Paper Reading #4: The Role of Tangible Technologies for Special Education

Comment 1: http://chi-jacob.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-4-role-of-tangible.html
Comment 2: http://csce436-nabors.blogspot.com/2011/01/reading-4-role-of-tangible-technologies.html

The Role of Tangible Technologies for Special Education
Taciana Pontual Falcão
CHI 2010 Doctoral Consortium

 This paper covered how technology can enable us to better facilitate the learning needs of different kinds of children with learning disabilities. In the UK much of their study has been on how learning with interactive screens has facilitated in the learning process of children with learning disabilities. It talks about how there has been lots of programs written that work on a flat television screen but very little work has been done as far as tangible devices.  This paper is the introduction to a dissertation that aims to explore this. She wants to use some recently developed tangible learning devices created for children with learning disorders and document their effectiveness in child participation in learning and how well they combat the main learning difficulties such as: short attention span, verbal memory and abstract thinking. The experiment will use children from 11-14 and will have them using devices that are specifically aimed to assist with multimodal activities that the children are having a hard time grasping. Much of the study will be recording of data in interaction time, content learned, number of times having to repeat the assignment and other factors. She also hopes that the biggest use of her study is going to be information sharing and the results of this will inspire others to look into this field and do further studies.



This paper was rather short and did not give me a lot of information to really work with. Essentially the author just set up what she wants to do and did not talk much about any past research or any of the work she plans to do. She didn't even give a description of what kinds of multimodal systems she is going to give the students and what she expects them to do with them. This may be perhaps because there will be different ones based on the child but even a few examples would have helped a lot. She also didn't give any strong evidence for what she aims to show with this or how she will know if her experiment was a success or not. I clearly see why this is an important HCI factor as again we as programmers need to think to write for as many different kinds of people as possible but I am at a loss here as the actual experiment is very vague. In all the paper was very dry and even though I feel it is an important topic I was very put off by the lack of information about the experiment. I honestly lost track and wondered if there was a page missing as there was so little information provided. I would liked to know if she had performed any similar experiments and what the results were or if she aims to show with her results.

Book Reading #4 Opening Skinner's Box

Opening Skinner's Box
Lauren Slater

Chapter 1: Opening Skinner's Box

In the first chapter of this we are introduced to Skinner and told about his views and experiments. Apparently he is sometimes seen as evil and his experiments as near forms of torture. We get to see how different people do not see things the same way as him and talk about how he takes the Pavlov experiments way too far. We also get to learn about how he got started and the many rumors about his life. At the end the author does some real investigation about his family by talking to his two daughters and their views on their father. They claim the only way to truly know him now is to read all of his work, not just the things that people talk about and review over and over.

I had heard of Skinner but I had never really gotten to study him. It is really funny how when my roommates saw what I was reading they confirmed everything that they said in the book like how people see him as evil. To me this is a very interesting branch of psychology the idea that you can change peoples behaviors through conditioning. It really makes me want to slow down and analyze situations and try to see if something that I do can change the behaviors of those around me to make them do what I really want them to. This chapter makes me want to look into his studies more.

Chapter 2: Obscura

In this chapter we get to find out about one of what the book claims is the most controversial studies ever done. Stanley Milgram once wanted to understand obedience to authority better, he proposed an experiment to see how far people would go. The experiment was simple: put people into a room, one in a fake electric chair, one that is instructed to punish him based on answering questions in correctly and see if they would go all the way to the end with the shocks saying "lethal warning" etc. He found that more than half of the patients would go all the way and were very shook up about it even after the debriefing. The author also talks about how she interviewed some of the patients many years afterward.

This is by far one of my MOST FAVORITE topics in psychology the idea that someone will listen to a figure of authority and essentially will do anything they ask them to. I also love the idea of the controversy behind this study, Milgram tells the patients they can leave, he tells them that its fake, and yet people get so wrapped up in what is happening and they just keep going. I really will never stand why people are so willing to listen to a figure of authority just because it wears a white coat. This is the precise reason why I love this study so much because I have always pretty much blindly listened to authority, and I wonder if I was faced with a morale situation if I would have the right mindedness to know when to not listen.

Chapter 3: On Being Sane in Insane Places

This chapter covers the experiments of David Rosenhan, an experimental psychologist who was always a skeptic about the study of psychology. He decided to put psychology to the test by trying to get sane people admitted to mental wards. Him and other colleges went into the hospitals complaining of a voice saying “thud” and answered all other questions correctly. They were all accepted and beyond that did not act insane and gave coherent answers. This led to a huge revolution in psychology and caused many psychologists to take another look at the study of their craft. The author re-performs this experiment nearly fifty years later and found that while modern metal hospitals have improved in quality and people skills, they have also become a bit more skeptical in that she was never admitted but only given prescriptions and then sent away. She did this at many different hospitals near her and got the exact same results and a lot of medication out of it. She claims that while it means that psychology as a practice has come a long way, it still is not a perfect science and something that needs to be watched.

I thought this chapter was very interesting in that I had never seen this experiment before. I think that it is an interesting thing that Rosenhan had enough knowledge about the subject to be able to say “this will get us in it’s a case that has no documentation”. I think that the descriptions of each of the institutions is a little inhumane but overall did not seem like they did anything bad other than make sure they had control of their hospitals. The interesting thing is that clearly most of these psychologists had no idea really what an insane person was, and even in the later studies of Rosenhan when he sent fake patients (of which he really sent none) they also made a lot of mistakes. I actually think the results that Slater found were a very big step in that psychology is no longer about jumping to conclusions but is more focused on studying the person and making sure they get it correct, and if they have to just prescribing medication and sending them on their way. 

Chapter 4: In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing
 
In this chapter we look at the semi-famous case of Kitty Genovese. This incident had to do with how in large groups, there is a psychological phenomena that happens that we refer to as "responsibility diffusion" that is, when in a group the group as a whole somehow decides that responsibility will fall to someone else in the group and not to themselves. The author then goes into the stories surrounding the incident and how when the story was reported that people lashed out and called for these people to be punished and ridiculed. In fact none of the thirty seven people involved so much as called the police. Some of the people were interviewed and some of them knew what was happening yet sat and watched the whole thing, while others were unaware that anything was happening other than some very loud screaming. The author covered more peoples reports of how this should have been handled and even talked to psychologists about what people need to do to make sure something like this doesn't ever repeat itself.

It is a very interesting case as many people would think that if there were more people that there would be more of a chance of someone doing SOMETHING. However we have found that this is never the case. In fact, people are much more likely to respond to someone in distress when there is not a large group around or they are by themselves. Somehow the idea of being in a group and then formulation of what we refer to as "groupthink" allows people to ignore cries for help or creates an awkward social interaction that makes them not want to respond to someones pleas. The fact remains this is a very famous case that is studied nearly once a year mostly, surprisingly, by news stations. They set up experiments to show this exact interaction taking place partial for the shock value and partial to boost ratings in slow times or in response to some sort of local situation. Whatever it is, psychology can only go so far to help us understand why this happens or how to fix it.

Chapter 5: Quieting the Mind

In this chapter we explore the experiments of Leon Festinger in what they call cognitive dissonance. This is the phenomena in humans that happens where they lie about something SO MUCH that they actually start to believe the lie. The most famous experiment with this is where two groups are given money to lie, one is given $20 and the other $1. The interesting part is that the group that was only give $1 lied more and eventually started to believe the lie was true, more so than the $20 group who eventually (usually) cracked. There are many famous cases discussed such as groups who believed that they were going to be taken away by aliens and then came up with justifications as to why they did not. The most interesting one is when the author explored a miracle workers home and actually saw oil leaking out of the eyes of a statue. The author even says she was unsure if what she saw was real or hoax but this phenomena in some form was definitely true in some of the cases.

I have always wondered about this theory, and the surprising part is that I don't think I've ever seen such concrete cases of it. The interesting part to me is I really wonder if these people do this just to justify their actions or if they somehow feel a void in themselves and need to believe in something so they create it. I wonder if there was ever a member of any of these groups who think a lot of what they say is $#!* and go along just to feel accepted with the group. We will never know if what the author saw was real or not or if the miracles that claim to have happened are true, but I think that people really will lie so much that they eventually believe the lie and will use this to justify strange actions or events. For some reason this always reminds me of the movie K-PAX where I couldn't help but think that's what was happening the whole time.

Chapter 6: Monkey Love

In this chapter we find out about the studies of a famous psychologist Henry Harlow who is famous not for a exciting contribution but mostly famous for what he did to test animals. He performed experiments where he separated baby monkeys from their mothers and performed different tests such as replacing their mothers with terrycloth towels and making ugly wire models that were warm and saw how the monkeys were able to replace their mothers with these. He even found that when he gave a negative punishment such as stabbing the monkeys for clinging to them they still continuously came back. Essentially what he showed is that during birth, the thing we learn to love most is our mothers touch and that we want to be held and learn to live for the warmth another person provides. He did this in a way that destroyed all we know about rearing and made people quite upset with his experiments as a whole.

