Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age Richard Coyne, MIT Press
Strategy of Metaphor (p297-300) · metaphor consists of giving something a name that belongs to something else
· "a house is a machine" - to see sameness in difference is the genius of metaphor
· we detect sameness in spite of the overwhelming presence of difference
· The game of metaphor: to create new meaning through the interplay between sameness and difference
· To understand a metaphor is always to interpret it - to bring meaning to it· Metaphor - a creative process by which to charge something with added meaning
· Creating conflict between sameness and difference through defying categories
· Metaphor bypasses accepted categories to reveal "unnoticed similarities in our experiences"
· We "misclassify a "house as a machine"· The tension - Is the proposition a truth? a fiction? or a metaphor?
· Metaphor - the uneasy space between "is" and "is not"
· Search for truth: Truth is not in what words correspond but in what they reveal
· Truth is on the metaphoric level, not in the literal
The purpose of metaphoric language (Ricoeur): · Not to improve communication but to shatter and to increase our sense of reality
· by shattering and increasing our language
· The strategy of metaphor is to redescribe reality
· Through metaphor we experience the metamorphosis of both language and reality
Metaphor & Machines · Computer hardware are named after familiar things: memory, gate, chip, processor, etc.
· The entire computer system is made up of metaphors - hardware to icons (trash, etc.)· Design - functions to arrive at the appropriate metaphors
· Design - becomes a process of metaphor efficiency· The screen is an imaginary sheet of blank paper
· We imagine we are touching real objects· Computer design - electric impulses waiting to be symbolized through whatever metaphor we desire!
· Some metaphors badly chosen - trash - to eject disks
Metaphor and the Body (p264) · Lakoff and Johnson - language is grounded in the human body as reference
· We shape metaphors according to our sense of the body in the world even our thinking activities
· Ex - "we see the answer to a problem", "we are deeply touched", "we make up our minds"· We orchestrate according to the concept of containment: Interior/exterior. - in/out
· We see our bodies as containers - ingest and excrete, take air in breathe it out
· Other metaphor structures: paths, links, forces, balance, up/down, part-to-whole, center-periphery1. Containment: in/out: "let out your anger", "let's start out from the following assumption"
2. Force: "pushing something through"
3. Balance: "we weight evidence", "we balance conflicting requirements"
4. Metaphor of tools: "We sharpen our wits"
Metaphor and Metaphysics (p275) Heidegger points to our ability to already be where we want to go:
· Before I move across the room, I am already there by my desire to reach my destination
· It is only because I am already there conceptually that I am able to physically go there
Metaphor and Science (p276) · The function of a model is to describe an unknown thing or a lesser known thing in terms of a better-known things, thanks to a similarity of structure. A scientific model is a metaphor
1. the observed phenomena - ex: the behavior of light, the material world
2. the system of explanation - the wave model, the atom (an unseen model)
Metaphor and Technology (p280) · Technology provides metaphors through which we understand phenomena
· The computer as intelligent assistant: codifying knowledge, modeling cognition
· To see the computer as theater is to think in terms of actors, scripts, spectacle, etc.
· Technology of literacy -> have influenced the primacy of method, individualism, objectivity
· Thought patterns become organized according to models of language organization (a result of writing)
· Technology metaphors create their own problems: problem solving leads to a concern with accuracy of information transfer (encoding, decoding)
· The progress of technological development excites our senses in the promise of creating difference - a metaphoric process similar as it provides a new way of seeing/interacting with the world
· Dependencies between technologies can be understood as metaphoric
· Metaphor of "Skeuomorphism": archaeological term to designate a "nonfunctional" feature of a design that derives from a precursor = ex. Greek columns, the screen cursor as a pencil.· Metaphors provide a basis for evaluating technologies: A problem may be solved by coming up with a new metaphor
Metaphor and Design (p292) · Design as creative problem solving
· Design - producing action within a "play" of metaphors
· We can appropriate the differences that a metaphor reveals as a stimulus of design activity
· Conceptualizing a design solution ? ex. architect "space as fluid" metaphor leads to "shaping space, improving flow, identifying source, etc."
· Design of software and computer systems: the computer as modeling cognition, intelligent assistant,
· stage and theater (director)
· Computer programming metaphors:
· Structured programming: autonomous subtasks and hierarchical procedures.
· Object-oriented programming: which encourages thinking in terms of autonomous objects with behaviors and properties, variables as containers, pointers, handlers, etc.
Metaphor and Advertising (Hyper Architecture, p.82) · Advertising today produces associations between elements and product, frequently not even showing the product.
What is creative thinking? · The ability to see something from a new perspective
· to refresh and give new meaning to something
· to challenge stereotypes and social consensus
· to explore how context (the world that surrounds something) defines its meaning