Could you please post notes, slides, handouts or something like that from the Huhtamo lecture. Thank you.

Erkki Huhtamo’s images of 19th century Atomization and Mechanization are thought provoking and quite enjoyable. Many reveal the beginnings of our societies’ love/hate relationship with “the machine”. This personified dynamic continues to be true today, as we all continue the dysfunctional affair with our desktops, laptops, and workstations. You can’t live with them, you can’t live (and flourish) without them.

The subtle shift from servant to assistant is equally reflective of societal norms and the technology itself. Early images of the shoeshine mechanism have been replaced with the Starbucks laptop user; just as the workforce has shifted from a class system of blue-collar domestics to the self-sufficient white-collar working class.

However, one thing seems to remain constant: The promise of technology as a means to “better living”. The expectation that technology will enrich our lives continues to flourish. I would argue that every Interactive Media Student believes this to be true (Unless he/she has chosen this field as a purely intellectual endeavor).

I don't agree that every form of technology enriches our lives. Maybe only to a certain extent. I doubt making baby dinosaurs, cloning a human or launching Skynet is going to make me a happier/better person. :) I think technology has made it easier for every person to express themselves and create forms of entertainment for mass audiences and that is what intrigues me about the interactive media world. But, potato potahto...

I especially liked the statue and cartoon Erkki showed us of the mysterious elephanus photographicius (think I spelled that right). Those two pieces seemed to portray technology as consuming a person. I got a vibe that it was meant slightly negatively, as a iconic(indexical?) representation of people's fears of technology at that time.

I appreciated the stark contrast between that and the woman posed primly on a stool next to the 'miracle' washing machine, where it was obvious that she LOVED this machine and that it added so much to her life.

I'm anxious to read more of Erkki's work, through his papers, and also to research/chart/graph America's reactions to different technologies at different periods in time.

I'd like to thank Erkki for coming in and speaking to us, and hope he'd be willing to come back!

It was interesting listening to Erkki's lecture in light of the discussion we were having in 542 the other night, concerning the paper There is No Software, by Friedrich Kittler. (link: http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=74 ). Kittler writes

"...the so-called philosophy of the computer community tends to systematically obscure hardware by software, electronic signifiers by interfaces between formal and everyday languages."

Now keep in mind he is writing about DOS, but as Neil Stephensen notes in "In the Beginning there was the Command Line" (link: http://home.uchicago.edu/~msethi/stephenson/command.txt ), the advent of the GUI has only further led users away from understanding the fundamental aspects of their machines (as well as the underlying philospophical question of the masking qualities of any ideology). Therefore perhaps we have travelled further away from what Erkki is describing as the 'interactive computer' as opposed to the computer portrayed by the faucet metaphor.

The argument could be made that in fact, with those older machines, the programming and understanding of bits and hex, of assembly languages etc., was providing us with a deeper level of communication with the computer, a higher level of interaction.

I don't necessarily agree with such an idea, but I think it's worth considering for us as designers - and this is perhaps related to Micheal's latest post (: http://interactive.usc.edu/members/msteffen/archives/001486.html ) - that when working with most software to develop content, we are working within a power structure. In a way, I think that David Byrne's Powerpoint works are an exploration of this idea (however unconsciously).

First of all, I'd like to thank Erikki so much for coming in on (what seemed like) short notice and sharing some of his research.

Interactive Media is another tool with which we communicate. To forget that is to make absolutely useless inventions. And I think many designers do forget that. Interactive Media is not inherently about new technology, but new technology allows for greater interaction on the part of the VUP and so that is most often our poison of choice. New technology is also blowing the whole century-old concept of interactive media up out of the water and into the household.

In response to Will's post, I've noticed we(as IM artists) often lump all of humanity together when we talk about how "we" interact with technology. At the very least, we should be making the distinction between consumer, prosumer, and professional, no? People can enjoy movies without understanding filmmaking at all. The same with music. In both categories there are then degrees of knowledge. So why is it that so often in these essays on interactive theory the authors lump all of humanity into either knowledgeable/naive? Why does the user either have to become one with his camera and tripod, or smile idiotically while sitting next to a washing machine?

