Linked to the post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/msjadelee/2022/08/05/task-12-speculative-futures/

The suspenseful music makes these movie trailers! Both were entertaining to watch and to imagine a world without writing manually. Honestly, the thought of losing such a skill that feels so natural made it sentimental and had me clinging on to present and past joys of shopping for notebooks and fancy pens to write with. This future does not seem far from reality as I notice in my very own 2.5 year old how intuitive she is with the screens, swiping through the apps and the keyboard compared to having to explicitly teach her how to hold a writing tool as she scribbles on the page to leave her mark. In the utopian scenario, Jade’s script explains “teachers don’t need to waste time teaching students how to write.” Alternatively, educators would need to spend more time teaching students about digital citizenship and authorship at a younger age. If manual writing were to become obsolete and succumb to the digital age, there would be a greater need to protect information and data with the lack of privacy and our every thoughts/ ideas being digitized. 

After watching the videos,  I was left with more questions about the potential outcomes of both scenarios. What impact would the loss of manual writing have on our dexterity? The simple act of holding a pencil takes practice and muscle control, would we see more students struggle with fine motor tasks? Since digital writing is less time consuming than handwriting, would this influence attention? How would this impact art forms that use similar instruments like painting?

 I was taken back to Module 4: The Mechanization of Writing where new technologies have emerged and replaced existing mediums. How might remediation of digital writing occur so that there is a “backup” if there was a worldwide infinite power surge? For example, there are applications now where we can still handwrite using digital tools. I look forward to hearing the podcast interviewing Jade’s children and their opinion on the potential of writing changes, and hearing from the next generation themselves!

Linked to the post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540thc/2022/07/23/task-10-attention-economy/

Even before I began playing the game, I recognized the irony of the name “Inyerface”, now fully understanding why this game is truly “in-your-face” as I attempt it to completion. Only 2 minutes into the game, I found myself clicking aimlessly in hopes of leaving the timer screen. Sophy and I shared the same sentiment towards this game- a level of frustration beyond measure. Her reference to Don Norman’s concepts in design and use of genial.ly to highlight the misleading signifiers was an effective  approach to emphasizing  UI/UX. These ‘unintuitive’ signifiers are suggestive of  deceptive user interfaces that are used to manipulate our responses to perform a forced action. Adding to Sophy’s example of the ‘opt-in’ boxes, this is similar to  one of the tricks employed for the A/B and multivariate tests to elicit user preferences (Brignull, 2011). To give a name to these signifiers, I found this infographic informative in detecting some of the most common dark patterns that businesses may use to force them to do something that is not in their interest. (Khindri, 2021) 

Taking Sophy’s researching style leads to asking and observing her roommates’ interactions with the game, I sought out my own expert advice on UI/UX- my sister, who worked as a project manager at a technology studio to design some of the interactive exhibits at Vancouver Science World.  She provided me with a case of a poor UI suggestion where the client wanted to put the “x” for the exit screen on all four corners of the app on the iPad. This correlates to Sophy’s comment about our expectations and habits as users in the online environment, where we are conditioned to look at the upper right corner for that “x”. As we navigate our lives in an online space, we may have become so comfortable and familiar with a certain design but serves as a reminder to  be more cognisant of traps that still exist and require our attention. 

Khindri, D (2021, July 9) 10 Common Dark Patterns in UX and How to Avoid Them. Net Solutions. Retrieved from https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/dark-patterns-in-ux-disadvantages/

Linked to the post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540mpepe/2022/07/10/8-2-golden-record-curation/

Written like a true musician. I purposely  chose  Mark’s Golden Record Curation task to link to because I remember his musical background from another course that we took together. Given his expertise and talents in this field,  I wanted to know about his  reasoning for the song selections. As one might expect from his music  background, Mark’s trained ears warranted a theoretical approach to this task as he analyzed the elements of each piece and found the universal components. As I listened to the excerpts again, I was drawn to distinct aspects that Mark drew attention to in his analysis such as the contrast in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”. 

In terms of comparisons, we shared four of the same top 10 picks but for different reasons.  While Mark was able to identify the details of the instruments and specific elements, I listened to the song as a whole, placing an emphasis on the emotions that were brought to surface. Our personal preferences and appreciation of certain musical genres were dictated by our context. Now translate this to space. Given the purpose of the Golden Record was to share a glimpse of humanity with extraterrestrial life forms, would they be able to make meaning of our message through music? In the Scientific American article aptly titled “Voyager Golden Records 40 Years Later: Real Audience Was Always Here on Earth”, the significance of the record is, in actuality, for us humans to “inspire us to broaden our minds about what it means to be human; what we value as humans; and about our place and role in the cosmos.” (Wright, 2017). Fast forward to 2022, in a time where we are even more connected by the internet and the wealth of information through digitization,  we have the opportunity to learn from one another and from our past. The question becomes, how are we going to use this power to join humanity and appreciate our differences?  So I am left with the quote “Music makes the world go around” It is through this simple music curation task that we can find ways to relate to one another and connect to people and cultures globally. 

Wright, J (2017, August 14)  “Voyager Golden Records 40 Years Later: Real Audience Was ALways Here on Earth”. Scientific American. Retrieved from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/voyager-golden-records-40-years-later-real-audience-was-always-here-on-earth/#:~:text=The%20Golden%20Records%20mark%20our,flag%20of%20exploration%20in%20space.

