Wiki info is on slideshow for ch. 1
Ch.1 Notes
The effect of media choice and the new use of new technology
 The media you choose has an effect on the way the story is told
o Print? You must describe things well
o Still Image? You have to tell it visually by setting the scene
o Film/Video? You have moving images and sound…does the sound
emphasize the moving image or vice versa?
o 3-d amusement ride? Moving images, sound and some actual
motion…3 modalities
New Media/New Technology
 consider if you had spent your life working with the SCROLL… and you were
asked to change to the BOUND BOOK…
o www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek
Different Media? Different Affordances
 affordances is a term from ecological psychology
o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_psychology
o different things afford different interaction
o consider door knobs, levers, push-plates and pull
 Don Norman Psychology of Everyday Things
o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman
Consider….the Scroll, Book & WWW
 The Scrol
o Can’t stack scrolls like books
o Can’t skip around except to beginning or end
o But…reading flows without the interruption of pages
 The Book
o You can stack them
o You can level a table leg with them!
o But…reading is interrupted by page turns
o Add a TOC & page numbers you can skip around
o With index & page #s you can go to a specific place
 WWW
o You can consume it in any order you want
o Links take you to a place (and back)
 Does a book do this?
o The page is in one place… one change changes everyone’s version
o Now compare to the book
 Doesn’t allow this unversal change
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Doesn’t take you back… but you can stick a piece of paper or a
finger in it to hold your place… or fold down the corner of the
page
You can take notes in the margin
WWW vs Book
 WWW
o Allows corrections immediately to everyone
o But no history kept like with book editions
 You go back to “the same place” and it’s different… were you
mistaken or did it change?
 http://www.archive.org/index.php
 Did you read everything?
o Book is easy, read front to back
o WWW…not so much…
 WWW affords searching
o You can google it and find it
 Book? Not so much…
o The index will help… if the thing you are looking for is in the index
o Ever read a book and think…where did I see this before?
 And the reach for the search tool?
 And then you feel kinda foolish?
New Media/New Technology Adoption
 It takes time for conventions concerning usag to form
 Consider the history of Film
o No sound
o Then performed sound
o Then recorded sound
 With time… film developed its own forms
o Hitchcock told the story visually, long scenes
o Tarrentino accents the violence with rapid, quick cuts
Usage of New Media follows a predictable path
 At first the new form tries to act like the old form to make the new stuff look
more familiar
o In the movies, Newsreels “copied” newspaper like layouts
o With computers, the desktop metaphor “copied” the office desk
 Alan Kay, XEROX PARC
 Personal computer usage
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay
 before desktop metaphor C: is all you got
o few people used personal computers
What is multimedia?
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Mix of audio, film, graphics, haptic
o That address the different senses
We are just beginning to understand what the possibilities are…
We are just beginning to understand how to best build multimedia stuff
o Mix of animation and live action
 The movie 300?
 The movie Sin City?
 Beowolf?
o TV series 24 and the movie Phone Booth
 Several scenes are played simultaneously
In this Class…
 We are interested in media forms found on and transmitted across the
internet and how to manipulate them
 We will build them as projects
o Audio
o Still images
 Bitmapped
 Vector graphics
o Moving images
 Video camera
 3D animation
Media Linearity
 Scroll—linear
 Book—linear…broken but linear
o Must turn pages
o But…table of contents and index allow some non-linearity
o Encyclopedia and dictionaries are media that are meant to be used in
a non-linear manner
 Film/Videotape—linear
 DVD—primarily linear
o Chapters allow some non-linearity
Hypermedia Organization
 Time-based uses time as its central organizing theme
o Film
o Audio
 Page-based uses a page as its central organizing theme
o Book
o Internet…originally, yes but now?
Media Interactive???
 Yes: programs appear interactive, but only within the constraints placed on
the interaction by the programmer and the interaction designer
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o Myst looked like a real world but you only had a few choices you could
make
No: improvisation (on the part of the user) can’t happen unless it is planned
and provided for in advance by the interaction designer and the programmer
User Interface
 This is what I do: HCI (Human Computer Interaction)
 There are standard forms
o Buttons
o Sliders
o Radio buttons
o Check boxes
o Pull-down menus
o Pop-up menus
 …the kind of stuff you see when using the computers on the internet
Ethical Considerations
 is technology
o neutral
o ethical
o unethical
 ethical or unethical? Depend on how we use it
 Consider that new technology
o Affords a new means of interaction
o Affords opportunities for behavior that previously didn’t exist
o MUD: Multiple User Domain
o Second Life
Social Considerations: Access
 Expensive
 Reduce the world to 100 people…
o http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/populate.asp
 Access to internet worldwide? 1/100 would have a computer
 But…there are internet cafes so…
 What about people with disabilites?
o Blind
 Prior to the desktop metaphor this was the largest group of
online users
 Now the desktop REQUIRES sight to be operated
o Can be mitigated by screen readers
 Imagees are provided alternate text representations
WWW use broadens
 Initially seen as a “source”… you go to “look something up”
o Seen as economic advantage…only have to put stuff in one place and
everybody can get to it
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Now it is also a transmission medium
o Streaming content: live radio
o Streaming content: view tv shows online
o Podcasts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast
Summary
 Media is changing
 Internet is changing
 Affecting us socially
 Giving us new capabilites
 Challenging our views of legality
 Challenging our view of appropriate behavior
 Allowing new uses and new interactions
 This class is about media and how it works