This was the kind of discussion that really excites me. What is interactivity? Where did it come from?
Exploring these questions with Erikki through lecture and discussion was enjoyable. The concept that struck me most was that of Protointeractivity. I really connect with this concept. Interactivity has been a focus of the arts for along time. Using Gene Youngblood’s 3 levels of interactivity as a basis for what qualifies as interactive, Erikki pointed out a underlying connection throughout the history of automation and entertainment. The idea that the marriage of technology and man will strip away all humanity, slavery to cybernetics, entered our social consciousness much earlier then previously believed..
The small sculpture of a man attached to a camera, as an early example of the human-machine cybernetic relationship, gave me a brief realization. Man has feared technological augmentation since the dawn of tool making. The images of Davinci’s sketches of man strewn up in a winged contraption popped into my head. Interactive, tools began showing up long ago. The camera in the sculpture could have just as easily been a hammer or sickle. The relationship has been seen as on of servitude but in the modern age it has changed to one more of cooperative creative communication (CCC).
CCC is of special interest to me. The creative conversation I have as I work with my software and hardware tools, however rudimentary, is one of cooperation. My condition is augmented by the machine and I suppose in some way it too lives through me. Together we engage in a creative conversation, the outcome of which is my digital media work.
I am interested in how interactive media tools might augment the artist of tomorrow. What tools could be envisioned that could enhance digital creation?

This lecture didn't do a ton for me, personally. I found the old drawings to be quite intriguing - the more things change...

i love history, but looking backwards too much tends to influence how you move forward. its easy to get weighted down by the 'this is how it has always been' mindset. i worry about this only because we stand on such a brink with our thoughts and ideas and it seems terrible to simply reapply the same issues and workarounds to new media when we have the opportunity to reinvent the wheel.

ok, im not really saying anything here, so ill shut up.

I enjoyed Erikki's comments on technology and interactivity. I was especially intrigued by his observation that early computers were less interactive than today (in that the focus was on automation). This makes sense the more I think about it, because early computers were slow and clunky and probably could not react fast enough even if interactivity was desired.
I am especially interested in the history of computers, so it was fun to hear about people's reations to other technologies, including the fear that a TV could watch you. I actually experienced something similar to this last week: I was setting up a webcam at work. When I was done using the camera, I felt compelled to turn the camera away from me, even though it was turned off, perhaps because of a similar fear that someone's watching me.

The technological imperative of progress is a double-edged sword. As we cut new paths of development, we usually do so with the intention of improving human quality of life. But when we invent and develop, we also restructure and can dramatically change the way we live and interact with others.

Archaeology reminds us not only of what came before, but what we’ve lost. Our expectations and sense of happiness are many times tied to our relationship with media and technology. We get so entangled in their structure, that we’re at times dependent on it. It sounds cliché, but everything is related. Change giveth, and change taketh away. Subtleties and qualities of prior objects, media and technology can be easily forgotten. I’m not saying we should disconnect our internet and widdle wood for the rest of our lives. But what we should do is always be sensitive to the fact that the decisions we make now about “progress” and “improvement” will inevitably leave something behind that had wonderful qualities to it.

Obesity is on the rise for many different reasons. The internet and computer games have contributed. That’s not to say tech = bad. What tech does equal is difference. Different ways of communicating, playing, resting and living. Archaeology reminds us to look beyond the accepted, the popular, the easy, the available, and the convenient. It inspires us to break out of the structures of reality and living that we’ve worked so hard to improve and develop. We can’t truly know how life will be in the future until we’re already there. And by that time, things will never be the same again.

To use another cliché: we can’t know where we’re going, until we know where we’ve been. I’m not suggesting at all that development should never be radical, or that we shouldn’t push our imagination to the limit. What I am saying is it’s very important to keep in mind the sensitive and complex relational nature of the systems we live in.

Erkki's talk still just scratched the surface of some very interesting subjects. History has always been an important (and rather interesting) aspect for me, and I'm glad Erkki looked at a lot of work done before the seventies. While a lot has changed in the last few decades, a lot of it was either anticipated or done before. There's a lot that people don't know about their past...for centuries, locals living around the Parthenon could not tell you why it was originally built.

