Today, we were given a summary of our assignment, part of which is to maintain a blog to reflect upon lectures, seminars, and further reading.
The subject of today's lecture was Cybernetics. Alan talked about the Shannon & Weaver model and then we played with blocks for half an hour. It was ace. The Shannon & Weaver model initially appeared only to be a way to describe telephone communication, but in actual fact has many, many other applications.
Over the past week in the Pixel, Image & Sound module, we have been using Adobe Illustrator to create vector images. I decided to create my own diagram of the Shannon & Weaver model, which is displayed below:
We spoke about these additional applications and used the classroom environment as an example.
In a classroom, the lecturer is the transmitter and the students are receivers. In this environment there is generally little or no noise. Literally there is no sound, as students are silent while taking notes, but also the walls are white, the chairs are neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, etc. The noise in the environment is kept to a minimum.
However, in this environment we are able to feed back to the lecturer and ask about anything we don't quite understand.
In media today, for example, in films, the feedback loop is broken. As a viewer, we are unable to stop the film and ask the director something we aren't sure of.
The Shannon & Weaver model has been described as the 'mother of all models'. (Source: Erik Hollnagel, David D. Woods 2005:11)
We then discussed Cybernetics, the science of communication between organisms/animals and machines, rather than my initial thinking of something Captain Janeway would concerned about aboard Voyager. I learned that it comes from the Greek word 'kybernetes' (the word Cybernetics, not Captain Janeway), meaning steersman.
We discussed a cycle that takes place between human and computer. The computer renders the display, the human sees and perceives. Then, the human thinks about the next course of action. Once this has been decided, the human will carry out that action in the form of a mouse move, button press, etc.
The computer will then receive the input, perform the requested task, and render it to display.
However, this is not a 'balanced' loop. Human will always be slower than the computer. The loop will always pause when the human has to make a decision.
We ended the session by talking about predictable and redundant communication and contextualised this through computer games (my fave!). When we start playing, there is a high state of entropy. The game is unpredictable and we require a high level of concentration and engagement. The 'pleasure' comes from the transition between entropy and redundancy. As our anxiety levels decrease as we establish what needs to be done, we start having fun. After a while, we become used to the game, and know exactly what we have to do. We require low engagement as the game has become predictable and redundant.
It was a really engaging session and I look forward to further lectures in this module.
The subject of today's lecture was Cybernetics. Alan talked about the Shannon & Weaver model and then we played with blocks for half an hour. It was ace. The Shannon & Weaver model initially appeared only to be a way to describe telephone communication, but in actual fact has many, many other applications.
Over the past week in the Pixel, Image & Sound module, we have been using Adobe Illustrator to create vector images. I decided to create my own diagram of the Shannon & Weaver model, which is displayed below:
Fig 1.1: Seb Emin: The Shannon & Weaver Model: (Source: Adobe Illustrator CS5.1)
We spoke about these additional applications and used the classroom environment as an example.
In a classroom, the lecturer is the transmitter and the students are receivers. In this environment there is generally little or no noise. Literally there is no sound, as students are silent while taking notes, but also the walls are white, the chairs are neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, etc. The noise in the environment is kept to a minimum.
However, in this environment we are able to feed back to the lecturer and ask about anything we don't quite understand.
In media today, for example, in films, the feedback loop is broken. As a viewer, we are unable to stop the film and ask the director something we aren't sure of.
The Shannon & Weaver model has been described as the 'mother of all models'. (Source: Erik Hollnagel, David D. Woods 2005:11)
We then discussed Cybernetics, the science of communication between organisms/animals and machines, rather than my initial thinking of something Captain Janeway would concerned about aboard Voyager. I learned that it comes from the Greek word 'kybernetes' (the word Cybernetics, not Captain Janeway), meaning steersman.
We discussed a cycle that takes place between human and computer. The computer renders the display, the human sees and perceives. Then, the human thinks about the next course of action. Once this has been decided, the human will carry out that action in the form of a mouse move, button press, etc.
The computer will then receive the input, perform the requested task, and render it to display.
However, this is not a 'balanced' loop. Human will always be slower than the computer. The loop will always pause when the human has to make a decision.
We ended the session by talking about predictable and redundant communication and contextualised this through computer games (my fave!). When we start playing, there is a high state of entropy. The game is unpredictable and we require a high level of concentration and engagement. The 'pleasure' comes from the transition between entropy and redundancy. As our anxiety levels decrease as we establish what needs to be done, we start having fun. After a while, we become used to the game, and know exactly what we have to do. We require low engagement as the game has become predictable and redundant.
It was a really engaging session and I look forward to further lectures in this module.
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