re-entered bad from the other side.

The copy on the page for the concept is equally awful.

“Bling” typically refers to flashy jewelry worn as the ultimate fashion accessory. But hard drives – especially miniature hard drives – are becoming the must-have accessory for today’s portable electronic devices. In the world of consumer electronics, the hard drive has truly become the new “bling” for both the valuable and priceless data they carry.

It’s the new vogue.

I finally “get” iPods with the release of the nano. Tiny like a shuffle, no HDD to break and the oh-so-clever click wheel.

Recently, Anne wrote about Marko Ahtisaari’s Seven Challenges to our Shared Mobile Future.

Three of Marko’s challenges are: hackability, openness and simplicity. I think they’re the same thing. Or at least facets of the same thing.

If something is hackable it must be open and at least fairly simple. There are, of course, varying degrees of simplicity. Openness implies hackability. Simplicity implies hackability.

The purpose of all three of these things, hackability, openness and simplicity would seem to be a degree of freedom and customistion within certain constraints. But since openness and simplicity implies hackability, hackability, at least, is redundant.

Marko’s usage of hackability does not seem to be how I would mean it:

Brian Eno summarizes well the essence of hackability: “An important aspect of design is the degree to which the object involves you in its own completion.” Some complain about the lack of “hackability” of mobile appliances. But the mobile phone if anything is a hackable platform. Think of all the examples of physical personalization that people engage in around the world e.g. changable covers and straps and self-made accessories. Physical personalization is fast extending into software.

Personalisation isn’t really hacking. Hacking is what Mr Jalopy does when he’s hacking on his iPod or hacking on his diesel Mercedes. Hacking is pulling it apart and putting it together again — something you can’t do without at least some openness and some simplicity.

This is what flickr defines as the most interesting photo in my photoset:

Ah, the vagaries of algorithm-driven categorisation.

This post at Boing Boing links to a powerpoint presentation recently given by Recording Industry Association of America CEO Mitch Bainwol.

I believe that it violates every rule and guideline given in Cliff Atkinson’s book Beyond Bullet Points (which I’ve just bought). The RIAA presentation is truly awful.