I think this is one of the MOST controversial and most powerful experiments ever done. I think that the idea that we live for another persons touch is inherently interesting because we are such independent creatures but when it comes down to it, our mammalian desires to be held by our mothers, no matter what, are the strongest. It was the most interesting when these monkeys were ignoring being shocked to do this and even more interesting how they grew up and how his experiments fell apart when he tried to get the motherless monkeys to mate. I think that these experiments did add something to psychology as we know it and to computing for that matter but I do not think that these need to be repeated ever.

Chapter 7: Rat Park

This chapter covers the studies of one of Harlow's students and fellow researchers named Bruce Alexander. He saw what Harlow was doing with love and decided to focus on addiction and how it affects people. He read that addiction was a brain disease but there was no medical proof for this. He decided to perform experiments getting rats addicted to various substances and seeing what it was that got them addicted. He also studied cases and worked in addiction clinics and tried to see patterns in the people who were there. What he found was that addiction is not itself a disease it is the lifestyle that is associated with the people and he proved this by making Rat Park. He put some rats in dingy cages and others in a luxurious cage with lots of ammenities and found that the spoiled rats did not even drink the addictive substances offered while the small caged ones drank until they were stark high. It gave us a different look at how addition works and though never published is a well recognized paper and has a small following.

I think the most interesting part about this is that when I think about it a lot of what he says makes a lot of sense and I can apply this to different cases. I fear that somehow I have the illusion of wanting to make it fit but I love the example case that the author gives when she tried this herself and did not get addicted. I would like to try something like this but I am still working on fighting caffeine cravings so I will take one thing at a time. It does lead me to more questions such as, if addicts can be cured by having better surroundings and less stressful lives wouldn't they simply get addicted to something else? And if that is true wouldn't we just say that in some way all people are addicted to something but some are more socially acceptable than others? Maybe, but I think that needs its own set of study and chapter. I like to cook, but I don't need to. An alcoholic likes to drink, but doesn't need to unless he is going to get drunk. Maybe not.

Chapter 8: Memory Inc.

In this chapter we learn about Elizabeth Loftus a woman who has spent her entire life looking at the phenomenon of being able to implant an idea into someones head and then the evolution of that idea into a memory that the person clearly recounts.She did experiments where she told people about an event and then the people were asked to come back later and see if they took to the event and how much vivid detail they talked about remembering it. She actually sites many famous cases where people had their children claiming they had touched them or inappropriately been touched twenty years later only to find out that the person was told that they did this and that their children would never lie and eventually they believed it and recounted it in vivid details. Essentially her work deals with people who have been force fed memories and then apparently become their own. Some of the cases went so far that the person was essentially tortured and forced to believe that something had happened when it hadn't and she became a lawyer to try and fight these kinds of cases siting her own work as to how it can happen.

I think this chapter is very interesting because of the stigma that surrounds it. Sometimes we are so sure of what we know and we believe that we could never be wrong about it. We also have some lies and other memories that we SWEAR we remember when really we are piecing together stories of other people we met throughout our lives. I know this phenomenon is real and have seen cases in my own life where it is very true. I try not to lie and be a good person but I used to have a bit of an issue with it and am sure some of my stories belong to someone else whether I remember if they are or not. I think everyone wants their lives to be interesting but hopefully this does not come at the cost of our own memories going to crud. I find the most interesting part of this is that in all the cases that she mentioned these people were essentially tortured until they cracked.

Chapter 9: Chipped

In this chapter we find out about a psychologist named Antonio Moniz who after hearing the story of a wild Chimpanzee named Becky being calmed by open-brain surgery wondered if the same effects could be applied to humans in deteriorating mental states. He announced his idea to sever the human brain at a psychology convention and stunned the crowd creating instant enemies and leaving others wondering (Walter Freeman). He took patients by availability and started drilling holes in their head and then using syringes full of alcohol was able to kill different parts of the patients brain. Nearly 70% of his patients reported that they were feeling much better and some even said "the tension is gone". People ridiculed him for not doing a double blind study but it would be rather difficult and expensive to do a "fake lobotomy" and if anything he figured he wasn't hurting these people and if nothing helping them. The patients personalities did become very "flat" but many did report relief of the mental states that bothered them and were released from institutions if attending.

The interesting part of this is how he came up with the idea. Knowing that our biology is so similar to monkeys that he figured if these kinds of operations could be done on a monkey why not on a human. It is a very bold statement to stand in front of a group of colleagues and say "I am going to cut humans brains" where no one had attempted it or even considered it before. We do now know that lobotomies can have very good effects and in some cases we have even split a persons corpus callosum to help deal with seizures and other mental illnesses. While we still do not entirely understand the human brain we have come a long way since injecting alcohol into the brain and can kill tiny clusters of cells in surgery leaving the person with no other side effects. I think this research is both necessary and important and we really should try to learn more about the brain as we advance in medicine.

In total:

Opening Skinner's  Box by Slater was a culmination of famous psychologists and their research. While it might be hard to link these kinds of things to computer science the diligent reader finds the connections that Slater gives throughout the book. From her examples to her own investigations of each of the famous cases Slater really gets the reader involved and makes it to where the reader wants to know what happens at the end of the chapter. While some of the researchers were very wild and in some cases did things that people don't agree with their experiments have very important foundations in science and also in computer science. She shows us that we can learn from the research of others and truly that every problem is a solution in disguise.

I thought this was one of the more interesting books that we read. While it did appeal to the side of me that still loves psychology and despite the fact that I have read about a lot of these cases I still really enjoyed the book and wished it was actually longer. A lot of the cases that were looked at were really well done and provided good examples with only one exception where they showed only the most popular cases and simply just showed how they were examples and didn't really focus on what the true meaning of the chapter was. I really was able to apply this to computer science and learn from the cases, about how we can condition people in different ways, how people learn, and how people might perceive different things. It was a good all around read and I hope its continued to be done.

Paper Reading #3: Lowering the Barrier to Applying Machine Learning

Comment 1: http://chi-jacob.blogspot.com/2011/01/paper-reading-3-lowering-barrier-to.html
Comment 2: http://chiblog.sjmorrow.com/2011/01/paper-reading-3-lowering-barrier-to.html

Lowering the Barrier to Applying Machine Learning
Kayur Patel
CHI 2010 Doctoral Consortium

This paper is the introduction to Patel's dissertation. In which he explains how machine learning software has been developed but none of them has been largely successful. In his dissertation he explores why these programs have not worked and tries to make a program addressing these issues. He starts by reading may papers on systems that have been built and talk to the programmers involved having them break down the workings of each systems and talking about the pitfalls so he can gain incite. He breaks these down into three main points first, most machine learning is an iterative exploratory process, essentially making changes to the most integral part of the system. Second, researchers and developers have a hard time finding the relationship between the parts of the system and their accuracy in learning a task. Third, developers have a hard time evaluating the degree to which the system learned. Many of these stem from the developer trying to get the wrong information out of the system. Patel also points out that a lot of this happens because the systems are only designed to learn a very specific task and it made it hard to evaluate general learning. He claims that a new kind of program needs a large degree of flexibility using established environments such as JAVA and MatLab. He wanted to create a new program called Gestalt that will use these generic, flexible systems to create a program that has good evaluation techniques at each stage of the program pipeline as to provide developers with very specific inforamtion on what to do next and how a system is working. The program aims to evaluate overall how effectively a developer is using machine learning techniques. It will give new visualizations and functionality and data that will help to connect steps in the pipeline. If successful Patel claims that the program could shape the way the HCI community thinks about machine learning and change the way HCI developers work in general.

This paper was very interesting to me. I think the most interesting part of this is that while it is going to be a very complex and data driven program it is written in the simplest programs and in such an obvious object oriented way that if it works I also believe it really will change the way the HCI community views machine learning. I don't understand much about machine learning, nor until recently had I ever considered that computers could actually learn something on their own and decide what to do in a situation. The problem I have is that I don't understand why a computer would make a decision other than that we programmed it to do so. I have even talked to other students at A&M who are engaged in this kind of research about writing a program that not only makes a choice but has a reason as to WHY it chooses it. I cannot grasp the idea that the program is deciding on its own because it comes from code that was written by a person. The computer only knows what we created it to do, nothing more. This goes back to the idea in one of the first papers we read about how machines can not be intelligent because of the systems that are put inside them. I think that this kind of tool while it might be great and will shape the way programmers see things, however it might only be so useful. When it comes down to it, there will still be some way to argue that the program is not actually making the decision but is only a programed response and the program does not actually understand what its doing. However if the program is complex enough maybe it will be able to determine just that, that the machine appears to be making a decision but is really only following a very complex decision tree. I think the most interesting part of Patel's program is that we are going to understand this broken down in the simplest parts and truly understand what the machine is doing. Despite my very pessimistic views this would be a program I would be interested in seeing, the results make me think a lot about the possibilities of computing.

