but told a lot personal instead .. and the principals in the end.
was supposed to make science out of it today but failed again,
have been chatting with friends about local-practical-important
things instead, an-Oulu that is .. or will hopefully grow soon.
i like the 4 Men In A Room he composed last summer:
+ an + ~ ~ : (t . !
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 14:10:10 +0200 (EET)
From: <@an.org>
To: @xs4all.nl
Subject: 4 Men in A Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Enviroment
hi,
writing from home, been here since wednesday,
working .. reading and writing papers, well
actually meeting people mostly so far. went
to see a film yesterday, and to the weekly
capoiera-class and then to listen a rock
concert afterwards.
the night before i spent at my mother's place,
where my younger brother Timo still lives ..
her father, our grandfather, had just died
on tuesday-wednesday night up north where
my mother's family lives. it was no surprise
but heavy for the family anyway.
also on my father's side there had been death,
i don't actually know how that man was related
to us, but he was a good friend of my parents
when i was a child - he was a musician and
actually taught me how to play and sing a little
when i was 5yrs or so. my parents divorced over
10yrs ago and we haven't had that much to do
with my father's family since, but i remember
this man, Elias Kivilahti he was called, clearly.
the local newspaper (www.kaleva.fi) mentioned
him yesterday and told about his extensive work
as a folkmusician and collector of old songs
and tales - taping old people telling them
in the '70s etc. i didn't know he'd done all that.
there mush be a lot of interesting stuff in
his archives .. he'd once asked my mother to listen
them and to figure out some way to put the stories
in order, classify in library-style or something,
but she hadn't the time to do it. i wonder if
someone has had. my mother told about all that
just yesterday when we walked through the forests
from where she lives here to town.
hm, i wasn't thinking of any of that when
i started writing .. guess you can tell that
from the subject line.
"4 Men In A Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environment"
my professor told me yesterday that there might
still be a chance for me to go to the eight
annual Wold Wide Web conference, WWW8 (www8.org)
in Toronto, Canada in May.
moreover, before that i could fly to New York
and New Jersey, meet up Michael Bieber and other
hypermedia people there and then drive with
them up to Toronto in a van.
the university would pay all that *if* i get
a decent paper done and it'll be reviewed by
the WWW8 people. the call for papers deadline
is gone already, but the professor knows
those people and told that they could still
do it.
he doesn't want to put too much pressure on
me, but gee .. enough anyway. i'd love to
go to states and really need to get some
real work done . instead of lengthy mails :)
what i've been working on are the things
i spoke with you too, about different
models of communication and scientific
ways of studying media. i guess i would
base my work on the concept of "environment",
meaning that what we do with these tools
for communication & information needs is
about creating environments with which we
ourselves, other people and companies and
other organizations interact.
the www is a clear case of that, obviously
so also because the researchers who've
started using the "hypermedia CME"'s term
are focused on www especially .. at least
those Hoffman&Novak I've been reading.
on www there's sites, that people and
organisations put there, and then (other)
net users interact with those systems
and that way communicate with each other.
irc, for example, seems to it the environment
model quite fine too .. there you have channels
(ie. rooms) and people (and 'bots) on them,
and by typing words and doing small actions
users create unique environments on each channel.
and by combining different channels and customizing
their own setups each user creates their own view.
e-mail .. hmm, in case of lists the environment
metaphora sounds clear - but how about for example
this letter i send to you? what else than this
text is here between us? the interface of course,
both hardware (keyboard, screen) and software
(operating systems, internet connection, mail client)
but .. i don't quite see the "hypermedia
computer-mediated environment" here. perhaps one thing
to study would be the relevance of the metaphora.
what about software in general? for example, the
tools you use and create to make music. are they
environments to you?
i read one text about digital studies on nettime,
where this guy manifestoed how stupid it is to
find connections between the digital world and
the material world, and that we should stop
trying to fit the models we have from the physical
to the digital worlds .. like when there is all
this talk about "cyberspace" and "e-marketplace",
he suggested looking into what there really is
in the digital world, like "objects" and "protocols"
(trying to be trendy he didn't mention algoritms?-)
perhaps those are different layers - meaning, that
on low (hard/)software architecture level there indeed
are no environments or marketplaces, but when we,
physically embodied people, experience them, the
connections to what we know from "the real world"
are there. btw, i just read this kind of stuff from
the notes i'd written in december when you and sally
talked in the end of touch-festival discussions.
so, if - when focusing on the human experience -
the physical gives us understanding of the ..
media/digital/virtual ..whatever .. environments,
would the physics as science be worthwhile looking
at?
"space" (place), that already is in use (marketplace),
is clearly a concept of physics (or perhaps geography?).
i think it has to do with also access, connectivity,
groups etc.
"time" is something that has been perhaps neglected,
like you said, but is surely (coming) there .. the
communication models i've seen don't really have it,
but these (economists) Hoffman&Novak and other
researchers do tend to consider at least things like
interactivity, dynamic vs. static etc. that has
to do with time too, i guess. another thing is the
so-called time-based media -studies and technologies
that are mostly about synchronization etc.
at one point you said that things get interesting
when they are .. sort of derived to another level,
when we get not only space/time, or even speed,
but acceleration etc. another point you made was
gravity .. later i remembered, that i'd sometimes
referred to the net as "zero-gravity non-culture"
and was thinking again the connection between
gravity and culture.
i gues what i'm after here is trying to, well,
not only understand perhaps but somehow scientifically
work with the *differences* of all these communication
tools we have. i myself use:
- face-to-face talk
- dance (party for fun/mediation, performance for .. art?)
- phone (wire and wireless)
- irc (one-to-one, private groups and public)
- e-mail (in very many ways..)
- sms (the gsm-phone text messages)
- nntp-news (the "usenet" etc. discussion forums)
- www (quite a variety of communication/information services)
- cd (for listening to the CDs i have, obviously ;)
- md (for listening to CDs i dont have & recording stuff)
- radio (listening to check if there was good music)
- tv (when tired&bored or if there is something)
- video
- film
- photograhps
- slides (we have a projector and a screen in our livingroom!)
- my new pocket MP3 player (bought one at schiphol)
- my old sony pocket recorder (to make voice notes)
- books
- magazines
- newspapers
- notebooks (for own writing)
- watercolours
- etc. etc.
all those are different. even the SMS messages of GSM phones are clearly
not either IRC or EMAIL. like books are different from magazines. and
video and pc and tv.
clearly there are similarities too .. and i believe that mess could be
better understood / modelled somehow and that it might teach us something.
or at least get me go to drive around north america in a van i hope :)
if i could only make some science out of all this. i should have good
sources and enoht historical&theoretical background from f. ex. the course
on TV-theory i took last week .. but i still don't quite know.
gotta go to the university know to see some students, ask how they're
doing with the assignments i've been giving them .. gee.
hope you're all fine. i've been listening to the cd with friends - Henkka
in Helsinki and my brother here in Oulu .. and borrowed it to one friend
who teaches classical music here .. curious already about what he's going
to say about it ;)
+ an + ~ ~ : (t . !