Muitas das ideias e influências dos novos media e da tecnologia apareceram pela primeira vez em contextos inesperados. No início dos anos quarenta, Jorge Luís Borges escreveu uma short story que inspirou diversos indivíduos. The Garden of Forking Paths, descreve histórias incorporadas em histórias e pormenores inexplorados, que nos fazem criar mentalmente, ainda mais histórias. O modo como a história é redigida, como a informação é e pode ser processada é uma ideia primitiva de hipertexto.
Em Seeing and Writing, J. David Bolter descreve a evolução da escrita, da leitura e as influências estabelecidas pelos novos média. O modo como a escrita evoluiu deve-se ao progresso da tecnologia e vice versa. Podemos verificar que em processadores de texto e folhas de cálculo em que a informação é processada por indices e pode ser movida, organizada e reorganizada existe uma ideia de hipertexto e processamento de informação. A evolução descrita em Seeing and Writing, e a ideia de The Garden of Forking Paths consolidaram um pensamento significativo para a projecção e programação de computadores e softwares que ainda hoje são discutidas como a inteligência artificial que Winograd e Flores criticam em Using Computers - A Direction for Design.
O Sketchpad de Ivan Sutherland, foi o primeiro programa com um interface gráfico de manipulação directa, em que utilizando uma caneta de luz era possível desenhar directamente no écran. Como, Susan Brennan argumentou em Conversation as Direct Manipulation o Sketchpad foi também o primeiro interface de conversação humano-computador e permitia que essa comunicação fosse superior em diversos níveis e a possibilidade de alterações nos desenhos, em que o sistema, automaticamente, ajustava o restante projecto. Douglas Engelbart e a sua equipa no Augmentation Research Center (ARC) desenvolveram também diversas tecnologias e ideias utilizando um sistema de files estruturados organizados e partilhados. E é neste ambiente de networking que após e durante o desenvolvimento destas tecnologias, é estudado o seu comportamento e são aperfeiçoadas.
Em Using Computers - A Direction for Design de Winograd e Flores, podemos ler sobre uma perspectiva ontológica, uma critica à inteligência artificial e à humanização do computador, assumindo que os computadores nunca atingirão um nível de compreensão humano e devem ser considerados e tratados como ferramentas. Os investigadores do ARC estudaram as suas interacções humano-computador e construíram ferramentas que melhor se adaptassem ao projecto em curso e às suas necessidades, por exemplo, o mouse.
O ARC tinha como objectivo construir sistemas e ferramentas, elaborar técnicas de colaboração e lidar com o processamento de informação. A ideia de Engelbart era conseguir aumentar a capacidade intelectual humana através da tecnologia.
Anos mais tarde, em 1970, emergiu o Seek, um modelo cibernético do mundo e também uma instalação existencialista, criada por Nicholas Negroponte e o Architecture Machine Group do M.I.T., que figurava a exposição Software no Jewish Museum em Nova York. Este caso de estudo consolida todas as ideias de que falei anteriormente. Composto por uma estrutura de blocos de metal móveis e apetrechado com um sistema que detecta um ambiente físico, afeta o espaço envolvente e por sua vez tenta lidar com eventos inesperados dentro desse ambiente, era também a habitação de uma pequena comunidade de gerbos. Seek, possuía uma câmara que visualizava e mapeava os padrões e a localização de blocos metálicos assim como as suas alterações no espaço. Os blocos eram originalmente dispostos em padrão numa grelha, mais tarde eram remexidos imprevisivelmente pelos gerbos e um braço mecânico precariamente organizava novamente o ambiente consoante essas modificações. O braço mecânico formado por um íman e dispositivos sensíveis à pressão, lia e reagia às alterações inconstantes impostas no ambiente e podia alinhar, empilhar e ordenar os blocos de acordo com as preferências dos gerbos, criando assim novas estruturas mais cómodas.
—— Miguel Almeida
“The tree diagram, so important for computer structures, is very old: there survive early medieval manuscripts that display hierarchical information as a tree.”
“Even within a single window, objects (images and verbal text) can be stacked: text can slide underneath a graphic, or the graphic itself may be moved to reveal another graphic.”
- Bolter, Jay David, "Seeing and Writing" (1991)
“Essence of intelligence is to act appropriately when there is no simple pre-definition of the problem or the space of states in which to search for a solution.”
- Winograd, Terry e Flores Fernando, "Understanding Computers and Cognition" (1986)
“An artwork that produced information (software) about the information produced and disseminated by the media (software) about art (hardware).”
- Shanken, Edward, "Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art" (1970)
“Structure of Files - Our working information is organized into files, with flexible means for users to set up indices and directories, and to hop from file to file by display-selection or by typed-in file-name designations. Each file is highly structured in its internal organization.”
