umwelt

Bret Victor's and Underkoffler's examples left a huge impression on me. They have been ahead of their time before I write about the "why" of computer programs right now. The aspects out of their works that stood out to me is that they are thinking empathetically to how other users or user groups utilize the computer programs and also having the belief that non-programmers can have the ability to understand a program given the appropriate visualization to materialize the causality of the programs. I myself have an interest in using programs (doesn't necessarily have to be digital) to take into stage the experience that people may have missed out if they had only used their own physical senses. What i mean is that computer programs that help humans see / feel / hear / sense things that they could not sense alone with their biological features, i.e, seeing the back of your head. What about simple things that could have been done by human power like writing text? Why do we have to do it on computer now? Is it overrated to write on computer? But writing on computer means a whole different experience than writing on paper. Writing on paper seems to be much lower level work as you get to scrutinize each letter, the shape of your cursive, and avoiding mistakes (if you don't have eraser). Writing on computer takes you on an experience above the empirical idea of writing itself, writing becomes more popular as an interface, a command, an intermediary language that grants you access to the computer world.

How can we make things better?

For the most time, the ideas for what computers should be have been developed primarily in the Western world.

The West seems to be invested more in the future rather than the past as well.

So does our computer prefer to work for the future? Does our browser show us the open possibility of browsing the future more than our past? The Youtube search history gives us recommendations but they didn't frame it as Watch History. Yes the history is available for us to see, but it is hidden in the Account section. Same goes with the browser history, often times i still find myself searching on Google "How to find your browser history" before remembering that it is in the History tab on the menu bar, but the point is, it is never displayed on the big screen portion.

The past is never the star of the show, it is always the future that the computer seems to offer. I think we may have overlooked the hidden power of the computer to store our past / memory. What if computer / internet / social media prioritize going back to the past? What will the interface be like? Will we be more trapped in our own solitary echo chamber? Is this worst than the current algorithm we're having?

My Manifesto

-> Computers and its network power drops the ego of one to do things alone (I'm mentioning this because once I had a photographer gig and my assistant tried to suggest me an angle, but I was confused, most people in professional setting may not hand their precious 3kg camera to other people but I don't think I'm in a professional settings so I gave my camera to my assistant and let them take that picture to illustrate what she meant. Though photography have been a solitary activity for a long time, it seems there are some values in doing the photography collaboratively.).

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Actually my week 6 attempt is a culmination of my manifesto and my answer to "how the past can makes thing better". I attempted to make a thing that takes your picture as you authenticates and give the server an X due time. By the time is up, your picture in the frontend will be dispersed fully, rendering it unuseful to your eyes to perceive it as meaningful portrait of yourself. However, if another user comes in, they could extend the due date, and it allows you to savour your portrait for a little more time. As more people comes, this will extend the due date for everyone.

It is a network effect!

It is a time management!

It is interpolation (of me and other me who have another email)

I want to add a timeline scrubber for people to go back in time so even if they lose their face, they can still go back to the point where they still have their face visible.