My RSS feed gave me this gem today:

I recommend taking a larger perspective than this overly-simple graphic displays. Note that it is without any credits to actual pyschological or sociological research, as well as being an example of the “slippery slope” logical fallacy .

Rather, the “real world” is filled with people who are managed into any one (not necessarily all!) of these positions by circumstances which themselves seem overly challenging, or have proven worthless. These can be seen as personal failures. Note also that self-confidence, cirumstances/environments of empowerment are NOT on this list, nor are they suggested to be on this list. Instead, Mr. Holmes presents the beginnings of a ‘blame-game’, a triage by which to score, judge and rate workers. Those who are already succeed will continue, those who fail will continue. Mr. Holmes offers no direct or clear recommendations or means of change. Such a false-dichotomizing info-graphic leads the viewer into negative feelings of self or worse, sets a keen eye to look out for and against the “fixed” folk. Enemy-creation is hardly the hallmark of civil society, yet it is the nature of Modernist thought.

This is an entirely sad “info”-graphic, placing all responsibility for change upon the individual, who likely is by now numb and blind to opportunity, having missed prior occasions for success. I fail to see how blaming the “victim” here solves any problems or moves anyone beyond self into sociable environments. Management means helping – something that was lost in the industrial revolution’s genocide of apprenticed trade-workers. People are moved by experience more than simple frameworks, however wonderful and cleanly presented they may appear.

Most of these statements I have made are likely familiar to sociologists; a field which is likely unfamiliar to much of the outstanding public. My reccomendation: Read Mark Schneider’s Theory Primer book.

Ahh the “New Media makes you dumb” debate. The WSJ has it going, and Slashdot picked it up.

My spin agrees with both sides, in the context of actor-responsibility/meaningless-drone. That itself is a rough divide for humanity; I mean, how many of us are *fully* determined in our thought patterns? Most of us are in small ways, but not in all ways. Further, we are only as determined by what is available to us. If no one is ever forced to turn off the TV, read a book, or read a full webpage, they never will. Humanity is *that* fickle. We’ll live in the present, assuming the past isn’t consequential. The Internet has only “given the people what they want” in that regard.  To this end, Shirky did a wonderful job with the history of new media; theories are only good if they hold water across time & place.

But this consistently distracted state is in some ways my own life. I have trouble filtering out background conversations when in a restaurant, among other examples. I’m sure it’s giving rise to affective disorders (let’s not get beyond simple parole: dis-order = out of order). How can someone know what to love if there is no order or priority to in and out-flow of info, people, experience, etc.

The spiritual consequences are huge then. Jesus’ 2 commands of love God & fellow-man could be well-undermined by this novelty. That’s why I’m agreeing with a friend’s recent Facebook status: “Discipline is remembering what you love.” Discipline isn’t about saying “no,” so much as remembering, and remembering & reflecting is being killed off.

Reflection is a time-intensive activity, one which now-now-now-or-you’ll-miss-it-or-get-too-far-behind media won’t allow for, and as noted, is required:

“The researchers were surprised by the results. They had expected that the intensive multitaskers would have gained some unique mental advantages from all their on-screen juggling. But that wasn’t the case. In fact, the heavy multitaskers weren’t even good at multitasking. They were considerably less adept at switching between tasks than the more infrequent multitaskers. “Everything distracts them,” observed Clifford Nass, the professor who heads the Stanford lab.” — Nicholas Carr

This is exactly what the other side of the debate agrees with as well:

“Reading is an unnatural act; we are no more evolved to read books than we are to use computers.”–Clay Shirky

But what I like about Clay’s statement is the next line: “Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read.” Resources maybe anything from mothers to educators, from $ for private tutoring to the publishing industry.. but it is always about time. My own time reading is only worth it if I spend the time to stop every other paragraph or so. Ideas need to sink in for any foundation to be placed. Who wants a skyscraper built on unset, wet concrete? That’s the best analogy I can give for what the Internet is doing: providing shortcuts for our memory, and keeping us from remembering anything. Even the act of scrolling a webpage is vague. Turning a page is much more definitive. I can’t glance-back as easily as I can scroll back & forth. (Ok, maybe not the best example..)

