Monday, March 05, 2007
In-der-Blog-sein
Mormon Metaphysics has a post on Levinas, Heidegger, and things.
Mormon Metaphysics has a post on Levinas, Heidegger, and things.
Heidegger during his middle period famously did a phenomenological analysis in which he argued that beings were not fundamental. Rather he focused on what one might call a pragmatic consideration. We encounter things not fundamentally as objects (beings) but as useful equipment. Thus I don't encounter a paint brush as matter that I then think of how I can use it. Rather the uses come first. I use a paint brush in-order-to paint a wall. The paint brush is part and parcel of a world with aims, projects, practices and equipment. Thus the paint brush has its meaning in terms of walls, paints, paint thinner, rollers and the aim of painting walls. There are many such worlds. For instance the world of an accountant involves pencils, Excel spreadsheets, Quickbooks, paper, tax forms and the purposes of paying taxes, pleasing tax men and clients and so forth.I was surprised when I took my tax materials to my new accountant, that when he got excited about a discrepancy between employer's and broker's numbers, he pulled out his desk calculator and the paper tape started flying out. This despite having a PC monitor at his side. Perhaps Excel isn't real enough, and needs to add sound effects. Or the ready-to-hand gets burned into the brain at a certain age, and all new gadgets past that point are merely present. ¶ 8:35 AM
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That's interesting. My comment appears to have died...
I had said that I'd have hoped you'd comment on my misreading of Levinas in that post more than the practical issue.
The issue of Excel is interesting though. It seems to me that many (especially those older) turn to calculator or pen precisely because those things disappear in their use in a way Excel doesn't. That is Excel doesn't function in a consistent ready-at-hand fashion for most of us (all of us?). As it misfunctions we notice it for what it is and then start to swear.
Interestingly some have been applying Heidegger to User Interfaces. While it's all familiar stuff to most philosophers, Paul Dourish wrote an interesting book on UIs called Where The Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied interaction.
I had said that I'd have hoped you'd comment on my misreading of Levinas in that post more than the practical issue.
The issue of Excel is interesting though. It seems to me that many (especially those older) turn to calculator or pen precisely because those things disappear in their use in a way Excel doesn't. That is Excel doesn't function in a consistent ready-at-hand fashion for most of us (all of us?). As it misfunctions we notice it for what it is and then start to swear.
Interestingly some have been applying Heidegger to User Interfaces. While it's all familiar stuff to most philosophers, Paul Dourish wrote an interesting book on UIs called Where The Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied interaction.
I leave Levinas to the ethicists.
One of my early impressions of ready-to-hand use of computers came from watching accountants using 1-2-3. Their fingers got accustomed to the shortcuts and screen would move faster than the eye could follow. I was once helping one print a spreadsheet on Windows/386, and I remarked that using a mouse must make Excel more cumbersome than the DOS based programs. He pointed out that Microsoft had implemented the 1-2-3 keyboard shortcuts, which he then demonstrated by jumping through formulas across crosslinked spreadsheets from the keyboard. So Excel can be just as ready-to-hand as any other tool to an expert.
As a casual user, spreadsheets seem infinitely more useful to me than a calculator. When I catch an error, I just have to fix that one cell and then everything recalculates itself. I don't have to step through the whole formula again. And as a casual user, it they are also as prone to malfunction as readily as hammers are on my fingers, albeit involving less physical pain.
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One of my early impressions of ready-to-hand use of computers came from watching accountants using 1-2-3. Their fingers got accustomed to the shortcuts and screen would move faster than the eye could follow. I was once helping one print a spreadsheet on Windows/386, and I remarked that using a mouse must make Excel more cumbersome than the DOS based programs. He pointed out that Microsoft had implemented the 1-2-3 keyboard shortcuts, which he then demonstrated by jumping through formulas across crosslinked spreadsheets from the keyboard. So Excel can be just as ready-to-hand as any other tool to an expert.
As a casual user, spreadsheets seem infinitely more useful to me than a calculator. When I catch an error, I just have to fix that one cell and then everything recalculates itself. I don't have to step through the whole formula again. And as a casual user, it they are also as prone to malfunction as readily as hammers are on my fingers, albeit involving less physical pain.
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