JellevanDijk.org

Vandaag opgepikt via Petra, Project Wildeman. Tekst, klank, muziek, theater, vormgeving. Ik zie helaas geen optredens voor 2012 - maar help me herinneren dat ze bestaan als ze weer op tour gaan. De website is al cool: hij begint direct volledig in audio.

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Some people at the conference asked to post the video’s. I will do that here.This is online already:Scenario of Use: Floor_It from Gerrit Willem Vos on Vimeo.FLOOR-IT first concept (Gerrit-Willem Vos)FLOOR-IT future scenario (Sijme Geurts)Here’s a video in Dutch but in which you can get a feel of the actual prototype we built and tested in the experiment:Update: this is the use-scenario video of NOOT:

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ID graduate Sijme Geurts’ Master project TRACES, which was part of my Phd project in collaboration with Rijkswaterstaat, will be presented at the Dutch Design Week!

Sijme Geurts

* Officially nominated to exhibit my master graduation project at the Dutch Design Week!! http://t.co/G7gRR4F

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This afternoon I arrived in Dagstuhl, a small village close to Wadern, a town two hours by RegionalBahn south of Frankfurt, Deutschland. I am here to discuss issues of ‘human and computer problem solving’, and whether we (who?, well, ‘us’) are in need of new foundations. (Some pictures appended below). I am honored to have been invited by Iris, since I am certainly not the expert in this field (and several of the people I met so far are pretty much The Expert). So I get to learn a lot. And yet it is a return to old times, since the world of problem representations, state spaces, search algorithms, frame problem, etc…, is the world of Cognitive Science that I was academically trained in. It’s fun to be back again! And I do hope I can build some bridges to my current Phd work, since I realize I have been drifting away from the things I was educated in quite a lot. The nice thing about this Seminar is that there are people from psychology departments and people from Computer Science, so there is enough opportunity for cross-disciplinary connections. But of course also we should expect some cultural clashes and misunderstandings. (My secret mission is to investigate (the lack of) shared understanding between scientists :-).

Talking about problem solving: In the train to Frankfurt there was a nice conversation I overheard:

Man with no train ticket “So I have to get out?”
Female inspector “You know that you have to have a ticket on the train”
Man, mocking: “But if you could only tell me what to do?”
Woman: “No no, you know that you have to have a ticket. No ticket, no train”.

So she indicated what he had to know
He then asked what he had to do (in the hope of not having to do anything)
And she then repeated what he should have known once more.

I hope we get to have good discussion on the relation between doing and knowing, and whether there is much of a difference in practice.

The Dagstuhl Premises (Schloss Dagstuhl). [I sleep on the other side of the road in a 60’s computer-science-lab-style appendix to the actual Schloss…]

Academic Seminar visitor Yellow von Diek visits the Dagstuhl Castle Ruins.

Seminar Co-Organizer Iris, not quite ready to accept that Boosting can get you arbitrary good results

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I don’t know how, but suddenly I found myself in a Linked In Group discussion on “The Nature of Truth”. I felt I had to make a bold statement, since so much of what was written there was a bit .. , well, I mean to pose this question already gives me certain feelings. Why discuss that question, when so many people have been discussing it for the last 2000 years? (I could also have decided not to reply at all, which would have been better, but I am a weak social media user so I have to contribute)

This is what I wrote.

Jelle van Dijk • I guess I want to question the idea of trying to ground ones’ statements in the past, instead of grounding them in the future. Grounding in the past is saying things like: “I have done the empirical research and the results provide evidence for X, therefore, X is true.” We always present it as if such a statement is about the *now* (The evidence shows that *currently* it is the case that X. Or as Robert says “at the time of the statement”.) But of course in fact we have done our measurements last week, not *now*. Building a truth statement as ‘grounded in evidence’ is therefore always a form of grounding what you claim in the past. The same goes for statements grounded ‘in theory’ (based on other statements). The theory, or evidence, or whatever you want to use to ground your argument in, has to exist before you can use it to create the argument, right? Could it be any other way? One would think not. How else can we find truths but by ‘providing evidence’, and how else could we provide evidence if not the evidence was gathered first (making it a ‘thing in the past’?). And so we argue by quoting Plato, and not by quoting Qzorq (the famous 3000 century thinker).But think about designers. Designers create concepts, prototypes, proposals, interventions. These are statements of some sort. One may start to think about the ‘truth’ of a design concept. The ‘validation’ of a design concept, however, is a tricky business. The design may not simply ‘fit’ to the world it has to function in, it may also *change* the world. So what happens if we start to consider statements that may not only (or not at all) *reflect* our knowledge of the world, but at the same time *influence* this world? What to do with these strange ontological kinds? Sometimes all you can say is: THIS (the concept, the prototype, the thing, the piece of art), “is what I ended up with while doing my job as a designer *as truthfully as possible*”. Or: “This is what I had to make, in order to *stay true to my identity*” (while at the same time designers define their identity through their work!). For scientists, this may seem strange. For artists, it is their everyday reality. To me, the truth value of designs, at least, lies in what they *do*, in their transformational power, (i.e. in the future), not in what they reflect or represent, (i.e. in the past.)

