Designing a Better Tomorrow: How design is informed by metaphors, images and associations of social progress

OK and device about thank you for inviting me and

having media and my name is meant to be a cheerful

I'm an assistant professor at the Tuck University at the Department for new media and I recently finished a dissertation on fossil culture cultures call it's about online collaboration and communities changing and not changing the culture industry and today I'll be speaking about

metaphors technology and media practices and so we that I was late but what I hear about the lecture my predecessor was really great because it might might actually be just a footnote to and for a and I will explain how technology on several levels needs to be designed as an EU level and there's a lot of practice and so long so if the speaking of technology we always dream of society

and that is the new innovation has been driven by motives to design a better tomorrow should based the optical telegraph desperately wanted to use a tool for introducing democracy to fly despite the fact that it that has been used for military purposes and later on Marconi so idea of the wireless world we see that a popular discourse referring to the violence error as a state like socialism like the social history and things like that the this is the

opening slide of exports the notes that is also referring to that dream and telling the user that for the 1st time the box you paid for can do what you wanted to do as the owner you already you should be in control not even more important is opening slide is referring to something that is out of a much deeper meaning it tells the user that is exude can block into a world of sharing and contributing you can be part of Roma community by ideas and so are free so telling the user you're not allowed alone you get there with other people and there's a community like of warm and cozy feeling of people that I to together with you in the same thing and striving for a better world and live awaiting the appropriate Terry devices formed from the even ownership of the corporation so how do we speak about technology

yeah cause I like to refer to the could stand because it's cool but because it's so to the point that he says the against minus that be going against them that so what I cannot at speed of my account put into words another person who spoke about innovation and technological progress was made during the said that we look at the present for rear-view mirror the march backwards into the future meaning that we have to explain all innovations and technological progress in images you can understand using associations and words referring to the past so innovation goes

public the new technologies we try something I'd like to call storytelling they need a story like a great lecture M. only information that is communicated with really diffuse and will be understood and will be picked up so it is often promoted in a popular discourse on the next slide for quite sure of the either cloud computing augmented reality or both and it will be promoted in popular discourse for people tell us that the world will be better that there will be social progress for technological advancement and these were popular discourse is are constituting something that I call the rhetorical progress to imagine a future technologies the users and the benefits and you might think that metaphors

are just used as in a sense but they are not neutral that do something so he has a couple of uh uh metaphor is used to describe the technology to make something understandable imaginable for someone who has no idea what to speak of the roads are making so the internet has been described as the information hiding from Germany got out of on the road by the yet another metaphor cyberspace hypertext is a metaphor the Memex referring to main about Bush's visionary text fundamental we extend and of course the latest that to all of which is yet another metaphor to speak of and to describe something in terms which I actually not really appropriate this was a 1st glance the

common user had on the development of the what that then was labeled the information highway and you see how the metaphor twice to to paint a picture of street that information is carried on it is not the 1st time that we use and

metaphors to describe technology when common public was unable to understand what the computer would do the computer has been related to the brain and it was sold as a thinking machine which on the other hand created quite some disturbance because people are were afraid that machines could call 1 could replace them so metaphors Met this is

really important things that material they are that shape our understanding of technological design and even more important they evoke associations affecting the constitution so what can we do with the metaphors their presented talking concept some in the metaphors we use we described already the future use of technologies an example I

don't example so we both we're familiar with those terms and receive information hiding described by

eligible as we are on the verge of a revolutionary and revolution that just as profound as the change in the economy that came with the industrial revolution and then he goes on to speak about the lobbyists future when everybody you to with the new network will have access to the commercial marketplaces really all what comes to your what geographical of physical distances due to this new streets but metaphor the cyberspace

much more wider much more anarchic much more sex so

here we have a parabolic not make use of policy comes from the other side go on and he says that the government unwelcome in this new space is opening up a completely new concept monastery motor highway that is governed by a bureaucracy but you open space that everything might be possible and that we can start over again it is also just a metaphor but the concepts and even the design concepts and avoiding wanted different metaphors are completely different and refer to completely different concepts and political

ideas so every tolerate of progress idealizes media and the ways to use them and that is why it is important to pick good metaphors to deconstruct the bad ones the ones that are inappropriate or armies confusing and there were a total of was always employs recognizable images so it would be be difficult to come up with a completely new metaphor that is incomprehensible for the majority of the users 1

company which that that really in fine rate was Cisco Systems 5 explaining everybody that will be access to the new information highways will be the road to commercial success and wealth the key

elements of the Cisco Systems advertising campaigns betrayal by vibrate targeted not at the end consumer of the large majority of the population and not to the potential clients ever emphasizing exits and participation due to new technologies and From there the development of new business opportunities that global connectivity and great market of happy people so you see that here this

