“Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry its progress, ignorance its end.” — Michel de Montaigne (1587) Near the beginning of her book, The Edge of the Sea, Marine biologist Rachel Carson describes “one place that stands apart for its revelation of exquisite beauty.” It is, she continues, “a pool hidden within a cave…
1. Earlier this summer I started reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Recently, I have found solace and space for growth by immersing myself in nature and in fine writing; Walden combines both at the highest levels. One of the most quoted passages of Walden explains why the book resonates with me now, as it has…
I’m so excited to share that my new book, co-edited with Shaowen Bardzell and Mark Blythe and entitled Critical Theory and Interaction Design, is now available. After discussing the need for such a book for years, we finally moved forward when we came upon a cool concept for it: we’d invite leading HCI researchers to identify…
Read more Critical Theory and Interaction Design (MIT Press) is Available!
One comment I hear from the HCI and design communities–from students and senior researchers alike–is the assumption that criticality is negative, that the role of a critique is to “destroy” something, or that critics just dump on the hard work of others. I want to push back against this idea, and I will explain why…
Why do we as researchers turn away from accepted knowledge, theory, and/or research? I don’t mean rejecting a given paper or objecting to a presentation. I am referring to categorically rejecting a whole knowledge practice, on account that it uses some method or epistemology or (fill in the blank) that one doesn’t like. This turning…
This is going to be short, more like a provocation than a serious post. This quote really stirred me. What [philosopher Arthur Danto’s book] The Transfiguration [of the Commonplace] really attempts to do is to display a certain train of ideas, a certain set of discoveries and the questions opened up by them. It is…
This post is a speculative exploration of an interesting position. I do not present it as my considered position; rather, I am just trying to think through some interesting thoughts. I encourage people to engage with me on this via comments. The gist of the issue has to do with what we take to be…
Read more The “Intentional Fallacy” and the “Affective Fallacy” of Interaction Design?
Periodically I post something on my course blog, Interaction Culture Class, that might be of broader interest than just the class. In such situations, I repost them on my personal blog. This is one such example, and its original post can be found here. Currently, our class is reading a philosophical genealogy of theories of authorship, as…
Periodically I post something on my course blog, Interaction Culture Class, that might be of broader interest than just the class. In such situations, I repost them on my personal blog. This is one such example, and its original post can be found here. For the past two years, I used a reading in this course from…
Download a printable version. Noël Carroll is a philosopher of aesthetics, known for his work on the philosophy of film and in particular, horror film. A former student of George Dickie, Carroll is intellectually connected to British aesthetics, a tradition that historically has been skeptical of the “grand theory” tradition in the humanities in which…
Interaction Culture 