8th April
08/04/09 15:45
Thoughts leading from the reading of Bob Hughes book ‘Dust and Magic’ - Talking to Carolyn Hassan at the Knowle West Media Centre - Thoughts about Peer2Peer, blogging (Stephen Hepple) - Seeing what you expect to see - IT solutions designed by large corporations, or by committee.
Wednesday, 8 April
It is going to be another what is happening rather than thinking block this time I think because there is not much that I'm thinking. Mind you there is a quote from Bob Hughes that I like which I think that I will put in about the best thinking happening when you're not thinking. And going through his book, I am not sure how much of it is relevant to what I am doing but the landscape, the idea of all these different possible routes, the fact that we explore a route but it is not necessarily going to be the best one. And actually in exploring the route it can change the topology depending on the route that you have taken. I certainly feel that what he says in his book, that Bill Gates led us up shit creek possibly, I am feeling that way piddling around with a Windows machine that doesn't want to behave, that comes up with illogical messages, that tells you to do something, you do it and then it doesn't do what it said it was going to do it does something totally different and then comes up with the same message again in an endless circle. and I find this happening so much with Windows, you go to the start menu to shut it down, once you tell it to shut down it asks you whether you're sure. that really isn't very good design to my mind as a graphic designer perhaps.
Talking to Carolyn Hassan about her project her essay on regeneration working with teenagers in Knowle West, which I think is much nearer the area that I will be working with, so I have made an appointment to go and visit her next week, and hopefully I will be able to see Emma Augustina again.
Putting some of my students work in competition today, their work on emotions and personality that we did very speedily.
What was that other quote? I know, a quote from Stephen Heppel's blog it is maybe not relevant but he was saying that he finds a lot of the best work on this current thinking isn't in academic papers or published publications but is just online in blocks and from very surprising sources not necessarily the sources that you would think the best thinking to be coming from. And that fits in very well with ideas of peer to peer and web networking the wiki effect where everyone can have a say and everyone's sake can be important, in fact it fits beautifully with the Quaker idea of everyone being equal and they're not being someone above everyone else will I am sure that you do get the occasional genius and you get people who are thinking in a particular way, so they have a lot of experience behind them but that doesn't necessarily mean that everything that they are going to say is going to be correct in right and it may also mean that the way that they are looking is the way that they sort of have to look because they have gone down that path and the path leads on when they could have gone down a myriad of other paths.
Out of the mouths of children and babies. and that fits in with the ideas... that is what was being said about the games as well, did I just lose all that I don't think I did. How the games people, looking at games technology, a usually games players themselves. putting their periscope above the parapet, so they are coming from their particular viewpoint of being games developers or whatever, so really what they see is what they expect to see to an extent and if you have a completely new clear pair of eyes you can possibly see something new with them and inform, if you can get your voice heard. and the whole thing with web and web 2 is that to an extent everyone can get their voice heard, everyone can publish, although of course with millions and millions and millions of people doing that whoever reads it? Who was it done for and how does the clear thinking rise to the surface? But it does, going back to what Stephen was saying, Stephen Hepple and his blog, but he was saying that most of the exciting developments in IT that he as come across have not been written up in papers, not gone through the academic route, there from people just working away at the coalface chipping bits off. and that fits in with my thinking again back to Bob Hughes and these huge corporations creating IT systems that don't work, but fail, that cost millions more than they should have cost and don't deliver. IT solutions developed by committee when a single person or a little group of people working together in open source can produce a workable solution that doesn't have the same financial commitment or expectation behind it. I certainly find this at school with the Sims database and the School website that I know that I could do possibly differently but I think just as well, in fact perhaps better. Bob Hughes was also talking about a huge amount of time that gets wasted on computer stuff writing reports that didn't need to be written doing things one way, dictated by the media, the machine, when they would more easily have been done another way, a bit like my online agenda system as opposed to the whiteboard.
It is going to be another what is happening rather than thinking block this time I think because there is not much that I'm thinking. Mind you there is a quote from Bob Hughes that I like which I think that I will put in about the best thinking happening when you're not thinking. And going through his book, I am not sure how much of it is relevant to what I am doing but the landscape, the idea of all these different possible routes, the fact that we explore a route but it is not necessarily going to be the best one. And actually in exploring the route it can change the topology depending on the route that you have taken. I certainly feel that what he says in his book, that Bill Gates led us up shit creek possibly, I am feeling that way piddling around with a Windows machine that doesn't want to behave, that comes up with illogical messages, that tells you to do something, you do it and then it doesn't do what it said it was going to do it does something totally different and then comes up with the same message again in an endless circle. and I find this happening so much with Windows, you go to the start menu to shut it down, once you tell it to shut down it asks you whether you're sure. that really isn't very good design to my mind as a graphic designer perhaps.
Talking to Carolyn Hassan about her project her essay on regeneration working with teenagers in Knowle West, which I think is much nearer the area that I will be working with, so I have made an appointment to go and visit her next week, and hopefully I will be able to see Emma Augustina again.
Putting some of my students work in competition today, their work on emotions and personality that we did very speedily.
What was that other quote? I know, a quote from Stephen Heppel's blog it is maybe not relevant but he was saying that he finds a lot of the best work on this current thinking isn't in academic papers or published publications but is just online in blocks and from very surprising sources not necessarily the sources that you would think the best thinking to be coming from. And that fits in very well with ideas of peer to peer and web networking the wiki effect where everyone can have a say and everyone's sake can be important, in fact it fits beautifully with the Quaker idea of everyone being equal and they're not being someone above everyone else will I am sure that you do get the occasional genius and you get people who are thinking in a particular way, so they have a lot of experience behind them but that doesn't necessarily mean that everything that they are going to say is going to be correct in right and it may also mean that the way that they are looking is the way that they sort of have to look because they have gone down that path and the path leads on when they could have gone down a myriad of other paths.
Out of the mouths of children and babies. and that fits in with the ideas... that is what was being said about the games as well, did I just lose all that I don't think I did. How the games people, looking at games technology, a usually games players themselves. putting their periscope above the parapet, so they are coming from their particular viewpoint of being games developers or whatever, so really what they see is what they expect to see to an extent and if you have a completely new clear pair of eyes you can possibly see something new with them and inform, if you can get your voice heard. and the whole thing with web and web 2 is that to an extent everyone can get their voice heard, everyone can publish, although of course with millions and millions and millions of people doing that whoever reads it? Who was it done for and how does the clear thinking rise to the surface? But it does, going back to what Stephen was saying, Stephen Hepple and his blog, but he was saying that most of the exciting developments in IT that he as come across have not been written up in papers, not gone through the academic route, there from people just working away at the coalface chipping bits off. and that fits in with my thinking again back to Bob Hughes and these huge corporations creating IT systems that don't work, but fail, that cost millions more than they should have cost and don't deliver. IT solutions developed by committee when a single person or a little group of people working together in open source can produce a workable solution that doesn't have the same financial commitment or expectation behind it. I certainly find this at school with the Sims database and the School website that I know that I could do possibly differently but I think just as well, in fact perhaps better. Bob Hughes was also talking about a huge amount of time that gets wasted on computer stuff writing reports that didn't need to be written doing things one way, dictated by the media, the machine, when they would more easily have been done another way, a bit like my online agenda system as opposed to the whiteboard.