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.

Place de la toile 09-01-11 – Lecture de la semaine (38:28) – Comment les twitt et les texto nourrissent l’analyse en profondeur

Place de la toile 16-01-2010 – Lecture de la semaine (15:40) – 2010 the year when technology replaced the discussion.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.