Ethnography Ideas

Here are a few enthnography ideas I have been thinking about:


1. Observer the habits of people in coffee shops. Do they actually get coffee or just come in to study? Are they reading or using computers? Are they studying or playing games/watching movies?
2. Observe habits of members of the self proclaimed geek community Cepheid Variable.What kinds of activities are they engaged in? Do the members gather to play games or to socialize? Is there structured meetings or social gatherings? What kinds of habits do they display in groups?
3. Observe the habits of people in various computer labs. Are they working on homework or going to social networking sites? Which ones? Which programs? If they are working on schoolwork for what kind of classes?

Paper Reading #2: Supporting Medical Communication with a Multimodal Surface Computer

Comment 1: http://chiblog.sjmorrow.com/2011/01/paper-reading-2-supporting-medical.html
Comment 2: http://angel-at-chi.blogspot.com/2011/01/paper-reading-2-medical-communication.html

Supporting Medical Communication with a Multimodal Surface Computer
Anne Marie Piper
Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems

This paper is the dissertation introduction for Anne Marie Piper of the HCI lab at the University of California in San Diego. She starts by talking about how there is becoming more and more older adults with declining physical, visual, hearing, or cognitive abilities and it is becoming increasingly difficult for these individuals to communicate with their physicians. As records and medical technology is becoming more digital many older individuals are finding it harder to communicate what is wrong. Ms. Piper begins by talking about the state of art solution called Shared Speech Interface (SSI). This involves the doctor and the patient sitting at a table-sized computer and through various input forms (keyboard, speech-to-text, etc...) speech is displayed on the screen in speech bubbles for the two to view. The computer also allows for visuals to be displayed for the patient to look at, resize, and comment on with the doctor. Many users have said they are enjoying this systems as it is seen as different and less intimidating as your standard computer setup and allows the patient and the doctor to review what they said to correct communication errors.

Ms. Piper then talks about her work that she will be doing with her dissertation which is going to focus more on current practices and challenges of communication between doctors and their patients. She is going to set up cameras and watch different aspects of communications between doctors and their patients including verbal and non verbal communication and queues, body orientation, eye gaze, gestures and what kinds of interactions the two have with medical records and photos. She will then use this data to develop a Shared Conversation Space, an improvement on the SSI that will be a multimodal medical communication device. She says that the key aspect she is looking at improving on is how the system captures and represents speech. The interface will start very simple and then be modified based on research until a prototype is ready for testing. She plans to install the first trial of this at her local health care center and through the use of video recordings (showing its use) and questionnaires continue to refine the project.

She says the overall goal of the system is to provide direct benefits to adult patients and an increased efficiency in communication. She also wants the interactions between patients and doctors to be more comfortable and the patient to feel more confident and independent.


This is a very interesting paper as one of my interests is to see how computing can affect the medical field and make the doctors jobs easier. As records become more and more digital it will be possible that soon all paper records will be non existent and that doctors will have all records on digital media (such as IPad) and be able to simply talk to it about all the patients symptoms and records and easily be able to diagnose what is wrong and prescribe a solution. This also makes it much raiser on adults with communication problems as they will be able to talk to the doctor and anything they want to know can easily be answered by the doctor in some form of media. I also think that this kind of technology and understanding of the role that communication plays between a doctor and a patient is key in other forms of medical technology such as mobile surgery centers and long-range computer-based surgery. I think that this study is a great idea and the idea to use the table-top computers is a good idea. My only concern is that they may be a few years too early as older patients who are unfamiliar with computers might find the devices intimidating and be afraid of or unwilling to use them. I think that there needs to be a lot of focus on the use of the device after it has been implemented and its overall effectiveness in the assistance of the interaction needs to be closely looked at.

Book Reading #3 HCI Remixed

HCI Remixed
Various Authors
Edited by Thomas Erickson and David W. McDonald; 2008

Chapter 1: "My Vision Isn't My Vision: Making a Career Out of Getting Back to Where I Started

Author talks about this first experience with what could be called a computer. He was a music major and drove to a research plant in Canada to test their new music machine. He ended up using a room size machine that enabled him to crudely put together a piece of music with the music creation machine one note one part at a time. He says this is how he got his start and it was the best example of HCI he had seen.

This chapter was interesting to me just to hear his story. I think its humorous how he only REALLY went on the trip to drive the motorcycle and arrived to see how much he loved using the machine and how much he learned from the experience. I think as much as it could be seen as trivial to have photos in this case they helped to understand a lot of what he was describing.

Chapter 4: Drawing on SketchPad: Reflections on Computer Science and HCI

In this chapter the author talks about one of his favorite computer inventions, the sketchpad. He talks about how he loves this invention, paper and dissertation mainly because of its close relationship with HCI. He covers the different parts and how they each have a very close relationship to what we study in HCI and concludes by naming three main points. 1. There is still a lot of research needed  on systems designed to be used as tools. 2. Technology is so great it is easy for one to create a new interface. 3. We must keep HCI in Computer Science

My immediate reaction even to my own analysis is that even though some of the three main points might sound like bad things, they are actually very relevant from the point of HCI. I think the most interesting part about this is that like he says, technology is so great, it is REALLY easy for us to put together new interfaces, and we need to take advantage of this to make programs more understandable. This reminds me of one of my favorite lectures that Dr. Yurttas gave when he talked about advanced properties tabs in Microsoft products. He says that Advanced to COBOL writers means something a lot different than to today's modern user. The problem is exactly that, the modern user has little to no idea what advanced properties are supposed to cover. HCI brings these issues to life and can provide insight into fixing these kinds of problems.

Chapter 5: The Mouse, the Demo, and the Bid Idea

The author talks about how he showed a video of the first (computer) mouse in his HCI class. He later got to see this again at the MIT Media Lab where the mouse inventor (Doug Engelbart) was trying to fruitlessly promote the mouse to the computing community calling it an "augmentation of the user". At first it was not seen as a large help and was cautiously huffed at by the community. As the author claims, the computing community was more interested in AI and office help products. He ends with some quotes and reflections from Engelbart.

This was a neat passage to read about. I again reserve that it would have helped to have a picture of what the first mouse looked like to help give an image as its hard to imagine a strange looking index card box with wires. I think the most interesting part of this is at the end where we have a quote from Engelbart as he looks at his mouse he is using and talks about how it is the best idea for the augmentation of the computer user that has ever been created.

Chapter 6: A Creative Programming Environment


In this chapter the author, Henry Lieberman, talks about the first time he met a researcher named David Canfield Smith. He was working on a new kind of programing environment that he called "Phgmalion: A Creative Programming Environment". This was an environment that was completely done by selecting objects and then giving them different properties to complete a program. Upon seeing this Liberman realized that this was the first real example of what would be known as "Programming by Example". Since this first design which was buggy and crashed trying to do simple math, many more programs have been created that not only teach the user basic programming but also show what the code is creating in live time.

This chapter kind of hits home for me because when I was first getting started with computers I used a very buggy program that allowed me to build websites and had free hosting. The interface was flawed and for the most part I was unable to make it look exactly the way I wanted it but it was great in its own right. I doubt that the site is still up but I know there are lots of rather affordable programs that do just this, give you a visual just as soon as you compile the code, making it much easier to check for bugs and giving you something rewarding with a visual. This kind of programming really should be done more, it not only helps with learning good code practices but allows for intuitive error checking which is a big focus in HCI.

Chapter 7: Fundamentals in HCI

In this chapter the author begins by talking about the Xerox Star. It was a new copy machine for his time and Xerox had just released the new model with a new user interface for assisting with making copies. The instructions came in a 50 page loose-sleeve manual called the "red book". It was the first interface of its kind and the author talks about how the directions were shaky and the design was very primitive. However he also notes that this serves as an important tool for today's design. Essentially, this machine with its guidebook were the first book on principals of interactive computer graphics. These fundamentals that were laid out serve as the basis for many designs today, and they still follow the same principals.

This chapter was a little dry for me, I think it has some very important principals but the story was not as interesting as some of the others. I think it is neat that the first real interactive UI was on a copy machine and that same design is still being used today. Although the screens on copiers have changed a lot and in some cases are not used, the overall idea of interactive user displays is still the same as it was twenty years ago. I think of these every time I go to the supermarket and get groceries. The self check out counter to me is very intuitive probably because I have been using computers my whole life. Perhaps we need to also consider the older generation and how it receives these designs.

Chapter 9: The Disappearing Computer

In this chapter the author talks about the idea of "The Disappearing Computer". Essentially what this means is that they want to design interfaces such that the user forgets they are interacting with a computer and are using completely natural motions and inputs as if they were interacting with a person. The idea is that, computers will be sophisticated enough that we won't see computers the way we see them now, we will simply be interacting in a normal way with a device that will be built into our homes and work. He talks about the idea of changing human-computer interaction into human-information action, and how this kind of research can make this happen. He talks about two ways to make this happen: physical disappearance and mental disappearance. The two are similar yet cover the same idea of getting rid of the computer. He gives some good examples of each at the end of the chapter.