- Engelbart, Douglas e English, William, "A research center for augmenting human intellect" (1968)
“(...) how electrical circuit diagrams can be drawn and reused.“
- E. Sutherland, Ivan, "Sketchpad - A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System" (1963)
“The animation is no mere gimmick. It reveals again the hypertextual character of electronic writing in which distant elements can be linked together and these links can be conceptually active.”
“The popular computer spreadsheet is an example of an active diagram and indeed of a hypertext.”
- Bolter, Jay David, "Seeing and Writing" (1991)
“Borges was no hacker; nor did he specify the hypertext novel in perfect detail. But computers do not function as they do today only because of the playful labor or planned-out projects to program, develop, and reconfigure systems.”
- Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), in "The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941), pp. 29-34
“Computer animation can take a variety of forms (…) Computer text and graphics can be animate in the sense of having their own organic impulse, of appearing to move or change according to their own logic and in their own time.”
- Winograd, Terry e Flores Fernando, "Understanding Computers and Cognition" (1986)
“Many of new media’s important ideas and influences first appeared in unexpected contexts. Artists and writers have often presaged developments in new media that were invisible to the most esteemed technologists.”
“Writers using the computer as a medium have found many types of inspiration in the work of Borges.”
- Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), in "The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941), pp. 29-34
“A group of researchers is developing an experimental laboratory around an interactive, multi-console computer-display system, and is working to learn the principles by which interactive computer aids can augment their intellectual capability.”
“Engelbart’s primary goal was to allow people to work together to solve difficult problems more easily. For this reason, networking and shared spaces were essential.”
- Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), in "A research center for augmenting human intellect" (1968), pp. 231-246
“Having turned away from the goal of machine understanding, they have developed a model of human specification and machine support.”
- Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), in "Using Computers - A Direction for Design" (1986), pp. 551-562
“Some gerbils contemplate how the world is changing around them.”
- Nelson, Ted, "Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art" (1970)
“Seek was a machine that runs a behavioral observation and experimental laboratory, was designed by a small general-purpose computer-controlled.”
- Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), in "Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art" (1970), pp. 247-248
“A group of researchers is developing an experimental laboratory around an interactive, multi-console computer-display system.”
- Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), in "A research center for augmenting human intellect" (1968), pp. 231-246
“Conversational agents today implement conversation in a more literal way by allowing multi-modal conversations based on speech and similar to those found in human-human discourse.”
- E. Sutherland, Ivan, "Sketchpad - A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System" (1963)
“The gerbils and robotic arm seemed to form a prototypical cybernetic circuit, it was an inspiring image of a machine that paid attention to the preferences expressed by the gerbils”
- Architecture Machine Group, "Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art" (1970)
“Following a link can make windows appear, disappear, or rearrange themselves so that the destination text comes to the front of the screen and captures the reader’s attention.”
- Bolter, Jay David, "Seeing and Writing" (1991)
“This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times, in some you exist, and not I, in others I, and not you, in others, both of us.”
- Luís Borges, Jorge, "The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941)
“Software considered interaction in a way that built upon ideas in Happenings, and in the world emerging through information processing and in then-current media theory.”
“At the same time, these blocks form the built environment for a small colony of gerbils which live within Seek’s three-dimensional world.”
- Architecture Machine Group, "Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art" (1970)
“This paper describes a multi sponsor research center at Stanford Research Institute in man-computer interaction.”
“The User System - The Mouse - A set of experiments, comparing (within our techniques of interaction) the relative speed and accuracy obtained with this and other selection devices showed the mouse to be better than a light pen or a joystick.”
- Engelbart, Douglas e English, William, "A research center for augmenting human intellect" (1968)
“(…) it exhibited some of the important features of human conversation. A user conversed with Sketchpad by pointing. The system responded by updating the drawing immediately,“
- Brennan, Susan E. “Conversation as Direct Manipulation: An Iconoclastic View”, in The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design 393–404, editado por by Brenda Laurel (1990)
“Understanding Computers and Cognition is concerned with the design of computer-based systems to facilitate human work and interaction.”
- Winograd, Terry e Flores Fernando, "Understanding Computers and Cognition" (1986)
“At the same time, Winograd and Flores advocate a design strategy they call “ontological design” which examines the fundamental human communications.”
- Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), in "Using Computers - A Direction for Design" (1986), pp. 551-562
TEXTS:
Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), "The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941), pp. 29-34
Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), "Sketchpad - A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System" (1963), pp. 109-126
Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), "A research center for augmenting human intellect" (1968), pp. 231-246
Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), "Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art" (1970), pp. 247-248
Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), "Using Computers - A Direction for Design" (1986), pp. 551-562
Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), "Seeing and Writing" (1991), pp. 679-690
CASE STUDY:
SEEK, Nicholas Negroponte e Architecture Machine Group, M.I.T. 1969-70
from, Wardrip-Fruin, Noah e Montfort, Nick, The New Media Reader (2003), "Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art" (1970), pp. 247-248
Miguel Almeida - DCNM