Colin Wren's Blog

Book I've been reading

The first thing I have to say about this book before I get onto how interesting it was to read is; It’s dated.The book was written in 1995 so it’s well over 10 years old and it shows in the way it discusses the internet. Turkle continually talks about the internet as a technology used mainly by intellectuals (though later one she does acknowledge that the other people are able to connect, but even then saying that one day that thousands, even millions one day may use the internet.) Another outdated view is the way she communicates with her subjects, in 1995 they didn’t have the multi media rich worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life so she would use the MMORPG’s fore father the MUD (though the thought of an MUD appeals to me as it allows the user to do anything with the games world without the need for a 3D model, animations and advance reaction scripting etc as it relies on descriptions and the players imagination instead of the player being presented with someone else’s interpretation) to communicate with her subjects. Obviously these were contemporary technologies in the books epoch and it does help to give an insight into how the emerging internet was used but sometimes it is hard to relate to the cases Turkle discusses.

The book is split into 3 parts; 1) The Seductions of the Interface 2) Of Dreams and Beasts 3) On the Internet. I will be devoting a paragraph to each part in the book as I think this would be an easier way to discuss the seperate subjects it deals with without blurring them into one big heap.

The Seductions of the Interface
This part of the book deals with the actual computers themselves and how we have psychological connections with them, Turkle starts off giving us a view of the 2 types of computer users Hackers and Users, She uses the Macintosh(Mac) simplify this.
The Mac revolutionised the computing world as it removed the need to learn computer code to use a computer for simple tasks and allowed computers to be a part of more peoples lives but as the same time it befriended one part of the computing community it alienated another part, and it still does to some extent. The User loved the fact that the Mac had an easy to use interface that let them do their work without needed to know to much on how the computer works and if it ever stopped work they could just get someone out to have a look at it (which to be honest is what most people do regardless of their computer set up). The Hacker on the other hand didn’t like the Mac as it restricted access to the workings of the machine (both in hardware and software) of course there was programs that allowed the user to access the inner workings of the Mac OS but then Microsoft Windows was introduced, as windows used a similar interface to the Mac but also allowed the user to dive into how the computer worked at the same time most people switched to Windows instead of Mac(fools ).
Though these 2 types of user are very broad they are both very accurate when you think of the ‘Hacker’ you imagine a nerdy person who likes to make robots out of old circuits and Altoids tins but it applies to anyone who likes to anyone who likes to change their computer to reflect their personality (I personally have defaced my MSN for Mac so all the Microsoft related images show apple logo’s :p ) or to learn how it works, one way Turkle shows this meaning is by discussing about a user who likes to build her own sub routines when programming large programs instead of using pre packaged ones (again I can relate to this, when I was doing my coursework for my Network Aesthetics, I hated the restrictions the pre packaged CMS I was using placed on my site so tried to modify it, and in the end didn’t have enough time to complete what I had started due to having to learn PHP.) The ‘User’ is also reflected in the way at High School (well at least my High School) all we were taught was how to use Microsoft office, not how to build a computer or how to code in HTML, I’ve been shown examples of ‘Users’ in my life my sister is a ‘User’ she can use a computer to download music, burn cd’s and talk online on MSN but when asked “how do you change the icon for a program?” or “my DVD drives gone ape-shit, how the hell do sort it out?” she will come and get me, this might be because she’s never had the need to learn these skills but that’s the difference between ‘Hackers’ and ‘Users’ the ‘Hacker’ initiates the event they learn from whereas the ‘User’ only learns after the event has happened. I admit that I’m biased towards the ‘Hacker’ type but that’s just because that’s the kind of person I am, I don’t like to think I’m elitist but the way some people treat computers is atrocious, the computer should be something you pour your soul into, not a means to play games, buy a PS3 to do that.
Turkle also discussed the online personalities we make and how they reflect us (I’ve had 3 types of personality, my first was Colin Wren, my teenage personality was Dragoni666 and my refined personality is Gimpneek) and how we go through many changes, for example my teenage personality was great until I hit 17 and decided the 666 was a bit too childish but yeah it’s still a part of me so I switched to Gimpneek (an ‘insulting’ name my step sister called me over MSN that I thought sounded unique and reflacted the fact that I’m a ‘Neek’ (an eccentric person) and can be a bit pervy at times) yet every personality is a part of who we are. Turkle also uses this to describe our relationship with computers, the contents of our hard drives show who we are, my hard drive has a massive folder called projects filled with loads of unfinished projects that I start then forget about because I find it hard to stick to anything, I suppose a more modern way of looking at it is, the Peadophile and the way whenever someone gets arrested over Kiddie porn, they didn’t get arrested because they touched a kid but because their hard drive said that they find kids arrousing, their computer ratted them out because it reflected their disgusting desires.
Anyways to get back on track, this part of the book really made me think about how computers functions in our lives, and I remembered my tutor Mark said when I first started Uni and I hadn’t yet met one of the other tutors called Nick, Mark told us this story about how when at a digital arts exhibition Nick was presented with a work that involved placing birds on a page, what the artist had designed it to do was to handle a few birds at a time and send it a server in another country, when Nick was told this thing he decided to push the system to the limit and posted hundreds of birds in the space of a few minutes and crashed it, that’s what a ‘Hacker’ is…