This is one of those strange topics for me because I have heard for years now about how close we are to this kind of technology but you do not see many people putting time into it. I know there are lots of people working in the field and doing small scale designs but I almost wish more academics would put time into this kind of computing. It is like the author says it would be come Human-Information action, and we would be able to more easily deal with our computers and not make them a tool or a burden but just a part of life. I loved the examples at the end of how to do each of these and he gave some really interesting thoughts on the matter.

Chapter 10: It Really is All About Location!

This chapter the author talks about the idea of mobile computing and how similar to real estate, computers are all about location. He talks about how fifteen years ago we did not have the satellites we do today and none of this was possible. He says this spawned a new age in technology that was refereed to as ubiquitous technology, and how its inception spawned a wave of new technologies and devices. In fact the first devices didn't use them either, pagers were simply a way to let someone know you need to call them by sending them your number. He then goes into call forwarding and how this revolutionized a secretaries job. He still points out that there is a lot of problems with these kinds of devices and talks about how it really has come a long way and is improving the more we study it.

I remember the days when you were not able to reach someone at any time of day. It used to be that if the person was not home you essentially could not talk to them. It is amazing how far the technology has come in a short period of time and how much we have been able to do with it. The surprising part for me in this article is how he did not discuss more the fact that battery life in ubiquitous computing is a really big deal and along with research on the computers we need research on batteries as well. I think location aware services are also a good idea. I love being able to type "restaurants near me" into Google and it actually know where I am.

Chapter 18: Observing Collaboration: Group-Centered Design

Here the author reflects on a dissertation done by J. Tang in 1989 that focused on aspects of design done in groups. He noted many things about the processes and broke them down into three main aspects orientation, proximity, and simultaneous access. The author talks about how using these ideas he created a few different systems that enhanced the idea of user centered design. Many of these allowed for ease of use of drawings, gestures and verbal communication. He ends as always by pointing this back to HCI and how design with the user in mind has made these programs more and more successful.

This chapter while very interesting was a little confusing. They talked a lot about the study of the gestures and interactions done in the groups but it seems like a lot of the products described and created based on these do not help as much as they intended. The pictures make these programs seem very primitive and clunky in their use. I don't know if the pictures are maybe just poor quality or if its hard to understand what is going on in black and white but they do not help my understanding much. The system sounds like a good idea and if done well I envision systems like this being built into big tables and used in conference rooms.

Chapter 20: Taking Articulation Work Seriously

In this chapter we are introduced to the idea of "Articulation Work" which is described as mediation and management of activities such as: allocation of tasks, distribution of resources and scheduling. The author talks about how upon reading this he realized his research in process models and work flows that were heavily studied by business professionals. The author talks about how this has made a huge impact for him personally and others in the HCI community as to how to look at organization of tasks and how there are many aspects of cooperative work that needed further study. The author also makes note that this is the field of research that needs to be investigated when looking at ubiquitous computing and the processes involved in automating everyday activities and actions that users of products take.

This chapter doesn't cover a whole lot because it isn't really telling us about applications of articulation work but talking about how when studied branches into many different fields of HCI. The author does make a lot of good points about how this carries over into group centered design and automated computing. I believe that if we do want to automate more and more products for users that we should be aware of how the user is going to perceive the automation and be sure that it is automated in a way that is not inconvenient for the user. I think the use of articulation work and study of how it works will be important in bridging the HCI gap that is left between the user and the computer. 

Chapter 23: Video, Toys, and Beyond Being There

In this chapter we learn about the authors mother who upon her granddaughter being born was unable to be with her due to cancer. He talked about how video conferencing and digital photos helped the process but it was on the same as being there. He talks about an area of HCI which is to help enhance the distance that computers represent by making the experiences more emotionally involved and create an experience of what he calls "beyond being there". He talks about one system he used that helped to facilitate group work in his computer science classes but mainly talks about his daughter and enhancements for video conferencing.

The strangest part about this chapter is that there was more story about his daughter and mother than there was on computer programs. In no part of the chapter does he really talk about a program that is trying to really bridge this gap and help to facilitate the idea of "beyond being there". He does talk about how research is needed and how he wants to be a part of it but no real information on products that are working towards it.

Chapter 24: A Simulated Listening Typewriter: John Gould Plays Wizard of Oz

In this chapter the author claims he has a seventy thousand dollar idea. He talks about how the speech recognizer was first researched in the 1970s. At the first inception it could only understand about one hundred words and one had to say them slowly one at a time. As the technology advanced by the Wizard of Oz method which involves a person talking and then another dictating (John Gould's method), This enabled them to teach the computer quicker and more efficiently. The only thing he said was that even today it is used a lot less than keyboard.

I think the interesting part of this chapter was that regardless of how good and affordable speech and text programs are people do not use them. Even with the vast amount of technology that we have we still have not adopted these programs. I guess for me personally it was always the idea that, I can type fast enough and I took a bunch of classes in school so why would I spend money on a program where I still question how well they actually work? Either way it is impressive how far they've come, though I would like the one on my phone to work better.

 Chapter 25: Seeing the Hole in Space

This chapter we find out about the work of three computer scientists: Bob Stults, Ranjit Makkuni, and Steve Harrison. They worked with two starving artists (Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz) to work on a project they called "Hole in Space". Essentially what they did was setup video cameras and displays on street corners to various locations around the world and watched how people reacted tot hem. What they found was much more than strange behavior of people, they found that people were interested in the social aspect that this technology enabled and found that people loved the sense of community of being able to see people all around the world.

This is definitely an interesting idea, setting up cameras and seeing what people will do in front of them. It does not surprise me in the least what people WILL do but the idea that people were interested in who these other people were and if they could communicate was interesting. I cant help but think what would happen if these cameras were allowed to run all the time, would people ever leave or would there be a continuous stream of people using them? Would people show up in groups or individually? I think this would be a really cool idea for an ethnography.

Chapter 26: Edward Tufte's 1+1=3

In this chapter we explore Edward Tufte's idea of 1+1=3. Essentially it is the idea that when you have a lot of different objects in a space creates a lot of clutter and in fact you can cut down on a lot of the congestion by simply reducing the clutter. The article gives an example of elevator buttons and how by making the open door button bigger and more understandable, one will not mistake it for the close button in a time of panic, whereas the close button does not need to be improved as people will find it readily.He drives home the point of how in clutter there is a sense of panic and chaos, and a simple redesign of a system or a design can make simple instructions less broad and chaotic for the user.

I think this concept is interested although I do not see how it has practical implications on anything that we're doing. I understand why the article is in the book, this is basic HCI wanting people to intuitively understand what you want them to do. However, this does not lend itself to a lot of what we are doing in other courses. Many of the programs we write have a very small audience and in some cases if we were to design our program a way that seems intuitive, it would get rejected by the grader. Perhaps as I go into the business world this will change but regardless of the cleverness of this article, in academia I have a hard time grasping it.

Chapter 27: Typographic Space: A Fusion of Design and Technology

This chapter we explore the work of Muriel Cooper a woman at MIT who discovered the role that technology could play in the manipulating typographic form. Her and other students in the lab at MIT created a program called Typographic Space which allowed users to create vivid typographical designs in a 3d space. This not only was a revolution in how type could be displayed but also lead to further studies of how people read and perceive different forms of font. They discovered systems such as RSVP ( rapid serial visual presentation) which shows words rapidly in a single place. Studies of RSVP have shown that readers can read much more quickly this way because the eye does not have to move much like it does with static text. This kind of study of kinetic typography is used in many programs today to convey different ideas to the user in a much more intuitive manner.

I have often wondered why we get so many font choices when we use word or other text-based programs. It seemed like for the most part there are two or three that we use and the rest are left by the wayside. Without realizing it I have been choosing fonts that represent my feelings and mood for years now as I have published many things on the web (be them instant messages or articles) and not realized the effect that it really had. It makes these kinds of studies very interesting to me and I wish I could know more about their results as I am curious to see how people perceive different fonts or text colors. However, with a study like this of rather arbitrary responses from people, feelings might change over the years so these studies would need to continue, for example in today's society if I were to type in all caps...DON'T YOU GET THE FEELING THAT I AM YELLING AT YOU?!?

Chapter 28: Making Sense of Sense Making

In this chapter we explore the work of A. Kidd and her studies on sense making. Essentially what this means is a study of how people and computer store information and how the information is organized. She claims that computers are inherently bad at this because there is no organizational system to surround this and people tend to follow the same patterns. Kidd claims that people need to ask for better ways to store information and not better tools to make it more "organized". Kidd breaks her thoughts down into two principles: 1. Memory prosthesis- determine how and why certain patterns of digital memory work better than others 2. support for sense making- managing working information as a perceptual process.

