An essay I wrote over the summer and have revised several times to include some of the thoughts I've posted on this blog is now on the Adaptive Path site. It's the most public airing of ideas I've mulled over in the last year or so and I'd appreciate others' thoughts on the subject. Feel free to post feedback about it here.
An essay on Animism and Ubiquitous Computing
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ThingM
A device studio that lives at the intersections of ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence, industrial design and materials science.
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What an interesting essay Mike - thanks!
A few questions & comments:
I like your claim that "user experience design will have to be more sensitive to respecting, creating, maintaining, and selectively breaking expectations."
What, exactly, are "anthropomorphised" expectations? Where do we draw the lines (and what kind of boundaries are there) between users and interfaces and objects? What, exactly, comprises this "system of objects"?
And more generally,
Do people only practice animism when they lack functional models for interpretation? (This would seem to suggest that animist or non-scientific explanations are somehow primitive or inferior.)
Does not anthropomorphism require the transposition of human qualities onto an inanimate object? (My understanding is that animism does not start from the premise that objects are inanimate.)
Thansk again!