MCOM 100 - New Media: Hypertext, Bots and the Future

SIX – AGENTS

“so called” intelligent software

mistaking humans for machines

What is an agent?

· Indirect manipulation

· Personal agents

· Traveling agents

· Social agents

o “collaborative filtering”

o Mass media (stable and top down) vs. cultural feedback loops (volatile and bottom up)

CONCLUSION – INFINITY IMAGINED

“the street finds new uses for things”

Memex revisited

· editing problems

Digital information

· GUI as a medium

Profound changes by digitations

· not about the “bells and whistles” of technology, rather in the generic expectations of the interface itself

Spatial depth vs. psychological depth

· spatial (geographic) immersion does not = psychological (subjective) immersion

Society vs. the individual

· community through text and flattened interfaces rather than elaborate GUIs

Mainstream vs. the avant-garde

· subculture as inspiration

One interface or many

· intelligibility (the force of habit) vs. innovation (the shock of the new)

Metaphor vs. simulation

· direct connections (metaphors) to the real-world are limiting

· we need new worlds (simulations)

Fragmentation vs. synthesis

· interfaces attempt to correct the dislocation and multiplicity of information/stimulus overload

o synthesis is a better goal

· interfaces help us in “trying to think about something that is too big to think”