Somewhere between "It's all been done" and "It's a new era unlike any before" exists a view of the past more interesting than these two blanket statements combined. Innovation does not occur in a vaccuum, and reincarnated inventions (stereoscopic photos, say) were undoubtedly different in each of their lives. Why things were different, as well as how they were the same, invite study and often provide amusing answers.

Looking into the roots of modern interactivity, specifically games, has been a topic of research for me. Video games today still owe a lot of their characteristics to the old arcades that go back to the last turn of the century. The disorder of seeking constant stimulation that was described, coinciding with the rise of assembly-line occupations, also caught my interest. "Automatic Amusements" with all of its implications, perhaps sums up many of the themes in that section of the talk.

Finally, I've been thinking about the "levels of interactivity": Interruption, Selection, and Creative Conversation. I've been known to say that the reason why so many games are violent is that it's easier to make an artificial character attack you than to talk to you. Computers still can't handle language that easily, and when they do, it's usually through a fair amount of trickery. Trickery that begins to question how creative most human conversation is.

However, if we expand "conversation" to mean "an extended, complex mode of feedback", the issue may start to get easier. Extended, open ended simulations could arguably be conversations, giving outputs that result in very unforseen consequences.

I'm wondering if one could compose an environment-the computers method of communication, if you will-the user doesn't so much "talk" to the machine, but converses through their actions within the environment. This has been done to an extent in a few places, again usually with simulation in mind. The sim games use it as part of a game mechanic, and toylike educational software could also be said to have this dynamic.

At any rate, this "creative conversation" idea will be something to think about as I look more into self-building environments. Complex methods of interacting with a virtual space, beyond solving a contrived puzzle, slaughtering its inhabitants, or "winning", might be the decent precursor to conversing with a machine. In terms of conversation, actions, even virtual actions, can still speak louder than words.

I really enjoyed this presentation. It was nice to see technology and automation from its beginnings and what an impact it has had on our lives.

At one point, Erkki mentioned the phrase media archeology and a merging of the biological and the technological. These phrases both intrigued me and made me start to think about what they mean. In my mind, archeology (the scientific) has always been the study of antiquated physical things and media (the technological) has either been content or a means of recording content. When they are put together, they create a new and exciting process. To look back at all of the technology that Errki presented and think about it as a form of media archeology is very interesting.

The archeology aspect of Erkki's talk reminded me of Peggy's Assignment from last semester involving our own "glossary" of interactive terms. The project revolved around finding and exploiting various methods and modes of what it means to be interactive and the basics of that mode of interaction is; how we begin initially to "interact". Will's citation of the article by Kittler solidifies the point that as we develop or have developed computers/technology/interactivity...we have developed a very specific language.

"...electronic signifiers by interfaces between formal and everyday languages"

I find that it is this language or dialogue that we have with machines that is most intrigueing to me, but on a higher level altogether.

I disagree with Will that we have "achieved a deeper level of communication/interaction". I seem to think that we have only begun to scratch the surface of human/machine interaction. Yes, I understand that Hex/ASCII/C and other bits of computer language and code may be the building blocks, but this seems rudimentary and very crude. I don't think that understanding a computer/interactivity comes from this root level at all, but at a higher more complex basis of thinking about the limits of interaction rather than the basic building blocks of code. The end result of that code is where I believe the comprehension begins. The begining of that code just states the rules.

To me Erkki's presentation evoked certain understanding of the relationship between technology and human. The 19th century comics and pictures he showed on the class were extremely representative.

On one aspect, Human need and seek the convenience from machines or we can call it technology today, on the other hand, human worry and even be terrified by the power of technology. Those ironic comics are a second thought about the over technology immersed society. This notion started from the occurrence of technology and kept alive until now. The similar comics appeared again and again, from the aggressive and sharp photo chair to the gigantic artificial intelligence computer. The worry and caution of overwhelmed technology have been a technology’s concomitant for hundreds of years. Although we are not willing to admit we are controlled by the technology at a certain extent, we can not imagine the world without technology. I can not help thinking about a future of human that can not live without interactive system and micro-HMD. Today’s human are using different methods to express the worry about the future than the ancient at 19th century. For instance, there are some films like minority report and matrix which have already step towards this issue.

