The argument for downplaying the role of the tech issues in the whole discussion about social interaction design brought to my memory some words put out by Theodore Roszack back in the eighties, basically that the essence of the progress in culture and human communications didn%u2019t coincide with the progress in information technology. Quoth the aforementioned:
%u201CAny kind of experience %u2014 even %u2018inner experience%u2019 not induced by external stimuli %u2014 may initiate cognitive processes leading to changes in a person%u2019s knowledge. Thus knowledge/ideas can be acquired without new information being received. Understanding an idea means knowing the peculiar sources of inspiration of those who created and championed it, their vulnerabilities, and blind spots.%u201D I don%u2019t know if current social interaction tools are humane to the point we can make that journey through another mind in the light of other ideas, including some that we have fashioned from ourselves from our own experience. Roszack also stresses the complex interplay between experience, memory, and ideas, which is the basis of all thoughts. Take experience here to mean the /stream of life/ as it molds personality from moment to moment, not the empiricist equivalent of mere information entries. %u201CWe don%u2019t normally collect much experience of this sort. The turbulent stream passes into memory where it settles out things vividly remembered, half remembered, mixed, mingled, compounded. From this compost of rememberd events, we somehow cultivate our private garden of certainties and convictions, our rough rules-of-thumb, our likes and dislikes, our intuitions and articles of faith.%u201D Then human memory, the key factor here, is fluid, wavelike, drawn from private fantasies we hardly admit to ourselves, not separable labeled items subject to total recall. The ingredients of a lifetime mix and mingle to produce unanticipated flavors, and just in the right circunstance a single residue bubbles up into a well-formed insight about life, an idea/knowledge. None of this is data processing. It%u2019s the give and take of dialogue between two minds, each drawing upon its own experience. Weblog: http://maverickmath.site90.net/blog/ Twitter: maverickmath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=35099 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
