++(4/24/2003)
++(4/20/2003)
However, then I thought about Tom Nagel's brilliant classic article "What is it like to be a bat?" and remembered my own critique in Museums of the Mind (Yale Univ Press, 1994) in a chapter called "Musing on the Absurd." Being in the center is the most primitive position. It's the one we are trying to grow out of. In the Chinese philosophy I've read about (very very sparsely), the notion of thinking of yourself as a mere limb seems germane.
User in the center seems awfully developmentally early from a psychological viewpoint as well. The infant starts there, and gradually grows up to be capable of more and more eccentric positions from which to view the self and others and the external and even the internal world, if one wants to make that distinction.
So, I look for a more complex diagram that could track all this--the movement from me at the center to the capacity to consider the trajectories of the stars and to imagine the daily lives of creatures inhabiting other times and places.
by Ellen Handler Spitz on 4/20/2003 at 14:27:08
It's interesting to think about an interface as a narrowing of all interactions into just a few. When Paul visited he wore a button from a "Welsh" rock band. If I understood correctly the dialect of Welsh isn't really spoken anymore. So to communicate through that narrowing channel is vital to keep the interface operational and open.
by Glen Cummings on 4/16/2003 at 15:55:00
When you write that your interest lies less in the contemporary and popular understanding of the term interface (human-to-machine interface) but "the meeting point between the human and anything" you are casting your net of interest very broadly. I was unable to discover (in your text) the strategy by which you are going to tackle this Herculean project.
You offer us many examples, theatre, games, telephone conversations, but none are explored to a degree that I can see the activity of design--through these examples--afresh. I would like to be able to make use of your examples but am unable to.
For me the most useful part of your thesis is your beginning taxonomy of interface characteristics: open-ended, empathetic etc. I would like to see this expanded and subcategorized. It may be a little unfashionable these days to pursue such a program but it may also be the strategy that is needed. Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium, chapters "Exactitude" and "Multiplicity" might be of interest. Alternatively I would like to hear much more about the Chinese translation of interface, jie mian, "border, boundary" and "surface,". While this is the title of you essay you do not make use of it as a method of examination. This could be very fruitful to readers looking to break out of their Western perspective.
Finally, I wonder if you have given any thought to the interfaces between groups or between individuals and groups? My own concerns have focused on the way corporations, institutions, and other systems of authority have "interfaced" with their audience. And how that relationship is often a one way (rather than two way) form of speech. I commend you for producing a project that is a two way (although as editor you still have total control) dialogue.
by Stuart Henley on 4/14/2003 at 05:11:00
The entire site looks great and works very well. I have not seen many of these student sites, but I am very impressed with what I see here and think this is the very best way to capture your experience at Yale. I completely get what you are doing. You communicated it all very well and the writing was clear and up beat. I hate deadly serious student papers!!! Bravo.
by Sylvia Harris on 4/11/2003 at 13:52:34
