User:Jasper van Loenen/RWRM/2-description-of-work
What
The Poking Machine is a small (9 x 7 x 5 cm) box made out of 3mm green transparent perspex. It has a piece of velcro attached to it. Inside is a ATtiny45 chip, a 9 volts battery, a servo motor and a bluetooth receiver. Apart from the box, you also have an Android smartphone with internet connection. When you get poked on Facebook, a little arm will come out of the box to physically poke you on the arm.
How
You can use the velcro to attach the box to your upper arm. Then, you connect to Android phone to the bluetooth module inside the box.
To get poked, a friend has to click the ‘poke’ button on your Facebook profile page. Facebook then sends a message to your e-mail address to let you know you’ve been poked. In this case an e-mail address that was created specially for the Poking Machine is used and the program on the cellphone keeps track on the number of emails in this inbox. When the number goes up, it means you have been poked and it will send a signal, over bluetooth to the Poking Machine box. The circuit will receive this message and will make the servo arm move out of the box, wait for a second, and than move back in.
Why
<copy paste from the description on my website>
Online social networks are platforms for communication, enabling us to connect anywhere we go. However, they still lack the mediation of physical communication. Facebook tries to improve this by enabling its users to ‘poke’ each other, which basically only sends another written message to the person you poke, without conveying the original intent of the poking gesture. The Poking machine converts the message into an actual physical poke, extending the reach of this haptic gesture indefinitely. This way users can connect not only virtually but also physically.
This is one of the essays written during the first year. It is about how we changed from just the receivers of information through media, to broadcasters of our own information.
I tried to connect multiple text related to this subject, from Richard Serra's Television Delivers People to Zadie Smiths' Generation Why? For my, this was a good exercise in using different sources to make a point.
In the text I moved from a description of the 'old' media situation where you would only receive information, like when watching television, to the 'new' situation where you actively broadcast information about yourself to others, like by using online social media such as Facebook. I found this interesting to do since I'm a user of these online media myself but I was never sure what to think of them. It actually helped me form a clear opinion on these 'services' (which in the end lead to removing my Facebook account).