This study really intrigues me as I never really considered that maybe the reason I have such a good memory is not that I can store more things in working memory is HOW I go about storing them. In a sense, the idea of sense making is really very intuitive, if you have a proper method for memorizing something it becomes like any other trivial task and it is simply a challenge of becoming familiar with the skill. I think that this kind of practice can play directly into HCI as having intuitive storage and retrieval systems would enable us to make better interfaces that are more focused on an enhancement of the user rather than a tool to be used.

Chapter 34: Revisiting an Ethnocritical Approach to HCI: Verbal Privilege and Translation

The article talks about how in many ways, the study of ethnography is similar to what we do in the HCI community. The author makes these comparisons based on the work of Arthur Krupat in his studies of ethnography. They take the idea of studying a culture and learning its customs and compares it to talking to customers and learning what they want in a program and then translating it to code. In fact the author claims that like ones culture, code is written based on outside influences of the people around and the people to whom the work is for. He breaks it down into a few main questions that one should ask: What is the analysts location? (culture and location) How should we use the translation as a core process in HCI? (how do we transfer from customer to code) and How can we cut down on second-hand information (which he refers to verbal privilege).

I think the idea of reducing verbal privilege is a good idea but if correct coding standards were observed from the outset of a program then these kinds of things would have been cut down. In fact, it seems to me that this is nothing more than a in-depth study of aspects of Agile or Extreme Programming. These languages have as a core that nearly all instruction should come from the customer as the end product is going to go directly to them. In a sense, this is bringing up very important issues and putting them into terms that are more understandable by computer scientists and engineers.

Chapter 46: The Essential Role of Mental Models in HCI: Card, Moran, and Newell

This chapter discussed the first appearance and revolution of Card, Moran, and Newell on HCI and their major discovery: a type of appealing mental model called GOMS.The GOMS method has four goals for a mental model: Goals, Operators, Methods and Sectional rules. They were able to use this model and collect a lot of data from experienced program users to see what it is they find to be "routine cognitive tasks" and then predict and explain error-free performance. This gives very solid set of qualitative and quantitative foundations and qualified HCI as an applied discipline. The author still believes that his article was one of the most influential bodies of work in HCI and demonstrated how interesting problems can be modeled and broken down to help fit the needs of the user.

The thing that I find odd about this is if this is such an influential work why are we reading about it at the end of the chapter and not at the beginning? It seems like if the book had lead off with this then it wouldn't have to focus so much on why HCI is a good field to study. It is a good idea to study what a users needs are but to be able to apply it as a discipline and make it to where we no longer have computer-human interaction but human-computer interaction or even human-data interaction is going to help us to advance technology much faster. I think that maybe this article would have done better by giving us some more excerpts from Card, Moran, and Newell's paper.

Chapter 47: A Most Fitting Law

In this chapter we learn of a very important researcher in the field of HCI by the name of Paul Fitts. He believed that all design in HCI could be quantified by a mathematical expression he coined "Fitts law" which is MT= a + b log2 (2A/W). Essentially, it means that the time it takes to move a target is a function of the length of the movement and the size of the target. This law has been verified in many situations and they even give many examples as to how it has been implemented and improved how we design interfaces. Pop-up menus, walking menus, expanding items and screed edge constrains have all been a result of Fitts equation and are a part of programs people use everyday. The law itself really does bring home the idea that it is important to use multiple design ideas so the design can reach its maximum potential.

I think this is very interesting, however it seems a little simplistic. I think that the idea of simplifying design into an equation is almost like saying to take the creativity out of it. However as we can see, there is a lot more to it than that in that it actually encourages different design decisions and has some value in that it has provided good working relationships to many of the designs we see today. There is value in it, however I was hoping the author was going to give more details as to how it works. The details given seemed like they were very abbreviated.

Book Reading #2 Design of Everyday Things

Design of Everyday Things
Norman, Donald A.

Chapter 1: The Psychology of Everyday Things

The chapter discusses common household objects and other items and why some of them are so strange to us. He breaks it down into a view items namely: visibility, affordances, models, maps and feedback. He explains what each of these are and how they help us to understand and item and its uses. Without solid foundations in these items can seem quite confusing and we may have no idea how they work without deep investigation.

I enjoyed this chapter quite a bit and was amused at how the author talked about different devices such as phones, VCRs and doors and how people do not know how to use them properly. The most interesting part to me was the pictures of devices that cannot exist.


Chapter 2: The Psychology of Everyday Actions

In this chapter the author talks about peoples views on actions and how they perceive things that happen to or around them. He starts with simple things such as how people feel when they inappropriately blame themselves for an action and then transitions into how this affects the ideas of learned and taught helplessness. He then talks about the seven stages of an action: choosing a goal, forming intentions, specifying the action, executing the action, perceiving its effects on the world, interpreting new state, evaluating outcome. He then transitions this into the idea of gulfs of evaluation, which is the idea of how much effort you must put into figuring out if your action satisfied your goal and the problem this creates.

This was a very interesting chapter from a programming point of view. It is interesting to think that instead of blaming myself for actions I should interpret this as a thought process of, did I really make a mistake or is this just a poor design decision. I remember occasions when this has come up and I was able to reflect on which ones I handled correctly and which I did not. I also think the idea of the gulf of evaluation is totally true and that you can drown in trying to figure out if what you did worked correctly.

Chapter 3: Knowledge in the Head and in the World

In this chapter the author discussed how memory works and how people think about things. Essentially, he talked about how memory can be tricky and how we can do tasks without thinking about them. He claims there are two kinds of knowledge: in your head and in the world. Knowledge in the world is the knowledge that you don't need to think about it just comes as being part of the environment (such as typing) and knowledge in your head are the things that you recall because you've learned them. He then talks about memory and the psychology behind it such as how people can only typically store seven things. He also talked about reminders and how they work, how you need a reminder that is visible and representative.

This chapter was quite interesting in that it talked about one of the fundamental aspects of human life that psychologist talk about all the time. Memory is a tricky thing and not many psychologists know or completely understand why it works. However there is a few aspects of it that are not entirely clear or cut and dry that we struggle to understand. I find it inherently interesting that the brain has to learn about itself and the idea that we have different ways to remembers ideas. One thing that I kind of disagree with here is that, you can get your memory to be better than seven items, there are lots of simply memory tricks that one can practice to make your memory much better, its the idea of chunking.

Chapter 4: Knowing What to Do

In this chapter we discuss the idea of how messages work and the constraints associated with them. The author talks about how different kinds of messages display different constraints and how good design should have constraints that are appropriate and lead the user to a logical way to use them. He also talks about how sound is a large factor in determining constraints of a sound and he argues that much of them are very intuitive however they can display largely different purposes. In fact in some cases sounds are built into items to confirm to the user that they are working correctly such as the click on a door when it slides shut. He claims that sounds can play a useful role in designs that seem rather confusing.

This chapter was rather good in that it presented more really good ideas about how things should be designed logically and how their design is geared towards users. For each of his arguments of design and each of the idea he talked about was backed up with a lot of really useful examples that brought the problem into perspective and made it a lot easier to see what he was talking about. I think my favorite part was talking about how intuitive of an idea switches are. The thing that bugs me the most about this is that if you have multiple switches controlling the same thing then you might be turning a light on when you flick it down (meaning off).

Chapter 5: To Err is Human


In this chapter the author discusses two main points, first that errors made by humans are one of two different phenomena and second that sometimes design of things shapes our view of how errors in it are handled and encountered. First he says that human errors in action are essentially two types: slips and mistakes. He gives very humorous examples of each most of which have to do with how mistakes are things that have a larger effect and are in some cases nearly impossible to prevent, and slips are small mistakes such as mistyping a word in this blog and having to backspace to correct it. (I do this all the time BTW, just in typing this I have done it three times now). He then talks about how different items are designed and how in some cases the designs are error prone or again (calling back to earlier chapters) the items are designed for how a user SHOULD use them not how a user WILL use them. He brings up lots of good points about how errors occur and how design can help to alleviate errors all together.

I think this was probably one of my favorite chapters from either of his books that we are reading (Everyday and Future things) simply because of all the great examples that he gives. It is interesting that in reading something like this I would think to myself, I don't think I've ever done that, when likely I have made all the same errors as the people he is referring to. I think the notion is also interesting that design of things has as much to do with errors associated to it as do the ways in which people use them. One of the examples he gives is the Nintendo system and while I never had many problems using mine it was because long before I got one I was able to see other friends use them over and over and had learned from all their mistakes. I think that in general many things are designed so that you DO NOT use them incorrectly but when someone simply does not understand or tries something different is when there are major design issues.

Chapter 6: User-Centered Design

In this chapter we look at the idea of how design decision are made and who they are made for. The author discusses many different devices as he normally does but then discusses how they are designed by engineers and many times really only for engineers. Some designers never really consider that in the end an average person is going to be using the item and a lot of times this person is not going to have any sort of background in that kind of device. It harkens back to earlier chapters when he talks about items should not be designed  based on how the user SHOULD use the item but rather how they WILL use the item. He talks about how designers need to consider the emergency moments how a user will not think and simply act and try to prevent as many of these situations as possible. The best example he gives is one he has done personally with sticking a metal object in a toaster, even if he was careful there is still a chance he could get a bad shock and really injure himself.

