References

Les secrets de la communication – les techinques de la PNL

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Les secrets de la communication – les techinques de la PNL – Richard Bandler, John Grinder – Les éditions de l’homme – 2005

 

Human uses 3 perception systems, eyes, hearing and proprioception. Language and words have different meaning for everybody relying on main perception system of an individual, therefore words are understandable because they are referred to a past experience.
The language is a boundary, because to formulate a feeling of an experience it necessitate a translation into words, that reminds me Mc Luhan.
Memories (of experiences) is part of the process, I think it begins to be a problem that computers record/archive the first raw impression of events we live. Our memories always adapt and evolve in order to select part of events that are important for us.
Among the other interesting themes of that book I noticed that proprioception might be my main system of representation OR/AND the thing I miss in digital technologies leading me to work on my actual problematic. I found echoes of that question of proprioception into “The hidden Dimension” by Edward T. Hall where he talks about physical proximity and social distances.
In the end, I think that feelings of people towards digital technologies rely on their usages, their perception system, etc and that my research might evolve differently if I run it into different countries.

Non verbal aspect that can be detected for communication are eyes movements, breathing rhythm, skin color and heat (hands and face), voice ton, body movements, etc.

 

Place de la toile – Comment les twitt et les texto nourrissent l’analyse en profondeur

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Place de la toile 09-01-11 – Lecture de la semaine (38:28) – Comment les twitt et les texto nourrissent l’analyse en profondeur
Edito de Wired janvier 2011 – By Clive Thomson
That article shows how instantaneity, connectivity and semi-public social relations brought new ways of communication that are accused to made us loose our desire for slow and reasoned contemplation. But they are interesting for reflexion on the long run.
It’s from the mass of instant messages that rises an overall meaning of an event, those messages are not meant to be relevant, trustable nor precise. Actual trends shows that longer blog articles are more popular but unlike magazines in the old days, the product of a long reflexion dropped online stays archived, dated and accessible in (almost) the same format that the day it was published. The content itself becomes the only witness that time has passed.
New forms of communication might be accepted for the good they bring and shouldn’t be a deception of expectation over phantasmic social uses they potentially allow.
Same goes for Facebook superficial social interactions that people misjudge as they are compared to IRL true conversation where they are closer to futile archived expressions of phatic function of communication.

Place de la toile – 2010 the year when technology replaced the discussion

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Place de la toile 16-01-2010 – Lecture de la semaine (15:40) – 2010 the year when technology replaced the discussion.
Article Sur le site Essay Today 30 dec 2010 – by Sharon Jason
That article brings Turkle arguments on how technology physically socially disconnects us because they ask for to much attention to entertain digital conversations to Tom Fisher arguments bringing the facts that statistics of IRL (In Real Life) contact didn’t decrease a lot while digital communications  raise substantially.
While some people feel their social link getting distended in their own family some others (like Xavier Delaporte) feel that they didn’t wait for new technology to get dissipated in an IRL conversation but those new ways of being dissipated are much less futile.
References:
Sherry Turkle – Alone Together
Tom Fisher – America Calling, Social History of Telephone to 1940 (1992)
Tom Fisher – Still Connected Family and Friends in America since 1970

 

Transmediale 2011 – Berlin

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Transmediale 2011 – Berlin – www.transmediale.de

This year at Transmediale, among all the themes debated or approached by conferences and art pieces I retained those three : Digital identity, Emotions and Social interactions.
Concerning social interaction, the last Sherry Turkle‘s book were discussed at some point, saying that depending on the age of the user, too much exposure to social digital interaction could reduce our IRL interpersonal skills. Parents and children relationship might be modified by the machine.
The pervasive capacity of the network surrounding ourselves were said to be as much threatening than exiting, for instance the network never abandons us therefore our private sphere disappear but on the other hand we have developed new senses, the one to sense the network and move to catch it up.
The notion of telepresence where also raised, the machine extends our presence and in the end, to surrender our ubiquity and connectivity seems to become a new challenge.
Artists as Ursula Endlicher where present with a piece called “InterACTicons” where she propose the public to redefine famous social key words that lost their meaning (friend, share, follow…).
Concerning emotions, the challenge is to convey it through the machine. We use emoticons as really abrupt summary of emotion.
We talked about technologies allowing ourselves to wear other people emotions. It has been a theme discussed between a search for a new emotional grammar and the pointlessness of such a technology as human is already able of empathy.

The Social Life of Information – Chapter 3: Home Alone

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The Social Life of Information – Chapter 3: Home Alone
The chapter I read from this book made me acknowledge the introducing of the landline telephone. As a testimony of old usage where telegraph where reserved to experts, telephone where the first brand new irresistible intrusion into privacy as there where no way to know who was calling and the emergency level of the call.
At that time the computer was thought to be used as a way to allow people to work from home and avoid each other. A tool for isolation that revealed to be a bad idea for productivity at work.
That chapter also briefly talks about the impact of usage on technologies : applications and usages of email and video games had a profound socializing effects on some fairly antisocial technologies that reminded me that we communicate a lot on workspaces, on devices that are made for work and productivity, and in our today usages the two are constantly alternated (work and personal communication).

The Hidden Dimension – Edward T. Hall

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La dimension cachée – Edward T. Hall – Edition du Seuil, 1971
Multiple level of communication as a network around vebalised com
Communication goes at multiple level all around verbal communication. For instance, emotionally, there is a dependency between biological reactions and human behavior.
But ethnic and cultural background of users make them privilege different parts of their sensory system, different perceptions that might be traduced in different usages of digital technologies and different feeling towards emotional sensibility that allow the machine.
Concerning perception systems, the importance that seems to have touch, smell or proprioception and the way they link us to the world surrounding ourselves is something that disappear with digital technologies. The impact that can have immateriality of digital technologies is maybe what I am criticizing in my problematic.
Digital media talks to too few senses, as shown in this image.

Overload of information does already happen for our senses therefore we learn to condition our sensory system comparing to our environment and culture
We filter information in order to select the important ones, even if we miss some, in my point of view computers make enhance this overload of information (and social contact) because it archives everything.
Human has a need for solitude, isolation. the book talks a lot about social and physical distances that human sets with people surrounding him. However, as media are prolongations of human they are also access points (intrusions) into its intimate personal space. Our devices are personal public intruders, Trojan horses.

Cybernetics

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From Wikipedia:
UK – Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and systems theory. Both in its origins and in its evolution in the second-half of the 20th century, cybernetics is equally applicable to physical and social (that is, language-based) systems.
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Contagious Affectivity – Betti Markento (2010)

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http://www.csm.arts.ac.uk/67192.htm

Source: Swiss Design Network. (2010) Negotiating Futures – Design Fiction, 6th Swiss Design Network Conference 2010. Basel, Swiss Design Network

Betti Markento (2010) – Central Saint Martins College of Arts & Design, University of the Arts. London. b.markento@csm.arts.ac.uk
Contagious Affectivity – The Management of Emotion in Late Capitalist Design

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