Of Interface, Identity, and Personality
Part II: To Fix iPadOS
The Tablet
Let’s break down what it is currently being used for:
a. Emulation
b. Kiosk-tech & Single-Use
c. Monitor with Touch Capabilities
d. Smartphone UI
e. Portable Platform Gaming Console+Monitor
f. Group Activity Input Device(GAID): incl. students and employer using these devices to fulfill company/organization standardized location-based recording; i.e. all students in one class must use their iPads to complete their activities / all employees can only use company iPads when on-the-job.
g. Laptop with a front-facing camera (Phone+laptop function)
h. Visual demonstrations (incl. AR)
i. Dashboards and/or Control Panels
j. Drawing Pad + Monitor as one
Do any one of these purposes resonate solely with a tablet, much less an iPad? Sadly, but nope. Even laptops and computers have had a long history with being implemented into dashboards and control panels. Many modern day DJs and MCs have turned to MacBooks for sorting and mixing tracks for weddings and ceremonies.
Let’s take a step back to the famed Xerox PARC Land where the graphical user interface was born. Up to that point computers were fed punch cards, and lines of code to compute instructions. A graphical user interface presented a hieroglyphic form of passing lines of code without having to understand what (and that) lines of codes passed by.
Essentially, a GUI is a semiotic approach to humanizing tools. The point of this bizarre yet helpful behavioral construct is to promote the behavior of computation not as computation but a type of Electronic Mannerism (reference psychological mannerisms).
Why use hieroglyphics and characters instead of word… lettering? Why have emotional icons become integrated into online communication?
This says something deeply interpersonal about how instructions are shared and created. Why use such emojis when communication is done in a digital format (like text messaging or chatting), when printed paperbacks still do not require such an interplay of character-like behavioral semiotics?
The answer is that all mannerisms promote “personality”, and that through and by design a desired personality drives a level of interpretation that such a created context is useful and understood on the basis of one’s identity, and of their opinions of collective behaviors and mannerisms. The problem is that personality often clashes with cultural identities. This is why design styles change all the time.
We Up Date them; the change is made to set a new time stamp for a personality realization (modernly spelled as “update”). Up Grading is the shift in the reevaluation of electronic mannerisms (modernly spelled as “upgrading”).
The moment something is upgraded we call this a version. The term, “version” derives from the 1580s to imply a re-rendering of the translation of a language (Etymology). And boy did the mercantile companies re-render language, country names and different languages big time during the 1500s-1700s.
Even the U.S.’s 1828 Webster Dictionary was a re-rendering of British English to what is just called English in the United States (U.S. version of British of English).
So, why give personality to things, to behaviors, to real objects that play a role in our sensory or external environments? Why portray animals with voices, why promote imagination and playtime? Why promote myths, legends and promises of grandeur?
Uniformity and commonality are a part of this, but there is a pull that if everyone understands the “same way”, then personality can move across cultural norms and mannerisms.
Take a minute and realize the vast percentage of the world which knows English due to British involvement, decay, and technological user interfaces (of which involve programming). Chances are, if China created the programming languages behind our devices, there’s a good chance that we would all be able to speak some level of Mandarin.
Personality drives implementation, and implementation promotes personality mimicry.
Whether, we like it or not (and many designers and engineers really like it), design and the fabrication of versions through updates drives mimicry: it’s a form of brainwashing to attain a sense of further advancement through re-versioning development. After all, what is the opposition of reverse or re-versioning?
Stagnation… no motion : Uniformity.
The point at which there is no need to go back and re-shape or re-design personality, the world population becomes uniform (or so this stratagem to developing a universal world lingual paradigm through versioning implies).
With that Said
The first core focus to creating a User Interface is understanding the parallel between a base behavior and its re-versioning.
The purpose of a computer is to compute instructions and to do this it must “understand” messages and create outputs. A computer calculates and prints out results, and stores those results so that these machines can be used to provide understanding towards one’s state of purpose or advancement. Understanding is and has always been the driving force behind exchange and tool development (communication).
The computer computes, so to re-version, designers took into account how to promote the most widely understood portrayal of input and output.
The result: humans access inputs and outputs through turning handles and pressing buttons. Now: what if buttons could act as a form of Resemblance?
Resemblance implies a state of “superficial qualities” of which promote a sense of likeness and similarities; a sense of uniformity. (Webster)
How can you make the input resemble the output?
Typewriters already did this, with letters on keys; but, surprisingly, many electronics did not.
Earlier radios in the 20th century had wording next to knobs/dials instead of on the actual buttons themselves. This was taken into account when designing the first icons for a desktop. There had to be icons and words to associate with them.
Association is the key to making a UI become a personality.
UI Personality = An interpretation of the implementation of the association of Resemblance
(UI) Personality drives mimicry; if not understood by the first few interactions, the behavior and its relevance will become normalized thereafter.
Does it matter if the coffee cup is red? Nope: you still drink out of it as the coffee cup is a coffee cup — if you desire to mimic the behavior of drinking coffee out of a coffee cup.
What does Personality have to do with Identity, and why does the iPad have such an Identity crisis?
The state of agreed normalization, the state at which personality is considered a given form and this form can then be added in layers of mimicry and other creation: this is what we call identity.
It is the answer to simplicity.
Identity is the standardization of normalcy derived through mimicry. However, the purpose and paradox of one’s identity is to keep it separate yet identical.
This is why we have names, and we continue to name things because we want to give things and behaviors separation. But to do so also implies that we all must understand them in such a way — such a uniformed way.
If his name is Bob, his name is Bob, but this Bob is different from another Bob; and that Bob is different from another Bob, and so on.