This chapter, while long, did have some really good examples. The toaster example was really good for him to put here because I am willing to bet that it hits close to home for a lot of people. In fact the more you look at it there are a lot of items that aren't designed with users in mind and they really could harm people quite easily. We have had to go so far as to put instructions "do not attempt to stop chainsaw with hands" because of stupid hasty things people have tried to do. I think that while devices should be designed with the user in mind there needs to be a way for companies to "sign off" designs and show that they have tried to protect the user as much as possible so when people just really do do something completely stupid with a product their good intentions and weeks of effort aren't thrown back in their faces and they are sued.

Chapter 7: User-Centered Design

In this final chapter Norman talks about issues very similar to the ideas he talks about in Design of Future Things. He also gives a large cover of all the material in the book and talks about how all these principals are properties needed for good design with the user in mind. He boils it down to a few items: knowledge in the world and head, simplification of tasks, making things visible, get correct mappings, exploit constraints, design with error in mind, standardization. Each of these he argues is needed for a successful desgin but also a design for the user not for the creator. He gives examples of how each applies and then talks about how one of the principals applies or could be applied to each situation. He then ends by talking about the future design of everyday things and talks about the Smart House example.

This was a neat chapter, and although rather long for its material did provide a good conclusion for the book. In fact, he uses some of the best examples here and covers each topic very well. It is interesting how in the end designing future everyday things is very similar to the principals covered in his other book. There is a lot to be said about designing strictly for the user and if someone were able to come up with all the user cases and potential errors that a user would make then it is possible to design items will be very beneficial to people and that computers will become more a part of society than ever. I like the idea of user-centered design and I wish we were taught more about it than in my last semester of class.

On Computers

Comment 1: http://shennessy11.blogspot.com/
Comment 2: http://alex-chi.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-computers.html

The Complete Works of Aristotle
Aristotle
Edited by Johnathan Barnes originally published by Princeton University Press

Aristotle writes this trying to inform people about plants and about the many different ideas about plants that are obvious and those that are more counter-intuitive. He starts by talking about the parts of the plants that can mainly be seen: the fact they cannot move, their different parts, the fact there are different kinds of plants (trees, flowers, etc.), some produce substances, some produce fruit and the fact that plants, unlike animals are fixed to the ground, and do not like to move from it.

He then goes on to point out less obvious ideas about plants. He does this in terms of three elements that plants interact and have powers with: earth, water and fire. He explains how plants powers over the elements explain natural phenomina such as earthquakes and salt formations. He also explains how plants, unlike humans, are able to survive in different environments such as water or solid rock. He closes by describing the needs of plants and how these needs similarly to the needs of humans are mainly for reproduction. However it was noted that a plant most commonly produces leaves and fruit, its ability to produce other plants is contained within it self as plants have both male and female reproductive organs.

Throughout the article he also speaks of a qualities of plants as if they are human. He commonly gives an example about the plant, such as that it produces a fruit, or an edible vegetable, and then gives reasons as to how this is possible and why the plant does this.


I think it is amazing that someone would be logical enough to think about things like this two thousand years ago but I cant help be slightly amused at the notion that Aristotle thought that plants had souls. He had no what we would now refer to as "scientific fact" for this but simply thorough observation and study he was able to come up with all these notions as to 'why' a plant would do something or 'how' it would be able to grow a certain way or in a certain climate. It is interesting to think that he sat down and had to figure out logical sounding reasons as to why some plants produce flowers, some oils, some are trees, some shed leaves and other characteristics. He even goes so far as to talk about how fruits of some plants change from bitter to sweet and how Human interaction changes this. It would have been an astounding piece of writing that would challenge the minds of the people of the time and give them a solid foundation as to the idea that everything, even plants, have a purpose. I don't know if I would have quite believed him and that he would be able to learn all this through observation as much of it does not seem obvious by looking at it, but then again he did not have thousands of years of technology and social norms telling him how logic is supposed to work.

Minds, Brains, and Programs

Comment 1: http://zmhenkel-chi2010.blogspot.com/2011/01/chinese-room-blog.html
Comment 2:  http://gspotblogspotblogspotblogspotblogspot.blogspot.com/2011/01/comments-reference-information-minds.html

Minds, Brains, and Programs
John R. Searle
Taken for open peer commentary from Behavioral and Brain Sciences by Searle, John R.

The abstract lays out a few distinct points that Mr. Searle defends in the paper, namely, he wants to show that while there are computers that do have true understanding, what people consider Strong AI is not a computer program that truly understands as true understanding is only represented by "...the appropriately programmed computer literally has cognitive states and the the programs thereby explain human cognition." He attempts to do this in two ways, one by asking well known members of the AI community what their interpretation of strong AI is, and second by allowing others to make claims and then systematically and logically disproving them as fallacy. He then ends by talking about his views on understanding and reasoning and explaining in a systematic way, what he believes they really mean.

The first example he explains is that of the Chinese Room. It is an example involving a man inside a room with a set of instructions on how to reply to a set of Chinese symbols. The man is given instructions in English that he understands and this helps him to essentially learn that, given this set of symbols I am to reply with this set of symbols, still not knowing what any of the symbols actually mean. He demonstrates how this is nothing more than a simple computer program, if this then this, given this print this etc. While this would make it appear as though the man understood Chinese it is nothing more than being able to follow a program or a system of instructions on how to relate one set of input to a set of output, similar to a computer program. He then presents these arguments to many different groups and researchers of AI and they came up with many arguments as to how we might be able to create a machine that perfectly imitates Human behavior so much that we would believe it is reasoning. However despite the arguments, Mr. Searle breaks it down to a simpler example and shows how it is nothing more than following a system and not true understanding. He then takes arguments from various schools and publications and in the same manner shows how each of their claims is nothing more than an extention of the original Chinese Room example.

Mr. Searle then explains his views on what understanding and comprehension really mean. He even goes so far to say "Could a machine think? ...yes We (Humans) are precisely such machines" but he makes it clear that he does not want to confuse this with the idea of truly understanding or being able to rationalize. He talks about three points that show the breakdown between a computer program expressing an output to an input and a mind comprehending a situation. The first is that the closest thing that a program can do to understanding is memorization, which is not the same as understanding, as memorizing Chinese characters is not the same as being able to read Chinese. The second is that while a program has a formal set of states, the mind does not have a set of states that it must change in an out of, only if we were able to have a program that did not have a set of states for determining of behavior would we be able to call it reasoning. Third, that mental states are a product of the brain, whereas the program is not a product of the computer. Essentially, that reasoning must come from the hardware that surrounds it, and as a program is written by another it is not a true creation.

He closes by again talking about how he believes that while machines can think, it takes a special kind of machine. He goes on to talk about how true origins of thought come from biological processes in the body that create reactions to situations. However this is not to say that a computer program can be constructed to explain to us how this occurs, it is not just a computer program that is based on a series of input and output.

This is one of my most favorite topics to argue and I have gotten in many discussions with roommates and friends over what would constitute a Strong AI. Various TV shows and computers have tried to imitate this but in the end it is very hard to define something as being a Strong AI. I believe the closest example ( and now we are going to get really nerdy) is Data from Star Trek as he seems to have not only logical reasoning systems but also displays curiosity, rationalization, and even intimacy without seeming to have a pattern or anything controlling these states. The show uses reasoning that I am sure Dr. Searle would agree that makes it appear as though he is a strong AI but I would be very curious, because of his in depth understanding of the topic, if this is nothing more than an extremely elaborate Chinese Room scheme. To that point, I would also like to say that in the case of the Chinese Room, because a computer program essentially acts in the same manner, it is not possible for a computer program to think. If we want to call our brains a machine then it is clearly possible for a machine to think but I don't think any machine governed by a set of programs is able to do the same. I would like to think that the new computer 'Watson' that recently won a game of Jeopardy or 'Deep Blue' who was able to beat champions in a game of chess understand what they are doing, but as shown in the Chinese Room example they are nothing more than extremely elaborate programs that only respond to complex input and can formulate complex output as though they understand what they are doing.

Book Reading #1 Comming of Age in Samoa

Coming of Age in Samoa
Margret Mead

Chapter 1: Introduction

Writer discussed topics of adolescence and the different factors that can play a part in shaping a child's adolescence. She then proposed an experiment where he took a relatively modest culture and subjected a child to it to see how it affect their adolescence differently than in Europe and Asia. She talks about how Samoa life is different and formalizes his reasoning for writing the book and performing the experiment.

I think that this opening chapter was very informative as to the approach the author is going to take in doing this research. The most interesting part to me was the fact that she chose a completely neutral culture that has never been visited or studied by westerners. Definitely makes me want to keep reading currently.