I suppose what this means for future information-design is clearspace. Data can also be held better when it is interacted with. Static graphs are visualization of too many numbers; interaction/overlays, compare-contrast is a beginning for too many graphs. Fickle “daily info-graphics” sent to my inbox or RSS reader only clog my mind, unless they spark interest  for further research (assuming I know where & how to research it!). I’d much rather have the data in contrast with something else, both of which are in connection with present values and personal states of knowledge. This way graphics could be delivered to my inbox for me, which overlap/redundant, and over-time help me learn and meat specified goals.

And finally for a sociological perspective. This little idea about remembering can be expanded further to include any binary-division, even gender-roles. While there’s a pressure from amongst egalitarians to “be equal” between/across genders, there is also a consequence of each gender doing everything, overburdening itself with too much. But that is still no “win” for anyone who would espouse a fascist (Modernist) sociology, where each person must fit the role assigned 100%. (I’m looking at you SB-preachers!)

Update: NYT picked this up too with their own spin that sounds like a good middle ground/awareness campaign.

Most of our desks are filled with frequently used items. Some bits might be more long-term, be it clutter, research or sentimental items.

However, “Computer as a Desktop” or “Desktop on the Computer” is a failed ideal of the early, by-gone days of computing. Simply: everything is not and cannot be on your personal computer *screen* let alone actually on the computer.

I’m a huge computing fan, I even PDF my readings for class (thanks to an old printer/scanner my wife’s new fancy-pants mac can’t use!). I annotate the PDFs & highlight them accordingly. I’m very document heavy, being a BachArts instead of a BachScience guy.

Compared to the image above, I’ve got only 3 piles of junk on my upper right & left corners: 2 book piles on the right & 1 ‘organizer’ on the left which holds everything from my keys & cellphone to pens, coupons & my external harddrive. And sticky-notes. Stickies can be moved, computer notes cannot so easily (yet). Cell phones & keys are much more ‘real’ objects, requiring separate spatial existence — like the kleenex box nearby. No computer will replace kleenex (I hope!).

So with all this, I’m not convinced the “desktop” metaphor is worthwhile, or even warranted. Sure there’s lots of files in folders on my computer, but (a) search has replaced some of that and (b) files and folders are in cabinets, not desks..

So, iTunes and other newer applications take on the library metaphor. You search a library; it is referenced, accessed and used. But that is just for an app, not a unifying theme between apps (though a good argument could and should be made why this shouldn’t be so!). User folders on Mac & Linux are now folder-lists of Documents, Media-types (pictures, music, videos).. Various netbook UI’s have ran with this as well. But none hold together any more than the files-in-folders theme. iTunes has it’s own folder inside your music folder. I know why this is, but shouldn’t there be a platform-independent format for these datasources?

And the desktop folder itself? Is there ever any real purpose to it? Most mobile platforms don’t have one and most linux geeks don’t place their files on the ‘desktop’. Microsoft Courier lacks a desktop as well, instead merging the desktop and the clipboard into one middle-bar for all things temporary (which most ppl use their desktop for).

Really looking at a normal, original desktop, it’s more a matter of objects which are acted upon with tools. Applications are the tool-set these days, but they fail to interact and avail themselves *on the desktop*. Desktops are loaded up with file *icons* not the file itself. Mac tries to maintain this file-window independence, but it’s just a jumble of windows overtop background pictures and icons. I cannot go from an open spreadsheet window and start making it pretty with a document design editor. These apps are mutually exclusive, and ruining any desktop metaphor.

All this critique is pointing towards a unified file format which all applications agree upon, and all have access to modify at anytime.

Clearly this is an idealism which won’t occur without limits placed. And such limits break the very nature of ‘general computing’ over which the Mac/Windows debate rages.

