Conversational

It’s not social media that we want, it’s “conversational media” instead. We just want a place to carry out a conversation.

The thing about ephemeral social media

iS-500 APX100 RodinalSt 016, originally uploaded by Ian Tindale.

By ephemeral social media, I mean things like status messages, tweets, etc. The ingredient that makes them work is a small granular satisfaction event formed by completing a loop through the transmission of the content of your output, the reception of your output by someone to whom it might mean something, and the completion of that loop by the overt recognition afforded by the receiver. It is all the more enhanced when the receiver turns out to be of a “high profile” category, such as an important person in an industry or trade, or a “famous” person. The individually crafted recognition is valuable, yet still ephemeral, although it might seem to have contributed to a tangible change or adjustment in the course of the output of that other party, thanks to something you said.

In this respect, it is very similar to a phone-in radio show, and the personable nature of response afforded by those social media matches the similar kind of dynamic represented by a radio station and the presenter, in broadcasting. It is just about as important — and no more.

Up

mju-II,TriX,HC-110-016, originally uploaded by Ian Tindale.

We never really actually needed any markup languages. And those markup languages we did end up with shouldn’t have been container formats, they should’ve been style-sheet languages instead.

You’re all stupid.

Bastards, originally uploaded by Ian Tindale.

A group of people go to a restaurant, and obviously, different people order different things, which of course, cost differing amounts. Why the bloody hell does the restaurant default to aggregating each person’s order into one single bill? That’s just bloody idiotic. Now we have to spend half an hour - using up a table that they could’ve seated another group at in the meantime - deconstructing, dismantling and reverse-engineering their ridiculous single combined bill that is no use to anybody, into the correct form of separate listings of what each person ordered.

Are they that utterly stupid that they don’t see that nobody wants a single bill? Are they that moronically cretinous that they can’t - in the 21st century - provide proper bills? Nobody wants a single bill. Anybody who wants to just divide the huge single bill up into equal parts is just as bloody idiotic - that can and will never work.

Obviously it can’t work. Nobody ever goes as a group and orders identical quantities of identical choices. Obviously that never happens. If you divide the bill up into equal parts, the other bastards will order more. This is only of benefit to the restaurant. Nobody wants that. I certainly don’t want to subsidise a bunch of other people who eat more than I do and are daft enough to spend more than I decided to. That’s just unacceptable.

No, the restaurant should default to providing proper bills - itemised by the person who ordered which food - without needing to be asked. The default should be that sensible structure. If you’re idiotic enough to share equally, or have someone who is sufficiently corrupt to have a job that lets them pay for the whole bill in one go, then that should be an electable option - but certainly not the default.

Why are restaurants so bloody primitive and stupid even in the second decade of the 21st century? Why are customers so stupid that they don’t object to this? Why would they be so stupid as to even think of dividing it equally as a way around this obtuse mistreatment by restaurants? What those bastards are doing is cheating the customer, in the favour of the bastard restaurant, by making it so much trouble (but not too much trouble) to do the job properly ourselves that they think people will just give in and pay more than they have spent. Bastards.

It’s no different to a supermarket charging an entire queue at the checkouts an aggregated price and letting everybody sort it out themselves. Everybody should complain. Everybody. Any other way is just stupid and wrong.

If art makes you laugh

PB102114, originally uploaded by Ian Tindale.

When I first went to art college, it was more out of a notion that art made me laugh, rather than one of art making me think. Of course, decades later, art makes me think constantly, yet there's not much laughing going on. It's deep, it's analytical, it's meaningful, but it's not really funny any more. However, the transactional reward is far higher. Perhaps in the beginning I got it wrong and I thought there was funniness in there where there wasn't. Maybe what I should have done is gone to amusing college instead of art college, if there was such a thing. The trouble is, I think that this is a mistaken entry point that a lot of people make - I'm not alone in thinking that "this modern art stuff" was hilarious and quite funny and a bit of a laugh and therefore we feel free and safe to get involved with it.

I think that having a line that goes between "I don't get it" to "I get it" isn't sufficiently explanatory of what the actual shape involved is - it's not a straight line. It doesn't go from "I don't get it" at one end, which translates to "I don't like it, it's not an old-looking painting of someone famous, in an ornate frame, etc, like normal art is - I don't know how to process this - what am I expected to do with it?". To the other end, the "I get it" of which would translate as "It makes me laugh, it stimulates me, I giggled, it reached in and touched me, I became a part of the process, I like it", which is equally missing the point in many cases. These aren't ends of a continuum. Are we mistaking art for comedy?

