Scratching the Surface
Posted June 12th, 2007 by Kevin Wiliarty, Wesleyan University
1 Comments | 638 Page Views
Of desktops and coffee tables: What's your favorite surface?
Are you ready for the next major operating-system metaphor? Scott Carlson in his "Wired Campus" column for the Chronicle of Higher Education and Kate Marek in a guest post for "Tame the Web" point to demonstration videos—a couple from Microsoft and one from Popular Mechanics—for Microsoft's new "surface computing." Marek speculates that surface computing will amount to a major paradigm shift, and the visually compelling demos left me feeling that she might be right. But what is the paradigm and what is the shift?
For some time now, the 'desktop' has been the controlling metaphor for the most popular operating systems. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner offer a nice analysis in their 2002 monograph, The Way We Think:
The emphasis on leisure and entertainment is not subtle, but it is tantalizing to imagine how a coffee table metaphor might facilitate increasingly social forms of scholarship. (See a previous posting.) If that is going to be the case, however, then we in academe will need to identify our own appropriate domain-specific surfaces. As one reader of the "Wired Campus" posting puts it: "If I use this for work, I'm going to spend 8+ hours literally hunched over a low table. If I manage to limp over to see my chiropractor, he will kill me." For her part, Marek imagines "fully automated, intelligent surface circulation desks," but I think that interactive contexts are at least as intriguing as automation. Think seminar tables and blackboards.
Are you ready for the next major operating-system metaphor? Scott Carlson in his "Wired Campus" column for the Chronicle of Higher Education and Kate Marek in a guest post for "Tame the Web" point to demonstration videos—a couple from Microsoft and one from Popular Mechanics—for Microsoft's new "surface computing." Marek speculates that surface computing will amount to a major paradigm shift, and the visually compelling demos left me feeling that she might be right. But what is the paradigm and what is the shift?
For some time now, the 'desktop' has been the controlling metaphor for the most popular operating systems. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner offer a nice analysis in their 2002 monograph, The Way We Think:
...computer interfaces are prompts to activate, bind, and blend at the level of both conceptual structure and bodily action. The most successful interface is the "desktop," in which the computer user moves icons around on a simulated desktop, gives alphanumeric commands, and makes selections by pointing at options on menus.... The blend is an imaginative mental creation that lets us use the computer hardware and software effectively. (22-3)So if we have been working on 'desktops' all along, why all the fuss about surfaces? I can think of at least two reasons:
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First, the new technology narrows the gap between the physical and
conceptual experience of working on a "surface." Most of the surfaces
featured in the videos are horizontal. You rotate and move things with your
hands. You 'hand' them to a friend, or you stack them and shuffle them in
ways that are significantly more like handling physical documents than the
corresponding ways of negotiating the mouse- and keyboard-mediated virtual
desktop. To connect your camera to your computer, you don't need a cable and
you don't get an icon on your screen; instead you just put the camera down
on the surface. Of course, there is still plenty of work for the
imagination; we can't normally enlarge photographs just by stretching them.
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Second, although "surface" is a highly schematic concept, Microsoft seems to
be inspired by a few rather specific varieties of surfaces, the coffee table
being perhaps the most prominent. And a coffee table differs from a desktop
in some rather inviting ways. Real desktops are often about solitary work,
maybe even drudgery, while coffee tables are all about leisure and,
critically, socializing. The videos feature several collaborative scenarios
where users are seated around a surface. They face each other, not
the screen. And like many a real coffee table, the surfaces here are a place
to find glorious visual images or good things to eat and drink.
The emphasis on leisure and entertainment is not subtle, but it is tantalizing to imagine how a coffee table metaphor might facilitate increasingly social forms of scholarship. (See a previous posting.) If that is going to be the case, however, then we in academe will need to identify our own appropriate domain-specific surfaces. As one reader of the "Wired Campus" posting puts it: "If I use this for work, I'm going to spend 8+ hours literally hunched over a low table. If I manage to limp over to see my chiropractor, he will kill me." For her part, Marek imagines "fully automated, intelligent surface circulation desks," but I think that interactive contexts are at least as intriguing as automation. Think seminar tables and blackboards.
How to cite this work
Kevin Wiliarty. "Scratching the Surface." Academic Commons Issue Name (Spring 2008): 14 October 2008. <http://www.academiccommons.org/>.Bookmark/Search this post with:
Making Fun of the Coffee Table as Computer (via Sarcastic Gamer)
On June 22nd, 2007 Michael Roy, Middlebury College said:
A very funny send up of the whole concept.
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