 Chapter 2: A Day in Samoa

This Chapter mead gives us a rundown of a basic day in Samoa. Everyone gets up early and everyone seems to have a set understood job: boys begin to fish, women do small jobs of lighting fires and weaving, men meet to figure out the days activities and girls tend to younger girls of the village. As the day sets in and the sand gets hot everyone goes to more shaded activities such as cleaning and coconut gathering until the sun dips and the fishing and planting continue, the work stops at night the evening meal is had and young couples go out for a little while, some will fish by torch others will play and dance, sometimes the village does not stop until midnight.

The chapter while very short did give a basic idea as to what everyone does on a given day. It seems that everyone in the village understands that everyone must do a job to keep the village moving in the correct direction and that in order to be accepted by the elders must put forth as much effort as they can. In this chapter we are not quite revealed as to the specific of the girls actual contribution we just get an overview and sometimes a few specifics as to the girls. I suppose this is necessary for the overall view of the book but it seems like it was left out.

Chapter 3: Education of the Samoan Child

In this chapter we are shown what kind of education a child in Samoa goes through on a daily basis. All children start with the duty of watching a smaller child amongst them and teaching them the ways of the tribe. Some girls are required to carry the smallest children around until they can walk. Once boys reach a certain age they are taught skills and girls tend to children until puberty where they then learn to cook, weave and perform other small tasks for men. Women then learn to carry things and support the men and even learn to fish to an extent. They talk about how they do these tasks in order to impress the elders and men so that they may get a husband as no boy would want a women with no skills.

This chapter actually focused more on the work of a girl than did the second chapter. This chapter actually gave me an idea what of a girl will do during the day and provided a lot of incite as to how the people think about work ethic and skills. Women are put under extreme pressure to learn skills very well because of the importance placed on marriage. The thing that is strange to me is how children are forced to take care of each other and this is seen as a burden. Very different from how we think about it.

Chapter 4: The Samoan Household

This chapter we find out about how Samoans treat each other in regard to housing and family. There is a large ranking system that each house follows where they have a head of household to whom the house belongs. This person can decide who gets to stay and who must be leaving. However he will not refuse a child who seeks refuge as children do not have a set household and go around from house to house throughout their childhood. We then also find out about the system of hierarchy that each family observers. In fact there are positions of prestige and power that each girl carries in that she might be chosen to be a princess which is a very revered position and she is used as a figure head for the village. Not all girls are able to be chosen and a lot of it has to do with family hierarchy. This also plays an important space in marriage as you must marry someone within your general division.

I think this is an interesting system for any peoples. It is an interesting idea that there is not only an idea of who you like for marriage but also who you are ABLE to marry because you do not want to marry someone below you in status. Going backwards even further, I think it is interesting that children are not confined to one household. It seems like children are given a lot of free reign and if they do not like the people that they are living with they can simply find a new household and stay there until they are dissatisfied and then move on. Could you imagine if one of your children just decided to go live with their friends for a few weeks? I guess it is different because they will see them everyday but it is still an interesting social system. 

Chapter 5: The Girl and Her Age Group
 

In this chapter the author talks about how the Samoan girl associates with her individual age group and how age plays a large function as to who you "hang out with" in their culture. Essentially each group is divided into cliques based on their age and they do not much associate with anyone outside of their group. As girls grow up that transfer age groups based on confirmation from older tribe members and the amounts of responsibilities that they are entrusted with. Girls do not associate with their former groups because it is seen as an embarrassment and most of the time once a girl joins an "older group" she wants to get in good with them and be treated as an equal. It is an unspoken system for the most part and boys and adults play a similar role but most of the social structure of the people is very unspoken and simply accepted.

I find this very interesting as much of our culture (especially in the twenty first century) is based, sometimes almost completely, around social interactions. Many times groups simply form because the people feel like they have something in common and just want to be able to have people to associate with. We take for granted ideas such as age, gender, nationality etc. While these do play factors, in general groups will be of people of similar backgrounds and interests and much of the other personal information is largely ignored. We also do not share the stigma of being in a group that we feel is "below" us or "different" from us. In the cases that these situations do exist they are largely the person's personal view or a view of their already pre-established pier group.

Chapter 6: The Girl in the Community

Girls and boys in the community are mostly ignored as children. As we have seen in past chapters the children get to do their own thing and live wherever they want and their only real responsibility is to take care of the other children and adapt them to the Samoan way of living. Once the girl begins to grow up she is slotted for a responsibility and some of the higher rank ones were discussed. She could do everything from being the right hand of the chief representing the guild and tending to his needs. She could be a princess and be a figure head of the tribe greeting guests and entertaining them. Some girls are workers who run errands and dance for guests when requested. Others are simply forgotten and are just simple workers and are expected to do the duties of anyone else to keep the tribe going.

I think this chapters was quite eye opening simply to see how the differences between men and women are quite vast and rather what one would expect for the 1920's before the notion of women having rights was generally accepted. The thing that interested me most is how one girl would be chosen to be like a princess and would be a representative of the tribe when going to visit other groups or having visitors to their tribe. Even more surprising than that to me is how there are some women who are entertainers and will dance for guests or the chief whenever requested. To me this seems like a demeaning job but for them I am sure it is quite a position of honor.

Chapter 7: Formal Sex Relations

In this chapter Mead looks at how sex is regarded in the community and how it is treated with respect to pleasure, companionship, and marriage. They regard this much differently than we do and in cases of marital sex treat things entirely a different way. When a boy is interested in marriage there is no formal courtship but he does spend time with her and one of his friends and simply be very shy and coy. Young boys and girls also attend dates but they are scheduled very early and are very informal with no gifts and basically scheduled sex meetings. They also have very interesting ways as to how incest, older/younger sex and marital infidelity are handled. Incest is completely forbidden and the offender is asked to leave. Rape is regarded as acceptable but the person is taunted and disgraced and infidelity is done by having the man and his friends disgrace themselves in front of the other mans house all day until he forgives them and then invites them in for Kava. Very similar to formal relations, sex is also largely based on class and age, and both are considered in matters of dating and marriage.

It is interesting how the idea of sex changes from culture to culture. Some cultures find things very acceptable that others would regard as an outrage. If some of the activities that occur in Samoa occurred today the people would be called barbarians and primitive. They would be shunned by our society and people would treat them as lower forms of intelligence. IT is also interesting that people are not allowed to date whoever and must be rather selective. The thing that interests me MOST is how there is no courtship and you must get a confidant to talk you up and be your showman while you are shy and never really make a move until a time of marriage. I guess there really is no phenomena of divorce and once you marry someone you are together forever. I think at the least it is a good thing that family members are never regarded as mates and that there is a completely different way to even talk to your family members than potential mates.

Chapter 8: The Role of the Dance

This chapter takes us through how dancing plays a part in the lives of the person in Samoa. Dance is something that is highly celebrated and of the only activities that everyone in the tribe regularly participates in. There is a number of different dances that everyone learns and a lot of this is through imitation of someone who is comfortable and familiar with the dance and this is one of the only activities that tribe members participate in without ridicule. Anyone is able to be the center of attention and they are allowed to dance however they want or with whoever they want. There is a lot of music made with hands, mouths, and other forms of noise makers and the tribe definitely celebrates and has fun with the activity.

This is interesting because it seems that this is so much different how everything in the tribe works with respect and honor and centering around each person being in their role and not in anyone else. There also seems to be the idea that anyone can basically do what they want. Boys can dance like older men, girls can dance with elders and even the really high ranking individuals are allowed to be expressive and dance however they want and with whoever. I thought this was one of the more interesting chapters because it wasn't as much quantitative and almost like a pure documentary of how the tribe acts.

 Chapter 9: The Attitude Towards Personality

In this chapter we look at how attitudes of the tribe are developed and how people perceive others personalities and quirks. In fact people realize that other people are different fundamentally from them but they either pass it as a generality or just talk more about the traits of the person than their actual personality. Mead even talks about how she had to taboo certain words amongst the children in order to get the answers she wanted to questions such as "tell me about x...". Many attitudes about people are also influenced heavily be the persons rank and status. If the village has three wise elders than those of lower rank say "they are wise, and very good". It is interesting how nothing is included in their personality but again more about their physical description, rank and then some good comments about them. It goes to show how the village really is a single unit and a whole and they all look out for each other.

I think the most interesting part of this is how Mead had to really pry in order to get anyone to tell her intimate things about themselves or others. They would not openly talk about another or an event and certainly would not say anything bad about another or someone of higher rank. Even more interesting is how boys would get away with mischief and similar to Americans now they will shrug this off and say "boys will be boys". When someone asks us about another based on our relationship with the person we try to tell good do bad things but when asked they almost will give you a description and tell you how good the person is regardless of the relationship. I suppose it isn't something that we commonly ask. If you were to ask me about my roommates I'd prolly just complain about their band they're forming. It again speaks to the cultural differences their tribe holds and their beliefs about living in a community.