Of course, most PROBABLY this kind of thinking is ‘old’ as well. Does anybody know which philosopher I am (naively and unconsciously) resonating with? I would be interested!

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Jonas is een kind van de nieuwe generatie. Hij stond in de kamer, keek voor zich, spreidde zijn handen zo een beetje uit naar het gebied dat hij in het directe zicht had en zei:

“Dit, is eigenlijk een TV”.

“Hoe bedoel je?”, zei zijn moeder, die duidelijk niet van de nieuwe generatie was maar nog van de vorige, toen de meeste dingen nog niet gewoon een TV waren.

“Nou dit, allemaal”, antwoordde hij, maakte daarbij wat nonchalante cirkelbewegingen. “Dit is allemaal hier is een TV, zo dit hier allemaal voor mij. Jij ook, dus. Jij bent op TV. Ha ha”.

Ik, die altijd slimmer wil zijn dan iedereen, voegde er aan toe: “Nou, dan zit jij ook in de TV. Want die TV van jou is ook hier achter je, waar ik ben, en daar links van je bij de tafel en daar rechts bij de box. En jij staat er immers middenin?”.

“Ja, ha ha, dat is waar”. Geen verwarring te bespeuren. “Ik zit in de TV!”.

“En die TV…”, deed ik er nog een schepje bovenop “zit die dan ook *in* jou?” (ik ben zo’n vader die altijd net iets te ver gaat).”Ik bedoel: zit hij ook helemaal binnenin je, in het midden van je buik?”.

“Jahoor, daar zit ook TV. Die is voor de bloedlichaampjes, de soldaatjes”, riposteerde mijn hedendaagse gestudeerde zoon zonder waarneembare denkpauze. “Die soldaatjes moeten vechten tegen de bacterieen. En die bacterieen zijn de TV. Dus de bloedlichaampjes moeten vechten tegen de TV! Ha ha”.

Ik keek hem verbluft aan, en moest mijn nederlaag erkennen. Hier kon ik, zoals de Amerikanen zeggen, mijn hoofd niet meer omheen krijgen. Triomfantelijk slenterde mijn zoon vervolgens naar zijn werkbankje, onderwijl het pasgeleerde liedje van de groep 2 eindmusical zingend. Aldaar vouwde hij nog enkele papieren vliegtuigen.

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Arjan Haring twittered about a conference in Spain UXLX where Stephen Anderson introduced the term Z-shaped thinkers.

I am a Z shaped thinker. So, thankfully as of today, thanks to Stephen A., I am now officially important, relevant, needed and appreciated (and therefore well-paid?) in the innovation and design proces that will spur the economy and save our souls from utter crisis and the End of the Planet as we know it (and from the Chinese as well). My contribution to modern society will be based on the fact that:

 Z-shaped thinkers…

• reframe the problem;
• explore many perspectives
• synthesize information
• embrace constraints
• challenge assumptions
• appreciate details

… in order to envision unseen opportunities.

(Although I am known to be a bit sloppy on the ‘details’ issue, but heck, that’s details).

You know, come to think of it, I actually know many Z-thinkers. In fact we’re a sort of Z-gang, we Z-people, doing the Z-thinking thing all day long, in our small little Z-munity, during lunch-breaks, on the toilet, etc…

And we *can* be hired.

So if you need help, and you have no one else to call (e.g. those God forsaken yesterday’s T-shape thinkers), then call us: the Z-team.

PS Please note I have nothing against T-shaped thinkers. In fact, I have T-people amongst the best of my friends. But still, you know, it *is* a fact that they are a bit horizontal, and vertical, right? They do seem to lack that diagonality that gives just that extra bit of juice to live. IMHO. Whoops, just thought of a fantastic new product concept - gotta go!

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Increasingly we will see designers and artists working with interactive technology as a natural base material for tinkering, exploring, crafting. Like their predessessors, who were skilled in crafting clay, or paint, or working wood, these young designers take a set of batteries, a bunch of interactive components (using, quite often, Arduino as a basic system) and they simply begin to design and make art. They also still draw on paper, make video’s, animations, work in textiles, use wood and iron: it is not as if they are computer programmers. This is simply a new kind of stuff to work with. For today’s students in design schools and art academies, working with interactive technology is just the normal thing to do. See for example this designer student’s projects: Liza Stark - and she’s just one of the many I stumbled upon.

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Now look at this:

There is something wrong with a program by which you can digitally create interface mock-ups that look like they were hand-drawn sketches. Then again, what precisely is wrong with it? It has something to do with the culture clash between designers and computer programmers. But I need to think a bit more about what my problem is. Meanwhile it is still a funny tool in some way.

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Via AnnePier deze fantastische klok

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