Langdon Winner

Winner is a social commentator, science writer, and technology professor. In his 1986 essay "Mythinformation," he argues against the notion that computers themselves have the capacity for a "revolution." Rather, he, along with predecessors such as Ted Nelson, looked to the computer, and the ways in which it could connect people, as a means for social progress. Still, he was very concerned about potential issues that computers, and computer networking presented, such as privacy rights.

Tele-information Services

In 1986, Jan Bordewijk and Ben van Kaam created a way to classify computer-related activities into various categories. They came up with four main categories: Allocution, Conversation, Consultation, and Registration. Allocution could be seen as traditional media-based broadcaster-receiver relationship, in which a main source disseminates information to multiple recipients. Conversation, logically, is the bi or multi-lateral communication between end-users of a system. An example of this is email. Consultation is the receiving of information from a source, which is facilitated by a service provider. An example of this would be watching HBO via your Time-Warner cable box and service. Registration, the final category, is an activity in which an end-user submits information to the service-provided. An example of this is when a user registers his copy of Microsoft Office when he first tries to install it on his computer.

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel’s work from 1986 and 1991 is considered to be a classical view of computing. She seems it as a form of theatrical expression. She, like many other writers and scientists, saw computers and new technology as a means of exploring new opportunities in theater and entertainment.

RMS

Richard Stallman, or RMS as he is sometimes known, is a crazy guy. GNU, which is pronounced like the insect, is an operating system he created. The primary idea behind GNU is that it is free. Stallman explains that he doesn't mean "free" as in "no-cost," but rather open, for people to make their own. He was one of the pioneers of the open-source software movement, and to this day, makes all of the code he writes available to the public. 

Cyborg Theory

Donna Haraway created Cyborg theory in 1985. The theory is a progressive hybrid of scientific thought, one that involves the integration of technology into human life. In other words, she talks about how technology can be an extension of the self. This is very similar to many of the thinkers we've read about earlier in the New Media Reader.

Computers as a Means of Living out Fantasies

Shelly Turkle's 1984 essay "Video Games and Computer Holding Power" examines the notion of computers, and their ability to give users other means of anonymously expressing themselves. Specifically she looks at why people play videogames, and makes some conclusions about how the games serve as an outlet for many people to express themselves in ways that they feel their normal lives are lacking. Turkle is a psychologist, and was interested in determining people's reasons for being so into gaming. While this was written long before Second Life the game, she brings up the notion of the "Second Self," which is the idea of using the digital realm to have a second identity that can do things the individual in real life cannot. 

Direct Manipulation

In his 1983 essay, Ben Schneiderman discusses the notion of "direct manipulation." Essentially, direct manipulation is using more life-like means to interact with a computer system. The idea came from arcade and videogames, in which people did not use text commands, but rather joysticks and specialized buttons, to affect an action in the game. Many of these buttons more directly resembled the action than entering text onto a keyboard. For example, it is more realistic to move a joystick to the right to make a character in a game walk to the right, rather than typing in "move to the right." 

This type of technology reminds me of the idea of the MIT Media room, where the scientists were interested in showing how easy it could be to manipulate a computer, and that it did not require a knowledge of a sophisticated programming language. As the GUI became more and more mainstream, the idea of direct manipulation tools, such as the eraser in a painting program, rather than typing a command "erase," grew too.