Chapter 10: The Experience and Individuality of the Average Girl

This chapter we find out more about how Samoans and, in particular, Samoan girls regard intercourse, learn about sexual activities and their process of "sex education". In fact, many girls in Samoa learn very early about the relations of a man and woman and very early in life are first exposed to activities of masturbation and in some cases sex. In fact, virgin girls seek their first mate to be an older experienced boy who more understands what he is doing so the experience is less painful and more pleasurable the first time. Mead tells us in depth stories and experiences of a few different girls including their casual approach to homosexuality and how as age increases so do the desires to courted by a man and the desire to be intimate. While most girls will end up getting married there are some with strong homosexual tendencies that lead rough lives and have to be very quiet about it. Most girls who seem to have lost their way usually end up living with the chief and doing various tasks for him.

This was interesting to me in the sense that while some things in their culture are drastically different as far as view points go, some things are similar in ways. Older women less interested in love, younger girls idolizing older boys. Boys wanting to be strong and good for the woman they are with. Even the fact that girls who are very into homosexual activity have a harder life than others. It is interesting how their culture is so much different and yet in many ways the same to ours. I think that their views are a little muddled and for the most part it seems like each person has their own view and essentially the elders are the ones who decide what is right and wrong, however they do have a very set belief system that is being a little changed by religion.

Chapter 11: The Girl in Conflict

In this chapter we see how the Samoan girl is treated in times of conflict. When she becomes temperamental and how the different age groups are expected to react and act whenever there is a conflict in their group. For girls for the most part this is seen as a bad thing because a girl who acts out and does not seek repentance or a girl who publicly elopes and runs off with another boy is seen as less of a marriage value. The author then tells the cases of a few different girls in the group and how their decisions and their whole lives are based around the household and looking like a good mate for marriage.

First off...this chapter was not 7 pages. I think its interesting that the girl in this case is mostly exiled from the group and even starting at about the age of 14 is exiled from her group of younger friends as she starts to learn ll the skill she will need to be, essentially, a housewife. However I do find this rather irritating because I think we have hit the part of this book where it feels like there is the same info being given to us over and over and we are just focusing on the stories of the individual girls. I am really beginning to lose interest and just want to learn more about the culture and not so much about isolated incidents. Part of this might have to also do with the fact that I am REALLY tried right now.

Chapter 12: Maturity and Old Age

In this chapter we are shown how the role of the girl in her group changes as she gets older. Girls are forced more and more as they get older to get married and a twenty plus year old girl is pressured and ridiculed more and more by her family and her community to marry. This is mainly because of the ability of the girl to find a mate goes down but also because the girl becomes less desirable and the family must provide more to a man the older she gets. Obviously this is different for the matai as she is set up to be married by the family and usually to a prince. There is also the stigma that as adults in Samoa get older sex becomes more of a taboo and an older girl and woman is less desired as older men are content to stay home and older women gather to talk and sip kava.

This chapter is quite a it different in that it doesn't expose us to anything new but simply just shows us an aspect of life and how it is different than ours. We know about how a girl is treated differently as she gets older but in this case we get to see how this also affects her ability to be married and what this means for the girl in the community. It is interesting how this inevitably leads into what older people really do in the community and ultimately concludes with almost a cute story about older people. I think the most interesting part is how vividly different our culture is now and how we used to be similar to this. Fifty years ago sex between older people was taboo and now it is encouraged. It makes me wonder if Samoa has changed and if this idea is still true or not.

Chapter 13: Our Educational Problems in the Light of Samoan Constraints

This chapter was a bit different, Mead even says this in the first paragraph, this chapter focuses on European conflicts of education and how they would be seen or perceived in Samoan culture. Mead actually talks about individual conflicts in Europan societies and then talks about how the situation would be so much different in Samoan culture. How it would be handled differently and how even the different structure of the family being what it is and how it affects girls. She also kind of gives an overview of the whole first twelve chapters talking about different aspects of the culture and how they interact. The chapter was rather long and covered a lot of problems but did so to see the vastness of differences and talk about certain girls in particular.

I am not quite sure why this chapter is here or why it is in the spot it is in. It seemed like Mead was trying to end the book but there is clearly more there. Perhaps she also understands the length of what she has written and needs ample time to conclude the book. In all the book was rather strange and it was interesting at the same time in how everything was described and explained to the lay audience. One would not expect some of these things or the amount of information Mead covered, however it was all good information and really helped to explain the culture.

Chapter 14: Education for Choice

In this final chapter Mead takes us in a totally different direction and talks about how the Samoan culture is evolving and how it is becoming so much different from outside influence. She talks about the changes in customs and daily life due to religion and education. She talk about how a woman's role changes and how this has affected their society. She even asks questions reflecting on some of their customs and comparing them to European society. She does a good job of wrapping up a very involed book and summaraizing the different aspects of her study and what she did to stay true to the data.

I found this as a good closing chapter. I really wasn't overly involved in it because I am rather tired of this book and ethnography can be rather dry at times. I think it is interesting how much religion and education have changed their lives but also how much they have not affected. It is interesting to see the vast amount of differences from our culture and to see her strait comparing them nearly action for action. I find it hard to think that there are some cultures who still behave as they do and haven't adapted to 20th century customs and beliefs but I would really like to know what has changed if anything in their society today. Most interesting to me is still the system of social order and how there is a defined chief and head of household.

Appendix II: Methodology of the Study

 The author here talks about her methodologies for the study. She compares her work to some of the earlier work but clearly talks about how she will have constraints due to the small size of the community. However she does justify her points by talking about different approaches and how she chose one that largely ignores the constraints for educational purposes. She also talks about her data gathered and how the way it was presented helps to ignore the bias of not having exact information and how the fact that these issues are relevant also helps us learn about the peoples.

This was the kind of information I would almost expect to find in the preface of a book, the author wanting to justify her actions and convince the reader that her methods were legitimate and not merely an amateur study. However it is interesting that she considered the different kinds of studies and talks about how her data is supposed to be taken at face value and not as the exact understanding of the culture. I believe the author is doing a very well thought though supposition considering she is the first person to do this and has nothing else to go on or study.

Appendix III: Samoan Civilization as it is Today

 In this chapter we find out about how the civilization has changed with the influence of the outside world. Mead sets up the scene and then goes through the various parts of her study and talks about how each has changed. The biggest thing she talks about is how life as a girl has improved significantly for the modern girl than it was for her Grandmother. No longer are the deflowering ceremonies and there is no longer a taboo of the girl who refuses to marry. They have even done away with the primitive way they deal with punishment having a savage beating from members of the tribe. They have even have some members of the tribe learning English and modern religion. Essentially, while the customs are the same there have been major improvements in the tribes quality of life.

This was really a good bit of the appendix, it was as if she wanted the reader to leave it until the end and then really see what the differences between the two were. It is interesting because despite the last few chapters where she tells us about the differences in the culture and compares them to European values in this she tells us about the quality of life in the two civilizations. I thought it was interesting what deeply rooted ceremonies and traditions they have gone away with. It was interesting how many things they would never consider to be inappropriate others told them to do away with. I thought the section was really interesting and actually think it could have been done away with before chapters 13 and 14.

Appendix V: Materials on Which the Study is Based

In this appendix the author lets us know about the subjects in which she did the study. She breaks down each of the groups of girls by age and family status. She then tells about the different personal questions she asked them all to establish their maturity and level of exposure to sex and other social activities. She then also talks about intelligence tests done and other forms of social exposure. She provides charts with a lot of this information that is used for references as the reader progresses.

I was kind of put off and kind of freaked out by the information that the author was able to get. It seemed that by any standards some of the things that the author asked these girls was very inappropriate for the early 1900's. It kind of freaked me out that she needed to gather this information and freaked me out even more to some of the answers the girls provided. I think this information is good to have but my pages were kind of small and some of the charts were hard to read across multiple pages.

Full Book:

The book covers all the aspects of the very small relatively unknown culture of Samoa. The small island tribe has its own set of customs that in some ways are still very primitive to our American cultures and do somethings that we would consider outright wrong and Cruel. Marget Mead wanted to study this culture and bring to life how other cultures live and specifically how this affects the lives of young girls and boys in the tribe. While religion is starting to change some of their views on these kinds of things and the white man has brought in goods and other technologies that have told them to do away with some of these practices their culture still remains different from ours and they still stick to a lot of their old pratices. I believe between the qualitative chapters and the quantitative tables in the back Mead does do a complete job of letting the reader know about the culture.

I liked parts of this book more than others. Some of it was really engaging and some of it it seemed like Mead was turning it into a novel more so than an ethnography. I appreciate the stories but I don't really want to know every detail about it. I think the dancing ceremony is probably my favorite aspect of the tribe, because the tribe is very into respect and staying at ones age and the dance ceremony does away with that and anyone can dance as whomever they like it is an interesting reflection of the true nature of the people. I also think it is interesting how they have had to give up on some of their traditions in order to be a part of outside religion. It is strange to think that that kind of influence can change a people who have established traditions that have carried on for many years. In all Mead does a really good job of letting you know about the culture and if you visit you might not be as frightened by what is going on.