Linked to the post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540ag/2022/06/26/task-6-an-emoji-story/

Admittedly, I do not watch many shows and the ones that I do are limited to Netflix, so my guess may seem dated. It wasn’t obvious to me with simply the emojis what the show could be, but based on Agnes’ reflection and some clues (that being one her daughter watches) my prediction would be “The Big Bang Theory”. I’m not even convinced with my answer as the choice of scientist emoji was a woman and there are male scientists. Clearly,  I was very focused on the one emoji and came up with other ideas like “Magic School Bus” or “Bill Nye the Science Guy” (classic TV shows I used to watch growing up) but decided against it as there would be more appropriate icons to use. 

Both Agnes and I used our iPhones  as devices to generate the emoji story and it took a few added steps to have it appear on WordPress. Interestly, Agnes initially began the process using Joypixel on her Chromebook which was not compatible with WordPress. With such universal picture symbols, it would appear that there are still errors in recognizing its functionality across digital platforms- unlike copying and pasting typed words. 

Agnes’ reference to the Objiwe’s cultural use of image content in Bolter (2001) in relation to our cultural use of emojis stood out. Over time, our culture has become so richly immersed in visuals and a reliance on these symbols to evoke certain emotions and convey meanings in a digital space. The emoji lexicon has evolved to represent a diverse range of symbols ranging from religion, professions and even skin colour choices. So much so, they have become part of our popular culture and have been branded into plush toys and clothing lines. In Pardes (2018) article in Wired, she suggests  that  “In the future, as the world becomes increasingly digital and increasingly globalized, emoji will become important tools for translation and communication—a lingua franca for the digital age.” This ‘bridge language’ could potentially allow for cross cultural communication and support inclusion of various audiences that would undoubtedly be better at deciphering the emoji language and stories such as this. 

Reference:

Pardes, A. (2018, February 1). The WIRED Guide to Emoji. Wired. Retrieved from: https://www.wired.com/story/guide-emoji/

Linked to the post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540emilymacdougall/2022/06/09/task-4-potato-printing/

I was pleased to see that Emily had chosen the potato printing task as I opted for the first paper and pencil option for two main reasons: I did not have the materials readily available and the time consuming nature of having to carve out each individual letter (the perfectionist in me would have to redo it until it was suffice in being identical). Over the holidays, I have created very simple shapes on potato stamps for cards and wrapping paper, so the thought of having to carve out more complex letters was enough to deter me. I love how Emily included her children in the entire process, from choosing the letters to maneuvering them on the page. It would be a lesson in patience as it took 40 minutes to reproduce 10 painted letters  compared to the speed at which I am typing out this 100+ word response.  As Collier mentioned in “Upside Down, Left to Right: A Letterpress Film.”, with the onset of the mechanized forms, we can “change things in an instant” as opposed to having to redo the entire printing process, that of which Emily experienced with changing the direction of the “E” and “L” to make it legible. Furthermore, if we think about the process of remediation explained by Bolter (2001), the idea of ‘fonts’ and Emily’s use of only upper case letters come into mind. I have the ability to choose an array of fonts on my computer for the purpose of the task whereas Emily was limited to straight letters to ease the carving process. Once more, it is a reminder of how technology provides us with an immediate outcome by “accelerating the rate of information production” and an appreciation of how far mechanized forms have improved since Gutenberg’s printing press.

Linked to post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/jocelync/task-1-whats-in-my-bag/

Aside from the fact that we share a name, this Jocelyn has integrated technology seamlessly into her everyday lifestyle-  and packs far lighter! While I can connect to the few essentials she included, I seem to take it to an excessive scale- my wallet contains at least 10 cards, my key chain has additional keys and I carry extra masks. Do I actually use these extra items daily? Not quite. Thus, I can appreciate Jocelyn’s minimal yet cautious approach and use of technology to downsize her lifestyle. 

I was captivated by the use of genial.ly to present the items in her pocket. It was the perfect tool for this task, taking it one step further  than the original Brown’s Bag project with the static photograph  by introducing this platform. It seemed to go naturally with her profession  in organizational development. Not only was it visually appealing, but the interactive interface  to select the items along with the description made it easier to focus on each individual artifact. It was another example of how she implemented technology to enhance and supplement her work. 

Jocelyn delved into the underlying literacies by defining terms, outlining its  history and analyzing  how they evolved over time. An immediate rush of memories came back when she mentioned the T9 predictive text technology on the older models of phones and how advanced that felt like at the time. Similarly, we have moved from clunky mobile phones to sleek smartphones with extra functionalities such as Internet access and hundreds of applications at our fingertips.  A search on the word ‘smartphone’ in the OED actually showed its first appearance in 1980 Telecommunications Policy to demonstrate how ‘telephones are enhanced with computer technology’ (Oxford University Press, 2021) Upon further examination of the compound word smart-phone, it becomes apparent that these two words combined are meant to attribute the human intellectual quality of being ‘smart’ (adj)  to an inanimate object, the ‘phone’. In doing so,  Berkowitz suggests in his episode  “…words that were used in the age before the computer and the internet now have additional meanings.” Now phones have enhanced capabilities with artificial intelligence such as voice assistance, that were once unheard of! These features have the ability to streamline everyday tasks to make our lives easier,  just as Jocelyn pointed out in the use of her phone as a wallet and key.