Besides the negative attitude, there exists the positive and optimistic force. I was astonished to realize that people in 19th century had already thought about complete immersive environment. With piles of boxes, the forefathers illustrated a whole platform with three dimensional sound, smell generator, telecommunication device and holograph. Like Erkki said, interactive media has pre-digital cultural background needs to be explored. And we find out the existence of the cultural precedents. But what is next? Why don’t we keep tracking the history, and see how did the technology come true from the cultural precedents? Look around the world now, which part of human’s imagination could be the next step after interactive media? Regardless of the pioneer and the authority in the industry, keep an eye on the public on the mass media. What kind of the interactive media and which direction is demanded by the culture?

Thanks to Erkki’s presentation. I wish we can have further discussion in the future.

Where are the people?

While I appreciate the Erkki had to compile this presentation quickly and improvise in many areas, there seemed to be a lot of deeper issues missing from the dialogue. Of course the illustrations and cartoons are interesting, but they function as mere curiosities on the periphery of the contemporary social discourse surrounding technology. Perhaps the advantage to looking at cartoons is the breadth of the audience , rather than written word targeted at a minority of intellectuals, the cartoons may represent a part of public opinion. Still this look at the history of interactivity felt very superficial, a collection of interesting images for sure, but I would have preferred some kind of written record of people's experiences with these devices, for ultimately I study interactivity because I am interested in both sides of the relationship between objects and intelligence with a special concern for the interface that connects them. Perhaps this introduction to "archaeology of interactivity" was just to cursory for me to engage, the deeper and more relevant issues to our theoretical frameworks may lie ahead; my instinct tells me that a far more interesting academic frame for this research would be the cultural anthropology of interactivity. While we certainly don't have a complete record of human experience over the last 150 years, I am not convinced that we are missing so much that we must reconstruct the past through archaeological discourse. All the devices shown in the presentation existed in a cultural context that is available to us today and we would be well-served to recognize the environments that either support or reject technologies, for raw technology is neutral but the implementation of technology is heavily coded.

I agree with everyone in saying that it was great of Erkki to put this presentation together on such short notice and come to meet with us.

And onward...

Archaeology is defined as: The science or study of antiquities, esp. prehistoric antiquities, such as the remains of buildings or monuments of an early epoch, inscriptions, implements, and other relics, written manuscripts, etc. It only makes sense that a "media archaeologist" would study media and the different forms what make up the ways humans have created and interacted with it. Doesn't "archae" in Greek mean "ancient?"

Anyway, in our ever more progressive society and the speed in which technological innovations move, yesterday's computer could be considered ancient without stretching too much. The same way that the internet and email as forms of media now dwarf the ancient "snail mail" letter by stamp system. Both for their immediacy, ease and availability for the user.

Erkki has done many things with regard to discussing the advent of the internet. His work as a historian, specializing in Media must have brought him to the same conclusions presented us in his discussion. Are the internet and other forms of tech. really enriching our lives? It has been discussed that automation was supposed to make it easier for us to live and while email may be a great thing...computers did really streamline productivity in the workplace. What they really did not do was make it so that less people could do a job...really all they did was allow more people to do a job better and with a higher quantity of jobs completed in a day.

Sometimes I even feel like I should chuck my computer, but only for a moment. This comes from the fact that computer enabled media, like the content on the internet is so pervasive that it at least makes me feel like there is so much info out there and I will never even make a 1% dent in it in all my life.

Perhaps when we reach even a higher level of interaction with technology than even Will was getting at, when we become cyborgs or we "jack into the Matrix" or something. Only then maybe, we will be able to assimilate at least 1%.

I agree with Tripp (8 or 9 posts above) that the lecture didn't do too much for me. The history was interesting, but due to the fact that he started late and that I left early for the Visual Effects Oscar Nominations, I didn't really get to hear what it sounds like was the more interesting part of his lecture. He hadn't really gathered up speed by the time I left. I would have really enjoyed discussing societal perceptions/interactions/expectations of technology, both present and future. But, at the same time, the VFX Bake-Off got me John Knoll's business card . . . ;-)