Our living environment has already changed a lot since human beings can make and create tools and artifacts. Further, although the computer ushered in the Information Age, the term information was never restricted to new digital machines (P200). We continue to invent new computing artifacts in modern society, from ENIAC to mac, to shape our interaction between information and the environment where we suited in. An important reason we develop technology is that we need to simplify and filtrate information to better deal with entropy in the body and peripheral environment (P202). What forms of technology can better help people engaged with and living together in a specific environment where they situated in. we frequently encounter with the digital media artifacts in our everyday lives, such as television, smartphone, and laptop, etc. Also, living with these artifacts become part of our life accompany with our growth. Does this form of artifacts rational and reasonable to be deployed in the environment that people situated in? Is there any other kind of media artifacts that can be inquired in our everyday living routines better help us understand the environment and ourselves?
Counterfactual Media Artifacts
Media are infrastructures with three components: the artifacts or devices used to communicate or convey information, the activities and practices in which people engage to communicate or share information, and the social arrangements or organizational forms that develop around those devices and practices. In interaction design, we are often concerned with material things and so in material speculation, we refer to speculative artifacts as counterfactual artifacts [1]. As a result, counterfactual media artifacts means digital media artifacts that be used as material speculation, and it can also be inquired in the relationship between people media, and the environment that people suited in. This is the revolution of media that worth to be watched as a reflective background information.
From Engaging with to Living with
We can imagine that how different it will be if we engage with the counterfactual media artifacts. For instance, you have to use your finger as a tool to interact with the website that you are going to browse, you can physically feel the texture, material, and light through your feeling and vision. nevertheless, how about you can feel the heat and steam if you suffer a website with the title that contains hot water? Will you continue to browse the website? Will this influence and change the way that you interact with digital media through the material in advanced information? more importantly, how and what interaction will be shaped and reshaped by living with counterfactual media artifacts in our everyday living environment?
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