Slides:
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Group Therapy:
As an interactive firm, we work in one of the most multidisciplinary fields out there and personally I think that this is the beauty of my daily work and that this multidisciplinary is why I will never get bored of doing what I do. At the same time though, we live in a time where the nature of projects we do and the type of applications we use requires a higher and higher degree of specialization. For this reason, it is very easy to lose sight of what is going on beyond one’s own nose. It’s the reason why internal communication of the team is more important than ever. This is what the "Group Therapy" is about. Basically it's a one-hour presentation about a random topic of the individual presenter's choice. The wide variety of possible topics is what makes those presentations so interesting. Sometimes a developer might simply explain the latest technologies in ”lay terms” to the less geeky half of the team, but then there are also presentations that might talk about how free-climbing can make you a better designer. And that’s the most interesting aspect about the Group Therapy; to see how sometimes things which at first might seem relatively unrelated to our daily work, can somehow be the most inspirational ones.
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Group Therapy // Why Everyone Should Be Flash Developer
With the ongoing debate of "HTML5 vs. Flash" and many people announcing the death of Flash, I decided to hold a little presentation that was approaching the whole thing from a slightly different, not quite as dead serious perspective. The thesis for this presentation was that everyone should be a Flash developer and that the world would be a better place if that were the case.
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Introduction
Jonathan Harris said that there are no masterpieces in Flash yet. Despite the outrage this statement caused in the Flash community I absolutely think he has a point. The Flash community is very distracted by technical tinkering (i.e. porting libraries from C++ to Flash). This leads to what I like to call "code masturbation". The programmer has fun while doing it, but in the end his efforts don't produce any "real" results. A perfect example is an award winning news aggregator website made in Flash, that features fancy 3D but in the end the site serves no purpose, because the 3D makes it impossible to actually use it for what it was meant to do: simply read the news. Another example for how we're still trying to understand the technology Flash correctly is an award winning car website featuring amazing CGI videos. As amazing as the videos are, the website's interaction basically consists of "click, long load, display video, click, long load, display video". The asynchonous nature of Flash gets totally lost, the new technology is used in the traditional, outdated way.
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Technical Evolution of Media
When looking at the typical way a new medium/technology is introduced this is very common. The first phase of this process is purely technical experimentation. For photography for example, the first picture of a person happened by accident. During one of the first experiments a long exposure photograph of a street scene was taken, due to the long exposure no people or cars could be seen, except for on person that stood still while getting the shoes waxed. Today we understand the way this happend and can use this technique as a stylistic element. As a rule of thumb: you need to master the technique first, before you can use it creatively and express yourself with it. The whole process is very similar to learning a new language.
Based on this analysis, an example for a better use of Flash is the
Puma Lift site I developed a while ago. A queue of videos is being loaded in the background, even if the user is busy doing/watching something else, which means that there is not a single second wasted by not loading anything. Due to this asynchronous technique the chances are very good that even though this site is a pure video experience, the user won't see a second preloader after the intial load, no matter what his interaction with the site is.
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Social Evolution of Media
Douglas Rushkoff, who wrote the amazing book "Life Inc" hosted a talk at SXSW, in which he said that the majority of people are always one step behind of the “elite” who is in control of the cutting edge technology. For example when the printing press was invented, it didn't lead to a generation of writers, it lead to an elite of writers and a generation of readers. The same thing happens now with programming. A typical complaint is that programming is "hard", so people are hesitant to try it out. Yet we have to realize that today's world is ruled by software. Everything we come in contact with during our daily life in one way or another has to do with software. (I.e. your bank account is run by a computer.) In conclusion it means that programmers are in charge of the world right now.
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Everyone, Be A Flash Developer
Everyone should be a Flash Developer for three reasons:
1) Its basics are fairly easy to learn and can produce visual results quickly
2) It's an OOP language, so it can teach a general understanding and important aspects of other languages
3) together with an Arduino board you can do physical computing
Physical Computing in my opinion is an important aspect, because it is also an important aspect of daily life. For the longest time it was expected that people adapt to technology, more and more we're reversing this again and technology tries to adapt to people again (similar to first chapter: we being to understand technology better, so we make more mature decisions). An example for this is the multitouch input which is a much more natural interface than keyboard and mouse. If the majority of people would know physical computing better though, they would realize how terrible most of the solutions in daily life are. ATM machines at the bank are a perfect example. They are confusing, need labels everywhere so that people understand what goes into which slot. A natural solution (similar to the hands of a human) would be to have one tool that takes and gives everything. if we're able to engineer multimillion dollar weapons, that you can use to kill people remotely while you're sitting on the other side of the globe in front of a computer screen, how hard can it be to come up with a slot in the ATM machine that can take a credit card and dispense money as well. (I'm not even questioning why we need the credit card in the first place.)
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What Would It Mean
What would really happen if people knew more about programming? They wouldn't only know more about software and electronics, I believe that essentially they would understand society better too. And with better understanding come concious decisions and change/better use. An example for that would be the Voting System. America's political system was engineered in a certain time with a specific situation in mind. Back then it was impossible to talk and see a person living on the other side on the globe for free with Skype. It was impossible to have easy mass votes over the internet, etc... Realizing all that, one has to agree that if we were to create a new country/constituation today it would probably be dramatically different from back then.
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What does it mean for us as people involved in programming/interactive?
In order for us all to have a small, positive impact on changing things for the better, we need to educate people. Once they realize that the world is run by programs and once they hear what's possible in programming with words they can actually understand, their understanding of it will change. The same way someone back then would probably have to explain people that photography doesn't steal souls and that it's worth learning about exposure times rather than just going the "easy route" and drawing with a pencil, the same way we need to educate about programming.
At the same time, while we're still getting to that point where the general understanding is there, we also need to give users the "feeling" of programming. A good example is Kontain. I would go as far as saying that the end users can be part of the programming process here. Actual users help with beta testing and can requrest features, forge their user experience. Once more people understand that they can change their user experiences and don't just have to accept everything that they get delivered on a plate, I think that this is a first step to better software, programs and user experiences.
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In conclusion:
If everyone had the education of a Flash Developer, we would see more conscious choices in today's world that is run by programs and media, which in return would lead to a better world...
efact
25 months ago
super duper
25 months ago
Jens Fischer
25 months ago
KreativaSt...
25 months ago
mikewoollard
22 months ago
seanthomas
22 months ago
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