Machines in the Triangle: a Pragmatic Interactive Approach to Information (original) (raw)
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2018
At this moment I consider Human-computer interaction to be one of the most intellectually stimulating fields dealing with the relationship between humans and technology. There are myriad reasons for this praise. Among them is the simple fact that in today's world, called by many scholars variously as the information age, network society or post-industrial and cognitive age (Castells & Cardoso, 2006, p. 4-5; Dijk, 2006, p. 19), technology and technological work are deeply interwoven into the structure of our societies. The ever-closing integration of technology and humans is manifested by contemporary approaches such as the Ubiquitous computing and Internet of Things, with sensors and smart devices monitoring, analysing and predicting what we do, or could or should do. To study both technology and society then demand that we consider their mutual influences and co-constitution; the approach that goes beyond the myopic variants of technological or sociocultural determinisms.
Journal of Advances in Humanities, 2015
Information technology has perpetuated the role of symbolism in everyday life practice, through its reliance on sign systems for its creation and operation. Increasingly attention has been placed on applying semiotic techniques to analyze user interface design and usability. Surprisingly, although the move towards symbolic interaction has been one of the most striking components of the digital shift, it has proven difficult to build bridges between semiotics and HTI-design thinking. In this article we argue that the problems in linking semiotic analysis of human technology interaction with modern HTIdesign paradigms such as usability or user experience arise from a theoretical gap between the paradigms of semiotics, human cognition and thinking-technological psychosemiotics. Consequently, it is necessary to reformulate principal insights of semiotics such as the triangle of reference, by replacing the intuitive concept of thought, with modern philosophical and psychological concepts of human thinking. This allows the unification of usability research based on cognitive research with the analysis of signs in modern semiotics. It is possible to unify the conceptual analysis of signification and semiosis with conceptual and empirical work typical to modern human technology interaction research and design, thus making semiotics an essential tool within the swiftly developing paradigms of interaction design.
Human-Information-Thing Interaction
This book is about how to make it out with technology. Humans have come a long way since leaving the trees, and through our tools we have neutralised most natural forces and adapted the environment to ourselves. This struggle for supremacy built, and still builds, knowledge about; nature, the tools needed, and how our society and we work. Relating this knowledge to the next generation of technology is the major challenge for the following 200+ pages. The human genome is now known, which is a major achievement. We know the wiring of our neural network, and have cars that transport us comfortably from A to B. However, not all problems are solved, and not everything understood. Far from it! The last thousands of years have for instance not shed much light on emergence, the effect of long term social processes, dynamic human behaviour, society, our mind, consciousness, self, and love. Aristotle is still the reference.
(Re)lations of computing: a conjunctural analysis of the emergence of the human-computer interface
Through a conjunctural analysis based on documentary sources, this investigation looks at the development of three forms of relationship between the computer and the human operator which emerged as the result of the processes by which the computer passed from wartime field devices used in the early 1940s to the distributed workflow of time-sharing computing of the early 1960s. The transit through these different processes allowed for the production of the computer as a cultural artifact, establishing the ways and means in which the operator and the computer became entangled in three distinct, yet deeply interrelated forms of relationship. The proxy relationship, which became produced through the usage of computerized apparatuses during WWII and posited the substitution of the human operator with the computer. The peer relationship, which required the digital general-purpose computer to become produced through its usage and posited the collaboration of the human and the computer, establishing each one as autonomous ontological entities, between who a dialogical relationship emerged. The partition relationship, which became effected through the incorporation of both, time-sharing computing and direct object manipulation, positing the existence of the operator and the computer not only as distinct ontological entities, but also residing in separate, irreconcilable worlds. The emergence, operation, and expansion of each of these relationships is studied and, in doing so, the conception of the human-computer interface is refocused as the result of the tensions and articulations of contradictory and coincident discursive and social practices. As such, the analysis posits that, although each of these three relationships developed within, through, and against specific contexts, they have not been abandoned in later computational developments but, instead, that they have become actualized and incorporated as facets of the human-computer interface.