I’m a huge fan of limited and thereby differentiated computing: the workstation should not be running the same UI as a eJournal (Courier!). And neither of them are sufficient for the task of media center.

We once had a division of these 3 tiers with servers, desktops & mobile devices. Then WindowsNT was thrown on servers & XP(and NT variant!) was thrown on faux-tablets UMPC’s. This UI/codebase permeation is inverse of the ideal, where the low-level is the universal, and the high-level is specialized to the task.

Moblin 2.0 has a chance with this for at least one front.

UI usability is consistently my no. 1 time-suck. I’ve ‘wasted’ countless hours config’ing and reconfig’ing GNOME panels into assumed-need sorts. I’ve given up and returned to Mac & heeded again the siren call to Linux’ potential simplicity.

My latest spin *was* playing with screen-maximizing UI’s: task-bar-less environments, panel-over-top window-titlebars, then I turned wanna-be tablet with the iPen.

But I’ll not deny, the best ‘inspiration’ has been the non-existent-yet(?) Microsoft Courier. Here’s a list of the bits, related & not, which I’ve come up with:

Dual-pane

My 13″ macbook is nearly-exactly 2×9″ screens. Yes, this is very Courier-esque. Especially if I use Linux’ dragbox in between panes! But the benefit here is window management. In Xwindows-land, there’s lots of these things called ‘window managers’. They’re supposed to, y’know.. manage windows. What do they ACTUALLY do? Place windows in wierd locations & sizes which require you to use a taskbar, alt-tab or expose’ your day away. I’m not down with that. Time for a ’tiling” window manager. Yet I’m just looking for 2 panels, and on a 13″ screen, that’s plenty. If I config my window-placer-thing to throw some of my apps on the left, I (craziest idea ever) can expect them to be there. I know where they are! Which leads me to my next point..

Priority

Since I’m not fussin’ with my 9 windows that are open, wondering where to look for ‘em (something a taskbar is supposed to do, but doesn’t supply the requisite window-parallel usage scenario).. anyways, since I’m not wasting time placing windows, I can focus on what I’m supposed to be doing: being a human with responsibilities over resources and being creative and learning. Those are the categories my applications have taken: email, calendar & files on the left, OpenOffice, Journal & Web on the right.

Lists, lists, lists!

Perhaps this is more iphone-y than anything, but there’s some goodness to be had with the removal of clutter (and there’s plenty on the web!) Yet, I use google calendar & email all day long. I don’t need another cal or mail app, I just need a browser open with these bits in it. But even these apps aren’t clean. Facebook, Yahoo Mail, Google Mail, Google Reader AND Google Calendar ALL have sidebars. Why, oh why do we need sidebars? They take up sooo much screen real-estate, especially after you scroll.

Bad:

What you get when viewing web-apps half-screen'd or in portrait

Good:

Ahh, mobile: a clutter-free web-experience!

You just have to load the mobile versions of the webapps you use. To find them, I viewed them on my phone & checked the url. I’ve also found the ‘print’ versions of yahoo news to be similarly readable.

Conditions: sure forcing all my windows into 2 locations (left/right) & 2 states (half-screen or maximized) is ‘limiting’, but I’m a limited human! I need some parallels here to stay sane. I can’t be moving & resizing windows all day long.

Perhaps I’m just getting old, and will eventually regress into the old lady who only has one window open (maximized) at a time. Until then, this is a good compromise.

Everyone’s all abuzz with Microsoft’s latest leaked prototype: Courier. On an off-note, it’s hilarious to contrast the handwritten everything with the king of monospace fonts! (and previously, my latest interest has been the long-awaited crunchpad.)

But there’s 2 things I’m here to mention: my dream & the obvious rising behind Courier.

Why Courier is Obvious:

First off, how many people do you see carrying around a notebook/folio of some variety? Everyone. The business guys do it for their contacts, dates & files. College kids do it for their class notes. Artsy-kids do it for their scribble-pics. Christians have a habit of doing it for their Bible study/sermon notes. Everyone.

