Manche Menschen haben keine Lust sich sagen zu lassen, was sie tun und was sie lassen sollen. Derartige Menschen neigen oftmals sogar dazu, genau das Gegenteil von dem zu tun, was ihnen aufgetragen wird. Wenn da ein Weg ist, ziehen sie es vor, abseits des Weges zu gehen.
Die Wahrscheinlichkeit abseits der Wege wertvolle Entdeckungen machen ist höher als auf dem oder neben dem Weg. Ein Weg ist nur deshalb ein Weg, weil er schon schon oftmals genommen wurde. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass eine Entdeckungen an einem Weg bereits in der Vergangenheit gemacht wurde ist also hoch, die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass eine Entdeckung bisher unentdeckt blieb, entsprechend gering.
Wer nun wiederholt abseits der Wege wertvolle Entdeckungen macht, wird mit der Zeit ein Gefühl dafür entwickeln, wie man dort Entdeckungen machen kann. Ein Gefühl, aus dem sich eine Methode entwickeln kann.
Doch schon das Gefühl und mehr noch die Methode ist problematisch, da die Methode ist nichts anderes ist als wiederum ein Weg – ein Weg, der verspricht zu Entdeckungen zu führen. Man läuft also wieder auf Wegen und es liegt in der Natur von Wegen dass an den Wegen Entdeckungen mit der Zeit immer unwahrscheinlicher werden.
Was man sich also wünschen würde ist eine Methode, die permanent neue Wege generiert. Korsakow kann eine solche Methode sein.
Some people do not like to be told what to do and what not to do. Such people often even tend to do exactly the opposite of what they are told to do. If there is a path, they prefer to go off the path.
The likelihood of making valuable discoveries off the path is higher than on or along the path. A path is a path only because it has been taken many times. The probability that a discovery on a path has already been made in the past is therefore high, the probability that a discovery has remained undiscovered so far is correspondingly low.
Now, if you repeatedly make valuable discoveries off the beaten path, over time you will develop a feeling for how to make discoveries there. A feeling from which a method can develop.
But already the feeling and even more the method is problematic, because the method is nothing else but again a path – a path that promises to lead to discoveries. So one walks on paths again and it is in the nature of paths that discoveries on the paths become more and more improbable over time.
What one would like to have is a method that permanently generates new paths. Korsakow can be such a method.
Alles Wissen, was in der Vergangenheit gesammelt wurde, ist wahr, wurde wahr oder deutete zumindest auch damals schon in die richtige Richtung. Die, in die es dann tatsächlich ging. Früheres Wissen kann vielleicht überholt sein, so wie ein langsameres Fahrzeug von einem schnelleren überholt werden kann, doch nur, wenn sie beide in die selbe Richtung fahren. Wissen kann, entgegen dem, was das Wort suggeriert, nicht “widerlegt” werden, in dem Sinne, dass es mit dem neuen Wissen nun in die gegengesetzte Richtung geht. Es geht immer weiter. Vielleicht, dass sich die Richtung des Weges ändert, den das Papierschiffchen auf seinem Weg den Bach hinab nimmt. Es ändert ständig die Richtung, doch immer geht es den Bach hinab und nie hinauf. Das Schiff kommt im Verlauf der Zeit an immer neue, ungesehene, unvorstellbarere Orte. Die Eindrücke, die diese Orte auf die Menschen auf dem Schiff hinterlassen, prägen das Denken. Das Wissen der Vergangenheit wies schon immer freundlich in unsere Richtung. So wie ein Kapitän der immer souverän das Papierschiffchen in die Richtung weisst, in die sich dann tatsächlich bewegt.
All of the knowledge that was gathered in the past is true, became true, or at least pointed in the right direction even back then. The one in which it then actually went. Earlier knowledge may perhaps be overtaken, just as a slower vehicle can be overtaken by a faster one, but only if they are both going in the same direction. Knowledge, contrary to what the word suggests, cannot be “refuted” in the sense that the path then goes in the opposite direction with the new knowledge. It goes on and on. Perhaps that the direction of the path changes that the little paper boat takes on its way down the creek. It keeps changing direction, but it always goes down the stream and never up. Over time, the ship arrives at ever new, unseen, more unimaginable places. The imprints these places leave on the minds of the people on the ship shape the way they can see. The knowledge of the past has always pointed kindly in our direction. Just like a captain who always confidently points the paper ship in the direction in which it then actually moves.
This text is based on a talk I gave in September 2022 @ HSLU in Lucerne
In this talk I reflect about the affordances of computers in when used in conjunction with media, and discuss how Korsakow, the software I developed, was constructed based on these affordances.
Once and more than 20 years ago, I invented something. I invented something that did not priorexist (at least in that form) and that was later on also used by other people.
Today I want to talk about Korsakow from the perspectives of the inventor and designer.
There are a few things to say about this. For one thing, when I invented it, I wasn’t aware that it was something new. It wasn’t anything new in a way, because it was based on what was there already. In my case, primarily computers, digital video, and a vague idea of what a database is.
Affordances
What I invented didn’t come out of a vacuum but was in a way already suggested by the affordances of the computer I owned, the sound and image recording possibilities of my camera and a very vague idea of what a database could do, an understanding I primarily got through my student job at “Daimler-Chrysler Research and Technology”.
So I combined things that were actually already there, and I made use of affordances myself to create something that would later turn out to offer affordances to others.
What were those affordances, what should this software be good for?
When I think back to 1996, I remember one thing above all, this incredible fascination that computers had on me. I had already observed for a while, that everything that was dear to me – notes, texts, photos and recordings accumulated in fragments on my computer and I wished I had a button I could press and then the computer would help me to make sense of all these fragments. I wished the computer would help me to read the data in a way that I could see the emerging patterns. I wished the computer would help me decipher what I thought.
I wished for a tool that could present the connections of the things that I had in my brain, the connection of my thoughts, memories and feelings, so that I could read them and that way understand what I felt.
This was the initial idea of what this software should be good for, as far as I remember.
Those thoughts lead me led to the use of keywords as a fundamental principle, to allow a flexible connection of the elements that later were called SNUs (Smallest Narrative Unit).
The idea was to organize all the elements in an open and flexible way. The elements apart from the SNUs are the interface, (the layout of how things are presented) and and additional layers of audio and text.
Designing a tool to create interactive films
Interactivity, that allows viewers of a piece to select clips offered by the system came as a consequence of this flexible arrangement of the SNUs and the wish to make it visible that there is no fixed order of things.
Because of the decision to make it interactive, options had to be presented to the viewer – there was the necessity for buttons to be pressed. I could only think of links being text, image, sound, moving image or a key pressed on the keyboard of the computer. And I allowed for all the options above, also in combination.
The intention of the designer and affordance
From the standpoint of the designer of Korsakow (me), Korsakow was not built with the intention in mind to make people use it in a particular way, but to give people possibilities, as many options that I could think of and that I was able to realize within the limitations of the technology I had access to and by my skills and the general resources that were available. So for example eye tracking could also have been a possibility for navigating interactivity, but that was beyond my scope of possibilities. So one could say the affordances that I made use of, were in the objects I used (computer, recording, database) and the environment I was in (things like my skill set or funding opportunities).
