Four Dimensions of the Socio-Technical

Jeff McNeillUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa

2007

Jeff McNeill © 2007 Some Rights Reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Socio-Technical Transformation

• These transformations are occuring now in a wide variety of areas and coming from a large number of sources– Medicine– Computing– Telecommunications– Social media on the Internet– Politics– Organizational Innovation & Change

Four Dimensions

• These dimensions are to some degree related to (correlated with) each other

• However, they can be used to conceptualize emerging phenomena

• Bipolar, Unary measures, with midpoints• Dimension labels, endpoints (and midpoint)

– Robotic: Biological (Cybernetic) Robotic – Virtual: Physical (Augmented) Virtual– Fantastic: Realistic (Allegorical) Fantastic – Ludic: Narrated (Dynamical) Ludic

Robotic

• Can be measured by degree or ratio of biology to robotic components or processes

• Cybernetic is concurrently biological and robotic • Could be argued that our use of computers and

communication technologies makes us cybernetic

Biological Robotic

Cybernetic

Virtual

• Degree of physical, tangible reality generated through interaction in a real space, as opposed to virtual reality generated through machines

• This is not to evaluate experiences of the virtual (which themselves are physical and real), but only how the phenomenon in question is produced

Physical (Real)

Virtual (Synthetic)Augmented

Reality

Fantastic

• The fantastic has to do with verisimilitude and mimetic elements

• The fantastic also exists where everything is real, except for one thing that would make everything completely different

• ARGs are a good example of the Fantastic

Realistic (Mimetic)

Fantastic (Unreal)

Metaphorical and Allegorical

Ludic• The Ludic is the degree to which play (an irreducable

concept) is present and free from narrative (constrained path through space and time)

• The Ludic is not necessarily anarchic, as there can be a significant set of rules in play

• Play is a complex concept (Huiziga; Callois)

Narrated (Linear)

Ludic (Play)Dynamical

(Interactive)

Visualizing inFour Dimensions

• Radar charts • Parallel coordinateshttp://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/land/PROJECTS/Inselberg/

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/excel_radar.htm

Additional Issues

• No one single type of chart or visualization technique is best, try different techniques

• For comparative dimensions, try and reduce down to sets of 2 dimensions, especially the one or two which will have the most relevance

• Find the sets of pairs which best convey information, and bring those forward

• For example, if we wanted to compare classroom with online and virtual world interaction on the four dimensions…

Data VisualizationRadar Diagram

Parallel Coordinates

Virtual Ludic Robotic Fantastic

Classroom Low Low Low Low

Online High Medium Medium Low

Virtual World High High Medium High

V

L

F

R

V L FR