Jan D > Recent Status Updates

I knew the book had a lot of influence on the silicon valley culture, but I was surprised to find so many statements that can be interpreted as influence, particularly the idea that the influence of technology is almost unlimited and that how people integrate the technology in their lives or how they use it does not influence the actual message of the medium itself.

I have my reservations about a lot of the claims, but I get that this was and is an electrifying read in particular for people who see themselves as part of inventing new media as this holds all the power.

"[linguist imagine teaching] a grammar of English to English-born English-speaking students is an exercise in making explicit to the students what they already know, but did not know they knew…" like a "…Swiftian school of physiologists at the grand academy of Lagado devoted to writing a complete grammar of how to climb stairs. We can, of course, already climb a flight of stairs."

Analysis of Photoshop filters. A bit of an unusual topic, but it does not feel "look, so strange, so clever".

"writing is a mode of communication sui generis and has no intrinsic connexion with speech at all. This should already have been evident from the long history of musical notation, but linguists turned a professional blind eye to music."

More metamedium-ing, still presented as a plausible idea, not earth-shattering change of culture, history and everything.

The chapter on how values, groups of people and tools of birth create one coherent system is great. And though there is a lot of insight and criticism it is written in an accessible language.

So far one of the most enjoyable ethnographies I have read.

After not agreeing with Canadian Media Theory, now not agreeing with Aristotle. Back to the roots. Still a good read.

Software as a metamedium and some nice review of history of computers as medium for thought and exploration ("Intelligence Augmentation" so to say)

Currently not agreeing with Ong.

So far one of the most enjoyable ethnographies I have read.

Not difficult to read and about the impact and history of applications I use every day.

My newest entry in people-who-argue-against-Aristotle. The premise is that the idea of rationality is (implicitly) bound to literacy. Might be interesting with post-colonial anthropology?

The references to god might feel strange today, on the other hand, monads or Descartes body/mind (in) dependence are harder to understand. Deified monad-ish is it *shrug*

Depressing as well as uplifting examples and great balance of theory and practice.

Still pretty good to read. Some positions on the state of human civilization seem eurocentric (though Confucianism is also mentioned) and modernist.

Chapter on algorithmic bias and intersectionality. Interesting and well written. Some references to questions of who gets to be a group-of-people in the first place (for better or worse). Hope for more on this topics. (And References to SL Star)

The discussion on disaffordances is great. This is a way I did not think about this topic yet. However, the section is a bit messy due to different interpretations. Thus if an affordance is physically there or is perceived or… remains vague. Thought I guess, , in the end, it targets the common-in-design, perception-of-action-possibilities Norman-interpretation.

Just when I was “Oh no, not yet another acronym I do not know”, I discovered it has list of terms and acronyms. That is pretty great!

Discusses (non) situatedness of language and its relation to writing.

So far it is interesting but seems to be more "brain as a computer" as I expected.

After "importance" now "Expression". Remains dense, but, with slow reading, it keeps to be understandable.

Starts with an accessible and interesting setting of context of author, design justice and relevant related movements.

Slow progress. Knowing what "Importance" is helps. The term is important.