Of course, this brings to mind stereotypes where groups use visualization and descriptions to portray “uniformity” as an assumption; whereas only a certain range of interpretations are accepted as normal. And if one’s interpretations of personalities are not identical they are considered erroneous by certain groups.
Ah-hah! And what about errors; how do they shape UI Personality? The term “Err” comes from “errare” in Latin, which means to wander or stray from (Etymology). Notice, we use “err or”, and the “or” originates from Old English in the 1200s, meaning a substitute (Etymology).
So when something strays away from a version by means of a substitution inferior to the original designer’s and developer’s intentions, and thus against a drive towards uniformity, it is considered as an error. And because of mimicry, there is often the identity of an error being negative, a mistake, an ill or wrong-doing. Because of this, an error must be Fixed.
And the term “fix” derived from “fixus” in Latin which means “permanent, established”, stagnate, uniformed in identity.
So Class:
How did the User Interface fix (unify) the relationship between calculations and normalcy; what is its identity?
The point of the computer’s Graphical User Interface is not to explain but to employ normalcy through an output to us, just as much as we are to recognize a manner of input using this output.
A body of learned interrelated interactive inter interpretations that drives groups, functions, and uniformity throughout time (dates, updates), versions, and space, records, storage, changes and re-versions is called a system. The manner of which this system is portrayed is called operational, because the user “works” on the system as an input-bio-mechanism.
This brings us to Apple/Artificial Intelligence, a drive towards an interface as an output uniformity optimizer where the user receives data which is uniformly understood from the next user who receives it (even if the data is not the same). Identitelligence might be a better term, but A.I. has stuck in mimicry for now.
Who makes all this uniformity movement and technological advancement stuff up? This stems back to a long legacy of guilds of record makers, goldsmiths, stamp makers, merchants, printmakers, maker-makers, and groups who were/are obsessed with promoting uniformity as if it has always been humanity’s long abiding purpose — or that such humans through the promotion of certain diets, hygienes, commonalities, perceptions and understandings under a drive for mutual purpose feel it as the only way humans could become one; essentially, more than their bio-input-mechanized states. {Exhale.}
Predating our current technological drive to unity has been a convergence of similarity through centralized religion. Religious unification, a need to unite under a single-focused contextual purpose influenced and continues to spark divide and separation of those whose interpretation/understanding of the world is more righteous than others. Not to mention, this drove a need to enslave others as way of atonement and service to such righteous identities.
The greatest mistake of the guild alliances in promoting unity as an advancement, was to do so from such a theological standpoint. After all, the first printed works (printmakers) from the Gutenberg press (of which originated from goldsmiths like inventor-goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg) was The Bible (a.k.a. the Gutenburg Bible or the Mazarin Bible). In doing so, available publicly printed works allowed for multiple readers and groups to get “on the same page”.
Yet, through communication, alliances through government, trade, royalty and education there derived a need to reshape the world as a place of mutual understanding, as a way to convey uniformity to all.
Unfortunately, this mutuality came at the expense of conquering and murdering. To some, unification has been a competition to be the one true ruler of the human race; that cultures shall serve a sort of Great Unifier.
If hundreds of thousands of years of historically repeating conflict through flawed unification strategies have told us one key point, it is that the conqueror does not unite. This force brings immeasurable hate which grows to no end. Hate inspires a drive to reshape the playing field so that in time, and in turn such conquerors will suffer dearly.
Data and informing others through visible storage and fabricated replication has been the major driving force behind the foundations of civilization, civilizations, and the developments of communication throughout history (particularly by trade). Such a presentation and exchange of data have always been made to progress human development through the creation of tools (verbal, mental and physical). The resulting problem however, is that a great many of these tools have been used to wage and inflict combat.
If populations could not unite by religion or centrally formed single-purpose alliances, there rooted a need to develop a unified community.
The goal of such a uniformity would be to shape worldview by a unifiable body of knowledge to associate with. The name of this distributed and traded communication data collection has become known as Science.
Through the development of mathematics (where Islamic countries were integral parts in the formation and creation of calculation rules which are still used in modern-day mathematics) a driving need to work to balance life under its principles came into being. This need was of an emergence of collecting, advancing, exchanging, and enhancing information through such mathematical constructs, patterns, and processes pertaining to behaviors and activities through the creation of tools. We call this need: Technology.
Science and Technology have forged the way to an improved path of unification; or so they say (for now).
The catch of advancement towards unification, especially with science and technology, is the shifting scale of those whose intentions are to progress for greed and power, and of those who feel a duty to empower the human race.
There is even a type of Anthropology forming from this relationship called Digital Anthropology .
James Ingram of the Liiv Center, states that his center has created the first toolkit of Digital Anthropology methods designed to promote uniformity through a set “cultural” interpretation:
“ Two years ago we set out on a mission to help society make better decisions through cultural understanding at speed and scale. Today, we are proud to achieve this transformational milestone, with the first toolkit of innovative digital anthropology methods and perspectives designed to empower people to make better decisions by understanding the cultures and communities they serve.”
Quote from Unesco’s page on the Digital Anthropology Project (reference:
)
To be frank, a lot of humans (if not most of the world) don’t really want to keep changing technology to re-participate in this sort of movement, but it tends to be individuals of that scale who run our tech… so here goes anyway…
It’s sort of like how zoology, animal breeding mutation experiments, and eugenics were super popular in the late 1800s/early 20th century, and how an element from theocracy was all about reinvigorating Buddhism in Sri Lanka… and how most common folk were spending some nights listening to the radio (if they had a radio) because the radio portrayed information as a form of uniformity despite all these separate unified movements which were going on in the United States (and throughout the world — eugenics was gargantuan all over).
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