the enclosed might be relevant here. It's a review I'm working on for David
Silver's cyberculture. a differnt perspective on space vs. place. critical
comments are also welcome
tom bell
Thick Description
Review of Dourish, Paul, Where the Action Is: the Foundations of Embodied
Interaction, Cambridge, MIT, 2001.
As someone who always seems to be in the thick* of things I eagerly
anticipated this book. In some ways my expectations were fulfilled. However,
I was disappointed not to receive much guidance through the action or
process of being in the thick of things. Perhaps that was an unrealistic
expectation and I'm sure similar books will soon be appearing But let me be
a little more specific.
Dourish does do an admirable job of weaving together some of the
philosophical and cultural underpinnings of this approach to the
technological world we now inhabit and would like to appropriate. He also
presents a refreshing perspective on the internet world where newer versions
are often pursued for their own sakes with an alarming (to me) tendency
toward the technological and abstract.
Sometimes people have been known to pursue a version of themselves which is
not tied into flesh and blood reality, but as Dourish points out this is an
impossibility psychologically as well as physically. "' Embodiment does not
simply mean 'physical manifestation.' Rather it means being grounded in
everyday, mundane experience.**" and not cut off from this experience as
some followers of Descartes*** might wish.
Dourish furnishes us with a readable and comprehensive grounding in the
philosophical and psychological bases of a view of humans in relationship to
the world. He draws on the thinking of such figures as Edmund Husserl,
Martin Heidegger, Alfred Schutz, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. J. J. Gibson,
Michael Polanyi, and Clifford Geertz and their disciples. This is not just a
list of names and terms such as participant observation, thick experience,
being-in-the-world, and the 'tacit' dimension. They and the perspectives
they represent open onto a board spectrum of thinking in the recent past
across the spectrum of knowledge were concerned with ways humans could
meaningfully**** interact with the world.
You will note here that the operative word is 'thinking.' This window on the
process of a human activity is refreshing to me as a poet where I take it as
a given that it is the process that matters or means. While there is a
tradition here I don't want to get side-tracked into a discussion of history
here. Suffice it to say that what matters to me is the writing or reading
process and not the poem as poem that means.
Dourish analyzes the importance of these thinkers and the movement's
potential role in 'getting in touch' by computer in an embodied way.
'Getting in touch' and embodied interaction are familiar to me as a
practicing psychology but as Dourish makes clear they are also familiar in
your everyday world when you as a person sit down at your computer - here he
is talking about you and your computer, not the ideas of you and your
computer. We're in the world of apples, as he says, not ideas of apples. You
touch your computer and you are in touch with your computer. In a real way
you are a person who can be in touch with others. In a real life way you can
tell when you are being real as a person and in your interactions. I would
hope so.
You might say, "fine, but how does that affect the design of computer
systems and games?" Dourish talks about the difference between space and
place. Let me here, insert a couple of examples for you to consider:
1. The other day I walked through my local library where people were waiting
in line for their 30 minutes at the computer. While computers and libraries
have been connected in space (and the minds of theoreticians) for over fifty
years (in my recollections) it's only now that people are sitting down,
putting their books and notes next to them on the table and 'appropriating'
the computers to use them.
2. Today on an internet international mailing list (Webartery, if you want
to look through the archives) two participants had an interaction about
gardening both are artists and gardeners. One was having difficulty
appropriating or using the interactive software the other participated or
dwelled within. The other lamented the difficulty he was having getting
other gardeners to join an internet gardening community. They negotiated
these issues. I don't have the answers.
I do think this is a common occurrence on the internet which relates to
people appropriating a place to inhabit. For Dourish place includes: 1.
attention to activities that occur in a space rather than the structure of
the space; the emergence of practice (knowledge shared by a particular set
of people based on their common experience over time), and 3. It refers to a
community of practice, with community defined by a particular set of skills
or training or a particular point in space and/or moment in time. What this
long sentence is saying is that we are, after all is said and done, people
out here on the net.
When Dourish talks about a place-centric view of design he is making inroads
into an important area that affects a very wide range of concerns in today's
internet and real worlds. There are now art museums of many types on the net
these days, for example, and many types of books and scrolls, and ebooks,
and etceteras, but the key question here remains how to induce people to
appropriate and use them or inhabit the internet. Museums in the real world
and on the net sometimes have had and continue to have difficulty
'appropriating' people and books of all types have a long history with this
problem. In my recollections it appears that there have always been and will
continue to be some of us (maybe the periphery) who inhabit the books and
the art museums. The hope some might have is for a way to induce the many
into appropriating a place for themselves here in the books, in the museums,
and on the internet. Part of the hope is that this might occur without
technological (in a pre-Dourish sense) and commercial inducements?
As I read this book, I didn't get the usual "get a new system" or "buy this
or that gadget." This book is also not a "how-to." This is a book for
designers of systems. It is a beginning, albeit a sound beginning. There
could have been more in the way of guidance through the process of finding
oneself in the thick of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) specifically or
generally for me as a writer or viewer. There could also have been more in
the way of guidance toward becoming a "being-in-the-world" designer although
one could of course turn to the philosophers on this or examine field notes
in particular other domains for hints. As I said above this might be an
unrealistic expectation here.
I do come down heavy here on this issue as I think Dourish is on to
something. He just doesn't carry it far enough into the actual process he
examines. As he points out in a slightly different context, "there is a
considerable difference between using the real world as a metaphor for
interaction and using it as a medium for interaction." What we have here is
HCI as a metaphor for interaction I would have liked to hear more about HCI
as a medium of interaction.
But I am hopeful that other books will be soon be appearing to examine and
explicate this important area for designers, writers, and users.
---
*Dourish uses this apt phrase as applied to Malinowski by Geertz who derived
it from Ryle but as he points out it is also applicable to approaches in
many fields,. He includes here participant observation and the 'tacit'
dimension. My 'thickness' credentials include being a patient as well as a
psychologist ( http://www.healthandage.com/Home/gm=0!gc=15!gid2=1259).
** Dourish, p/ 125.
*** I don't want to get into this too far, but A. R. Damasio's Descartes'
Error: Emotions, Reason, and the Human Brain, (NY. Putnam, 1994) is worth
reading here.
*** As Dourish ends, the question of meaning is one that will be addressed
in a future book although he does explore ontology and epistemology in a
readable fashion here.
Try to like something
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something and the anger
will GO
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