Blogs



Same as it ever was: Constitutional design and the Orange One

Posted: Tue, October 11, 2016 - 4:07:05

In politics, as in music, one person’s stairway to heaven is another’s highway to hell. Proof is in the polls: Americans across the political spectrum believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. And here’s the thing: Rather than dispute one another over the facts, we acknowledge only the facts that suit our present viewpoint and values. Then there’s…

Thailand: Augmented immersion

Posted: Thu, September 08, 2016 - 5:29:47

Our first day in Thailand, we visited the Museum of Regalia, Royal Decorations and Coins. Case after case of exquisite sets of finely crafted gold and silver objects from successive reigns: How had Thailand managed to hold on to these priceless objects for centuries?That night, Wikipedia provided an answer: Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country that avoided colonization and…

The map is the territory: A review of The Stack

Posted: Wed, August 03, 2016 - 4:18:39

From that phantom vibration to that reflex to grab your own rear, you are responding to the call of The Stack… From the virtual caliphate of ISIS to the first Sino-Google War of 2009 to the perpetually pending Marketplace Fairness Act, The Stack gives birth to new sovereignties even as it strangles others in their sleep. From YouTube’s content guidelines…

The joy of procrastination

Posted: Mon, July 11, 2016 - 11:37:43

I have long meant to write an essay on procrastination. Having just been sent a link to a TED talk on a virtue of procrastination, this seems a good time to move it to the front burner [1]. An alarming stream of research papers describe interventions to get chronic procrastinators like myself on the ball: wearable devices, displays mounted in…

Brigitte (Gitti) Jordan: An obituary

Posted: Thu, June 23, 2016 - 3:43:25

It is with great sadness that we report on Brigitte (Gitti) Jordan’s death; Gitti died on May 24, 2016, at her home in La Honda, California, surrounded by loved ones. She was 78. While the influence of anthropology and the practice of ethnography may seem very familiar to us in the HCI and technology design world today, it was not…

Technology and liberty

Posted: Tue, May 03, 2016 - 10:22:39

The absence of plastic microbeads in the soap led to a shower spent reflecting on how technologies can constrain liberties, such as those of microbead producers and consumers who are yearning to be clean. Technologies that bring tremendous benefits also bring new challenges. Sometimes they create conditions conducive to oppression: oppression of the weak by the strong, the poor by…

Collateral damage

Posted: Tue, April 05, 2016 - 1:06:30

Researchers are rewarded for publishing, but this time, my heart wasn’t in it.It was 2006. IBM software let an employer specify an interval—two months, six months, a year—after which an email message would disappear. This was a relatively new concept. Digital storage had been too expensive to hang onto much, but prices had dropped and capacity increased. People no longer…

Critiquing scholarly positions

Posted: Tue, March 15, 2016 - 12:13:32

If I am right that HCI and neighboring fields will increasingly rely on the essay as a means of scholarly contribution and debate in the future, then it follows that the construction, articulation, and criticism of intellectual positions will become increasingly important. In Humanistic HCI, we talk about the essay, the epistemic roles of positions, and how they should be…

Technological determinism

Posted: Wed, March 09, 2016 - 12:21:43

Swords and arrows were doomed as weapons of war by the invention of a musket that anyone could load, point, and shoot. A well-trained archer was more accurate, but equipping a lot of farmers with muskets was more effective. Horse-mounted cavalry, feared for centuries, were also eliminated as a new technology swept across the globe, putting people out of work…

A dark pattern in humanistic HCI

Posted: Tue, February 09, 2016 - 2:52:11

I have noticed a dark pattern among papers that align themselves with critical or humanistic approaches to HCI. I myself have been guilty of contributing to that pattern (though I am trying to reform). But I still see it all the time as a peer reviewer and also as a Ph.D. supervisor. And since I spend so much time evangelizing…