Our acceptance or non-acceptance of art is probably irrelevant, based on the premise that our starting point as consumers is uncontrollable and variable and quite likely wrong in most cases. What if, why not just go straight to the comedy part, if that's what the acceptable component of art consumption is seeking? Art should become comedy, and it should present the challenges that art does, but with an obvious punchline. Maybe this is what advertising is? That way we have a commoditised and consumable form of provocative art, which channels the end-result into an easily predictable format of a surprise package that makes you think it is making you think while it is in fact only making you laugh. You can tell art isn't comedy isn't advertising all the time. Otherwise there'd be adverts that shock and distress as their leverage that affects you and shifts your perception in connection with the thing the advert is selling. The amount of adverts that actually come close to shock and distress is minimal, and when they do, it doesn't go far at all. It's probably preferable to make the audience laugh if you want to sell stuff, than be traumatised, although both establish associations.

Of course, normal comedy already is comedy. How should art comedy differentiate itself? Perhaps art comedy will have a higher level of "I don't get it" in the same way that normal comedy sometimes does, and that art does when people were expecting something differently established. But in that case, perhaps I don't care whether you get it or not. In the case of normal comedy, of course, the quality criteria is whether enough people get it - if nobody ever gets it, then it's perhaps comedy with a quality problem. In the case of art comedy that nobody gets, I'd say there's an opportunity to position it as that being the fault of the audience for not positioning themselves appropriately. Maybe they're too aligned to consume in a certain established pattern. Maybe they're expecting reception of what wasn't delivered. Maybe they don't get it because they haven't done the work involved. It's not a cheap laugh. It might involve significant transposition of positioning to make it function.

Art that attacks comedy on it's own ground. It's not funny. At least, not on the surface. It doesn't have the same end-product, even though it follows the same structure. For example, an example of art attacking comedy in the form of a stand-up routine might be one of the established form of comedian, mic, stage, executing many consecutive instances of the 'joke' unit. The joke unit might be one of a verbal set-up, followed by a 'punchline'. The verbal setup might consist of straightforward selective narrative, or sometimes it might involve dynamically exaggerated narrative for extra comedic effect. The joke terminates in a violation or surprise against the trajectory of the premise of the set-up. These all assume that the audience understands the setup, the premise, and also understands why the punchline violates it.

But this assumes that the audience has a level of quality that they bring with them in their ability to process modern language. What if, as artists, we took control of that aspect of the process also? What if I the artist presented a self-consistent setup and premise that you the audience simply didn't "get" or relate to or understand or engage with? What if I then violated this setup with a functional punchline that you equally didn't "get" or understand? But in all case, the consistency and validity of the process was intact. It just didn't rely on the audience to "laugh" at it to validate it. And yet, the truth of the structure is valid - it would be a joke, and it would be a highly funny one, if the premise and setup were transformed from where they describe within language to another position. One way of doing this would be to shift the meaning of all surrounding language around the premise and setup. Once all peripheral language surrounding it is shifted in meaning, then this setup and premise now means something different to what the words merely said on their surface level. And hence, with this shifted surrounding meaning, the punchline works. But if you don't go through that process, it's not funny - in fact, it's meaningless. But did the art go away just because you didn't laugh?

I don't need to explain

P1010028, originally uploaded by Ian Tindale.

The internet seems to force the explanation of things - motives, decisions, opinions. Everyone wants to know why such outcomes were arrived at, in an audited sense.

I don't have to explain why I've done certain things, why I like certain things, why I've made certain decisions. I don't think you need to either. It's not the requirement that people inevitably treat it as - I simply don't have to respond to demands for explanation. I don't even have to appear logical or externally consistent if I don't wish to. If you want to know something, figure it out yourself. If you ask me, I might be able to help, or I might just as easily mislead you because our experiences and requirements are mismatched. What if I like something for an entirely irrational, unquantifiable and illogical reason. The amount of work involved in dredging through any possible reasoning (or even just making it up) in order to relate it to someone else is frankly not worth it - what do I get out of it?

Obviously there is a requirement for 'warning' or 'recommending' others regarding purchases, configurations, etc. The whole world of the review is heading in the direction of satisfying that need, although embryonically at the present. Right now, the review is only hinting at the value that it could offer as a literary form, but suffers from undeveloped structure as well as amateur standards of content quality. But is it right that someone should feel they can absolve all responsibility for making a decision simply by acquiring a thin thread of recommendation from other people with other purposes, other scopes and other objectives? The consumer of an opinion or reason must equally share a load of the responsibility of fitness for purpose of the information, and this is simply not being formalised in a recognised manner at all.

Where word processors went wrong

NikonF4_100TMX_Tmax_009, originally uploaded by Ian Tindale.