unfortunate you made by German advertising company was stupid slow 1 will 1 day when internet that reminds of really disturbing political time in Germany box and the let's

move on so in the 1st in the 1st part of the of the of of the development of the World Wide Web that was X as a key metaphor for participation if you have access you can participate today it's collaboration it's not the dream of access

because access seems to be something we have achieved now it's collaboration and

participation became great legend of social interaction and culture production online it's telling

us simple story that passive consumer wars from being a critical reader to user into becoming a consumer and producer story which is laid out in the popular discourse and is um quite inappropriate is

emphasizing according to change definition the strong support that some participant of a community would find there the members have that their contributions matter the social connection with 1 OK that is all about and you will find that in many communities box it is always based on

intrinsic motivation explicit activities is community but you know that there's another form of

participant patient implicit participation which I will describe in a minute what we find here what I tried to do was laying out all the media practices that have developed over the past 20 years and tried to to organize them according to an accumulation which means you tried to to do something with the content already provided by the media industry and you model like the force on that morning star was have you build a completely new stuff called I quality construction and you up busy is organizing data which I call archiving we have many projects in the region on the key aspects that Jenkins pointing out I stick that it just means that a

photo you put on the market you change like makes box will change into a new node so computer but

let's go on to the more interesting part this great

next week not only by music it also made something extremely here it was built from already existing technologies like 5 file-transfer particles and performance music player applications and programs for automatic indexing of what it did was changing distribution by good

so good by lowering the level of participation you don't have to be nice to your neighbor just because you wanna Boston you copy it you just plug into a network you don't have to talk to anybody you circumvent all the community aspects that that are so much highlighted in the discourse and participation is just on the low level you still participate but it's interesting part of the technology of software design and so you participated effort in communicating with all due away and you have a really effective way of exchanging music somebody else was not happy with

that and xt that was good for the sign that companies like all looking media century but trying to fill up those networks and to fight the distribution online that only led to better particle so the participation of the evil empire was actually good for the development of better software what did we learn from that the interplay of

design an appropriation that means for users to with the technology that comes out there is actually really important for the integration of wallet technologies next assured us that participation can take place on the lower level so the intrinsic motivation can be they by test which is really cool and which really works in the back toward applications that we see the moment and again automatized participation which is even more more and we see that very well done by the culture industry

in their talent High along back to that is completely swiping on a promise and it's nothing more than a promise that everybody becomes a producer income participate in the culture industry so

actually took place was the culture industry found a way to extend into the domain of the use of and implement the media practices that building that sites of common now like communicating the other by making videos and uploading them you now all I think the buddhist example are finalizing services like many got note that I actually complete wiring on pirated content and building successfully business model around this is what I

call implicit participation it means that the software the sinus directing user activities is formalizing them in the sulfur designed something that has been adopted by the way architecture of participation and which is now by some critics labeled as architecture of exploitation and they develop new business models many of them most revenues the most important that took the shift place from content creation tools providing a platform and that is

the important point it's about these platforms I don't mind that Facebook might make money with my content on this news me communicating with my other but the problem is that they are determining the platform they are determining the cultural and social values that are made out of something that you find in the end user license agreement something that might apply to schools as well as you have seen in the previous lecture so but what's labor that up as participatory culture right now is actually something that reminds me more of a football stadium you are a politician than among thousands of others and the platform the stadium that they're really not belongs to someone else and they are determined in the woods and that's why

technology technological sign is key to culture powers and finger philosopher of technology later this is why it is so important that we put together and a technology that makes sense the sign that is laid out on the level of the metaphor the media practices and the technological design it has to be embedded in them and if the technological design is contradicting the metaphor used and companies have the problem that users will act like the black like black exports has been hacked by users because it wasn't it was limited to the game consoles up behind the black was of course a powerful universal machine and the the downgrading the metaphorical downgrading to black box was something that was easy to remove I find it really funny that actually the development of and the development of the exports is transparent for so the developers received the transplant exports and find that former a metaphor the point of view hilarious so here we see a contradiction between metaphor and technologies and I find it very important for deciding to think about for the sign of graphic design of technological design to think about the available technologies are communicated and how the metaphors to describe them might be comprehensible to there to the future use of and to what extent does metaphors described to reuse users and the potential of the technology you all for because in the end the following month of stop referring to the German philosopher Walter Benjamin it meant that you build devices that change the entire apparatus of production by making them available to the most possible number of users and that is what my predecessor has perfectly well described the freedoms form which applies here as well so thank you very much and that was his speed

reading because I thought I had 30 minutes to speak

and then let it live this lecture is based on an article which you can find in the recently published book giant co-edited with my colleagues and bridges of course for download online for free and we just think you much fewer