Second: netbook+eReader. Limited computing strikes again, and awaiting for a convergence.

Third: Intel’s atom platform (and I would argue ARM even more!) is ready for this kind of thin-and-goodness. Especially with ssd’s (heck, I’d be happy with an SDHC!)

My Little Dream:

I’m a fan of the UI-customizability of Linux. Always have been: it’s what keeps me away from MacOS. Right now, I’ve got a toolbar that has everything I need in it: time, calendar-on-click, applets & a task-switcher. All this overlays the wasted-space of window-titlebar. Most of the time I maximize my apps, so I can focus. But there are somethings that should be a sidebar: notably a tabbed filemanager (since I already have a tabbed term thanks to tilda).

And there’s no reason why a quick photo-viewer, calculator, contacts & datebook cannot also be in this sidebar (especially if cache’d & synced from Google!) All this sidebar stuff is too perfect. Why not make a Window Manager that runs specific apps in specific ‘frames’ (yes, like HTML old-skool style). The frames are resizable & collapsable. Ths is so (similar but) much more useful than a tiling WM.

Next up, I’ve never, ever understood file dialog boxes. I do however understand Delicious’ tagging. It auto-generates recommendations, and why not do this for files?  Linux is built for this: symlinks.

And while we’re at it, why not kill off scrollbars & make everything grab-and-draggable. Just use a modifier key (or both-click). Then we can have the app be like a magnifying glass, with the edges smushed to show you how much more you have down there (in preview-style).

As for all this journally stuff, Xournal is the single-best program I have ever, ever, ever encountered. Multiple-layers? yup. Print to PDF? Yup. Wanna add a new page? Click the ‘next page’ button. It could remove all it’s menus if it just had a ‘preferences’ dialog box. It is the model for any journaling program.

Lastly, mouse-gestures are very hot lately. I don’t use them because I’d like ‘em to be like Courier: context-specific AND list suggested actions, instead of always acting on its own.

Dreams, dreams, dreams.

All I’m sayin’ is if ASUS puts out an Intel Atom dual-screen netbook/eReader next year, or even this year, I’m putting my dreams to work. Just need to solve 2 problems:  the sidebar thinger (update: “devilspie” might be halfway there for me) & handwriting recognition (and I’ve got a prototype system coming this december when classes are out!).

Somehow, I don’t think Vin will take lightly to being called a girl. (As of at least 4/13/2009)

Whoops! Vin=Michelle?

Sometimes, just one in a rare while, someone has a good (understatement) idea. I’ve been trying for a long while to understand what a good, innovative, productive computer workspace would looks like. One that captures the needs of the task at hand, centralizing focus on that task, removing distractions, while providing context-relevant information on which to collaborate.

Friends, I introduce: Gnome Shell.

I really cannot express the genius I feel seeing this. The traditional desktop workspace is the down-n-dirty ‘workbench’. I imagine myself as Dr. Manhattan putting the pieces of the project together in this area.

Not to be lost in the mundane work area, (and, just like the mind!) there is also this overlay, which could hold the sub-tasks, associated projects and documents and email (all through tagging).

The mind, when organizing and planning has such an ‘overlay’, but when ‘in the zone’ of working on a task, interruptions and excess information is hassle. I can furthermore foresee another screen like the overlay, where you’re in planning mode, an overarching taskmanager. All the while, the user status on IM shows the availability for interruption (and optionally the task and how long/deep (subtasks/due date) you are into completing it!)

I like this. I only hope Gnome 3.0 will be the start of something huge across all Desktop vendor-designs. The cluttered desktop of windows-everywhere must end.

Conclusion: Stop being pansy Ami’s (cruises) and eat more whoppers while ride a bike! Yea Burger King!

http://blog.doloreslabs.com/topics/colors/

There’s more, so go get ‘em:
http://blog.doloreslabs.com/2009/02/age-and-gender-stereotypes/#more-118