Just in case you missed it, may I recommend a quick skim of this
as useful background for MACK? It's Microsoft's report "Being
Human: Human Computer Interaction in the Year 2020", which you can
download from here: (01)
http://research.microsoft.com/hci2020/download.html. (02)
"Being human" and HCI in the most general sense is very much the
scene of "pillar 3" of MACK as I introduced it here: (03)
http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2008-02/msg00277.html#nid012. (04)
The observation demanding such a pillar was that "the balance
between the formal and the informal is absolutely key." (05)
That "informal" was meant in the most inclusive sense of at least
'colloquial or intuitive or pertaining to aesthetic or moral or
even comic sensibilities and judgement'. But that does comprise
the more specialized or ontologically-relevant senses of
'inexpressible or ineffable or transcendent' as well as the less
existential senses of 'misconceived or misconceptualized or
conceptually malformed'. Risking flames one might even add
"demanding deconstruction"! More practically again, let's add
'unconventional or uninstitutionalized or ad hoc'. (06)
Maintaining and developing the value-related aspects of all such
"informal" matters will be a constant challenge as we move towards
the integration of digital with analogue, and increasingly of dry
with wet. (07)
The "4th instalment" of my "MACK basics" series of posts to this
forum, due out in the next few days, starts getting down - at
last! - to the practical detail on how MACK broaches those "pillar
3" matters, and in such a way that its reductionism is not unduly
impoverishing but is instead uplifting. (08)
That whole area is, I believe, where you will find the most
important contrast between our present IS-infrastructural
environment and that promised by MACK. (09)
That will be thanks to how MACK:
* will help us dispense with the technical complication of many
present systems and methods,
* by its core technology and facilities will reinforce our
defences against misconceiving, malFormation, and other forms of
oversimplification, whether obvious or insidious, and
* thereby and in more positive ways will promote constructive
attention to what really counts for people. (010)
You will also see how it is likewise in the essence of MACK for
all the above to apply, self-critically, to itself as well, and to
our application of it. (011)
As the Microsoft report put it near its end (p76): (012)
"Finally, understanding the new relationships between people and
computers will involve asking questions about process, potential
and change rather than attributes, capabilities and being." (013)
So some in Microsoft might be able to relate easily enough to a
"Ride The Mainstream!" call to action as the message of a
Democratic Web medium, at least at the philosophical level even
though there might be no small measure of resistance in such
quarters to the technology in question. (014)
Christopher (015)
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