User:Colm/RWRM-year2-Thesis-outline0.2

Thesis outline

standing outline for Thesis Graduate Seminar deadline 2016_11_09 after 10 am meeting.

Central research question: How do visual production software technologies transfer knowledge and skills of the craft they virtualise?

Technology is typically seen as a problem-solver, and well-designed technology is supposed to follow an according aesthetic of efficiency, ease and—ultimately—automation.

To Save Everything, Click Here — Evgeny Morozov, ch 9

Introduction:

• Central research question
• What is visual production software?
• There is no visual production software that does not mimic a physical tangible action, something I believe to be a craft.
• Physical tangible actions are what visual production software virtualises.

Chapter 1:

Temp title: Defining craft

What is modern digital craft? Is it the same as old crafts with different tools and different outcomes? Is it still cultural production?

tangible material, virtual material, manpulation techniques, expertise, experts, professionnals, tools, manual tools, virtual tools, progression of craft

Chapter 2:

Temp title: Efficiency

Can we say that a well-designed technology is one that is efficient and easy? What is the criterium for well-designed visual production software? Outside of visual production software, we can say that virtualisation of certain processes has made them more efficient, is this also true for digital visual production?

Chapter 3:

Temp title: The user

Is the visual production software user automatically a craftsman? Do all users mean to attain craft, or is the software designed for a broader set of users?

the doer, the producer, the craftsman, the professional, specialisations, comforts

Chapter 4:

Temp title: multiple interfaces

In the movement enabling larger sets of users to produce visuals digitally, what happens when the software is declined to function on other types of interfaces and devices? Firstly tablets and phones, but also web apps.

Comment on this quote:

[...] And eventually, the file system management is just gonna be an app for pros and consumers aren’t gonna need to use it.

Steve Jobs on the file system; video transcription from here

coming full circle, Apple Pencil, Adobe rulers, even the place where the computer tool runs becomes blurry. The cloud. Solutions to file handeling.

Conclusion:

A place to recap, repeat some aspects faster, and elude back to the central question.

Hope to find place in conclusion to explain how a contributive software model answers some if the issues raised above, displacing the user and calling upon a larger context of knowledge and intelligence.

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My intention is to provide context to better understand certain contemporary movement in digital services that seem to focus on efficiency. This risks the further diminishing the cultural relevance and importance of digital practices and crafts, and in the case of the most recent implementations in alternate interfaces and web apps: blurring the lines between service and production.

Key texts

• to save everything click here — Evgeny Morozov
  
• La société automatique: Tome 1, L'avenir du travail — Bernard Stiegler
• Adverserial Design - Carl DiSalvo
  
• Chantal Mouffe
  
• Terry Winograd & Fernando Flores — Understanding Computers and Cognition