Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
To fl ip the bit for a moment, let's look at style in computer-land. Let's com-
pare the minimalism of Sir Ive's designs for Apple with skeuomorphism as styles.
Skeuomorphism delights in imitating materials or techniques different from those
actually being used; for example, a computer-based address book application that
features a graphical border representing stitched leather. Steam Punks love this
sort of thing, but Sir Ive hates it and has banished it from his kingdom. Within
computer games, differences in style can make signifi cant differences in how the
action is experienced and what sort of meaning is derived from it. For example,
Call of Duty
vs.
World of Warcraft
: Both represent versions of “hyper-masculinity,”
but style produces interesting differences in the experiences and constructions of
players (Lau 2013).
icon have internal representations that consist of the code that defi nes
them—how they look and behave. In keeping with the principle that “the
representation is all there is,” however, an internal representation has no
value by itself, just as the working script for a performance is likely never
seen by an audience. As a program, an internal representation is merely
the potential for what may be manifest in the external representation—
that which has sensory and functional properties. As it is used in this
book, the term “representation” subsumes both aspects.
We have said that human-computer interactions can be defi ned as rep-
resentations of actions with agents of both human and computer origin.
The word “agents” has a particular meaning in computerese that is a deri-
vation of the more general sense of the word. A computer-based “agent” is
defi ned as a bundle of functionality that performs some task for a person,
either in real time or asynchronously. “Bidding agents” on eBay are an ex-
ample. Agents may be represented as “beings”—that is, as characters—but
they need not be. The Aristotelean defi nition of an agent is the root of both
of these permutations:
an agent is one who initiates and performs actions
. So in
any human-computer activity, there is at least one agent—the human who
turns on the machine—and if the machine does anything after it boots, then
there are at least two. This topic uses the more general defi nition because,
as I will argue later in this chapter, computer-based agency is present in
all human-computer activities, whether or not it is coalesced into coherent
agent-like “entities” in the representation.