Of Dreams and Beasts
The next part of the book really lost me, in fact I read about 50 pages a day until I reached this chapter and ended up giving the book a break for a while, because in this part Turkle gets deep on they psychological part computing and our relations with computers. She starts off introducing how people tried to fake humans online using instant messaging bots that would try to emulate a person, one such example was JULIA, JULIA was designed to act like a human, she would take what the person had typed in and respond to it using a set of rules and then randomises the responces her rules output so she appears ‘unrobotic’ she also memorises who she talks to so that she appears to have a relationship with the person and learn stuff about them for further conversations. Reading about JULIA and the whole Turing test thing was interesting but my favourite part of this part of the book was John Searle’s Chinese Room theory.
In Searle’s theory he talks about how Turing’s test has flaws, in Turing’s test the robot would give set responces to questions, but in the case of JULIA she learns her responses from interacting and thus can pass the Turing test but she doesn’t really understand what she is saying, the political, social and emotional meanings and consequences are not accessed so JULIA sometimes upsets people by accident. Searle’s theory goes like this:
If a person was put in a room by themselves and handed a set of instructions that said when you are given piece of paper with these chinese symbols on it you give a piece of paper back with these chinese symbols back to them, this happens over several years until the person has memorised what to do so well that they no longer need the sheet and to the outside it would seem that the person knows chinese really well but in truth the person in the room only know that a certain arrangement of symbols needs to be replied with another arrangement of symbols, they do not know what the symbols mean, they do not understand what they are saying, they can’t understand chinese
I thought that was an excellent way to differentiate humans and robots, because unless the robot has a culture programmed into it, it will never be like us.
Later on in this part of the book, Turkle discusses Emergent AI and a new found interest to me Artificial Life, I’ve just recently got ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ by Richard Dawkins and will be reviewing it at some point in the near future. Artificial life is a way of simulating the process of evolution and how life works on a computer, now obviously this is a tricky subject because what life is hard to define, life is breathing but it’s also who we are, our relationships with people and more.
Either way I got to know about Tierra (an awesome program where your computer is turned into an ecosystem where processes fight for memory and processor time, where the processes get killed off after a time and produce offspring) one day I hope to do some stuff on artificial life, even if it is a flash based version of Tierra or something. It’s one of those things that makes you want use your computer to see ‘life’ unfolding instead of watching a movie on youtube.
The SimCity/Life/Ant games were all influenced by Tierra, and it got me thinking why games now days don’t tell you about the technological advances that influenced them, like Spore, it’s essentially Tierra-esque but in 3D and interactive where your creature you created fights for the planets resources etc, but there will be no mention of Tierra in the manual, kids will just see it as a game, it’s shallow. These kinds of games should teach children about science and how people are unravelling life. Ok, it doesn’t need to be in their face with it but a little paragraph would do.

On the Internet
This part of the book deals with the mask internet users wear online, how we feel free to say things we wouldn’t dare say in real life because we’re too scared of getting hit or putting people down. It also deals with people using MUDs to try to better themselves, i.e. people who have bad social skills using MUDs as a fresh start and becoming popular online but overall failing to transfer those skills into real life.
The stuff that I liked was when people talked about how they felt they could be more open online, because that is true, well to a certain extent, on text based chat/commenting systems it’s easy to be aggressive or kind because you have time to think through what your typing or you can quickly say somethings shit (this really pisses me off about youtube, looking at peoples comments on other peoples work, and seeing people not appreciating the fact someone put hard work into the video they made and just putting stuff like ‘too long, needs music, this doesn’t make sense, this sucks’ without giving a second thought of the persons feelings, it happened to me and I got very offended).
On the other hand the book doesn’t deal with things like xbox live where you can talk to your fellow players via a headset, most the time it just involves young teenagers being really aggressive towards other people just because they can’t match their skill, sometimes you do find interesting people but not all the time. It’s strange because even though the people on xbox live can’t see you, them hearing your voice makes you less anonymous and allows the other people to judge you by your accent or any impediments your may have. A great sitcom on youtube by DigitalPh33r that deals with the types of people you meet on xbox live is Arby ‘n’ the Chief and I hope to post a vid here once I’ve got his permission.

To sum up the book, It’s brain food just don’t let the psychological stuff drag you down if it’s not your thing.