Human–computer interaction viewed as pseudo-communication
Knowledge-Based Systems, 2001
Semiotics is considered fundamental to an understanding of human±computer interaction, and of all computer artifacts. Informatics should therefore be viewed as technical semiotics (or semiotics engineering). In particular, interaction between human and computer is characterized by features of communication, a sort of communication, however, that lacks decisive communicative features. It must be identi®ed as a process of pseudo-communication. Interaction is viewed as the coupling of two autonomous processes: a sign process (carried out by the human user) and a signal process (carried out by the computer). Software appears as a semiotic entity in a duplicate way: calculated and calculating, i.e. both result and agent of calculations. This dialectics characterizes the class of signs on the computer medium. Problems of software design (functionality and usability design) are speci®c problems of the coupling of sign and signal processes. q
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2013
This research examines a new design philosophy of HCI in the collaborative action-based context interdependent perspective. To frame a new perspective of design philosophy of interactive technologies, the study proposes "We" human-and-technology as a response for alternative perspectives of reference in interactive systems design and alternative ways of understanding the relationships and collaborative actions between humans and new digital technologies. It argues the problem of knowledge provoked by the collaborative action of "We" human-and-technology, through three keys: reflecting, performing, and invaginating. Its aim is to reveal that HCI design practices establish a new knowledge beyond the logic of opposition reinforcing the mutual degradation between technology and human, thought and action, subject and object.
Goodbye World. On the Incommensurability of Technical and Sensemaking Communication
2021
We have never communicated with machines, and we never will. All we have done so far to communicate with machines are detours to be able to communicate with each other via machines. The foundation for this statement is the differently designed logics of communication of machines and social systems. Social systems communicate by processing meaning. According to Luhmann, communication consists of the three parts of information-message-understanding. Connectivity and recursiveness are generated based on meaning. Machines, on the other hand, communicate causally and logically and therefore exclusively via information. Technical communication is therefore established causally and is only causally connectable and recursive. Following these assumptions, we notice, that social and machine communication are incommensurable. Nevertheless, social systems manage to bridge this hiatus and produce the illusion of communicating with machines. Social Interface, a concept and term coined by Bernd Miebach accomplishes this. We discuss this new approach based on communication theory using an example of organisation research: the AI assisted hiring process using Pymetrics. The example shows that the used technology fulfils its function reducing complexity in the decision-making of the hiring process by producing a communicationally connectible output in form of ratings. We conclude that this process is being made easier via AI on the surface, but the AI assistance also produces uncertainty itself, which cannot be presumed due to the incommensurable operation of communication.
Some Ethnomethodological Observations on 'Interaction' in HCI
2002
This paper tries to indicate how interdisciplinary work between ethnomethodologists and system design can be taken seriously. To do this, we proceed to indicate that our problem is not with engineering procedures but with the portrayal of human action and especially human interaction in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). We deconstruct the use of cognitive, information processing models of HCI and indicate how such conceptualisations are problematic and lead to a simplification of human action. As a result, we indicate that tools of ethnomethodological sensitivity provide more detailed and accurate analyses of work practices and technology. We consider the impact of replacing the cognitive HCI model with descriptions of work, action and interaction provided by ethnomethodological studies. We continue to provide some remarks on the ways in which such descriptions may form a useful resource for systems designers, by providing a better description of current socio-technical...
The person-machine confrontation: Investigations into the pragmatics of dialogism
AI & Society, 1996
Erroneously attributing propositional attitudes (desires, beliefs...) to computational artefacts has become internationally commonplace in the public arena, especially amongst the new generation of non-initiated users. Technology for rendering machines "user-friendly" is often inspired by interpersonal human communication. This calls forth designers to conceptualise a major component of human intelligence: the sense of communicability, and its logical consequences. The inherent incommunicability of machines subsequently causes a shift in design strategy. Though cataloguing components of bouts between person and machine with Speech Act Theory has been popular, I will endeavour to present the sine qua non for their insertion into a larger unit of discourse-their societal embodiment. I shall argue that the so-called "intelligence" of the artificial should to be seen as a purposeful act that is socially generated, because it comes of Man, for Man. Designership will provide the forum for evolving user requirements and interface renewal.