A long time ago, there were programs for the early computers which were known as ‘text editors’. These allowed a person to create a text file, and perhaps later edit it. The text file might be for consumption by another person, or it might contain a sequence of instructions or settings, even constituting an entire computer program, which a (not necessarily the same) computer would run.

Ignoring the ‘consumption by machine’ cases, the early text editors were in effect an extension of the more sophisticated typewriters of the day. By then, typewriters were not just dumb appliances that if you struck a key, the corresponding letter would appear on the paper. They could do far more. They attained a feature set that allowed a degree of automation in the office, and productivity for writers. And yet, the final output of those typewriters was nevertheless in terms of sheets of paper.

As text editors on computers mutated into more fully featured word processors, the advantages of working with screens and mass storage were utilised. Mail-merge programs, using a boilerplate template and a database or tabulated list of names or data were now easier to manage than the same task ever was on a sophisticated office typewriter (however - it certainly was possible on the higher-end models of typewriter). Hundreds of tailor-made individually addressed letters could be printed out with ease, and edited with ease, and the files could be managed and the output could be adjusted.

The transition from dot-matrix or daisywheel to the first generation of laser printers such as the Apple Laserwriter, and the corresponding transition from character-based screens to WIMP GUIs such as the Apple Lisa or Apple Macintosh meant that more flexibility or time could be applied to the specific styling of the output. Typographic presentation was now a very flexible capability of the system, and the people producing such output would spend considerable time in that part of the process.

Where it went wrong was not, as I often thought, at the point where word processors effectively couldn’t decide whether they should become fully-fledged typesetting systems and hence, desktop publishing applications, or whether they should still claim to be word processors, yet all the time adding this feature, that feature and bolting on other capabilities that are outside the strict realm of word processing. For example, the typewriter can tabulate, but the word processor can also range copy to the left, to the right, centred, or even justified (with appropriate algorithms) in a similar way to the more sophisticated phototypesetting systems of the day.

Soon, to add to tabulation, justification, a range of typefaces and fonts in various sizes, demand for actual tables was catered for (in perhaps a not very interoperable manner). Tables could be drawn up using a different action than simply setting tabs and drawing rules. Tables required a whole new interface built into the program, and as this was the wysiwyg age, the table construction had to happen right there in the middle of your page, as you worked.

After tables, the addition of graphics. This was perhaps an odd decision - a word processor program that can actually embed graphics into the page - and show you them as it does it! Is this now a DTP program? If you took this word processor document and used it as the copy for an article that were being set in a DTP application, you might find that the tabs didn’t match what the author saw on their screen (as authors rarely understand tabbing), the table was interpreted in a variety of ways by the DTP program, and perhaps even that the graphics and other non textual content were stripped out by the time you saw the copy flow into the galleys on the DTP program.

If you were lucky, the WP program and the DTP program understood each other in terms of fonts and typography, and if you were even luckier you could set up matching style names on each and they would be respected throughout the workflow. Soon, the perceived demand for not only tables, but tables that behaved (or in fact were) just like a small chunk of spreadsheet was satisfied. You could set up a small table in the document which linked some of its cells to live data or external data, and some of the other cells might contain formulae that operated on the content other cells, producing results. Is this what word processors should be doing?

So, word processors have always had the temptation to bloat in various unmanageable and uninteroperable ways, continually striving to be a more accessible or immediately usable alternative to a DTP program, and increasingly adding features the relevance of which to the act of processing words is mystifyingly remote.

No, none of this is where it went wrong for the word processor (and by extension, the ‘office suite’). Where it went wrong was more subtle and less obvious. Where it went wrong was when we slipped unknowing and unaware into the age where the intended surface for consumption was not a sheet of paper any more, but the actual data file! The word processor file is now vital, whereas previously in history it would and should be of no interest outside the office or organisation that produced it. Now, everybody thinks they have to be able to read other people’s word processor files, which is a frankly ridiculous situation, and one that nobody has clearly spotted that we’ve got ourselves into.

There is not a tangible or appreciated boundary between creation and consumption. By sending or accepting a word processor file, where are you? Still producing - or worse, finishing the unfinished production initiated by someone else; or are convincing yourself that you are in the act of consuming? There needs to be a clear boundary between production and rendering, and there needs to be education that the intended consumer only having access to the rendered output is a good situation. After all, in the days of the electronic typewriter, there wasn’t a ‘typewriter file’ that you gave to someone else to somehow read as the default finished output. No, the paper output was the final rendered product. It involved decision making at the editing phase, and a clear demarcation between that production stage and the finished output stage ready for others to see. This isn’t there any more, and it is this precise problem that word processors have led us into.