# Living in Information  ## Metadata - Author: [[Jorge Arango]] - Full Title: Living in Information - Category: #books ## Highlights - The boundaries of the physical environment we share no longer constrain them: they’re engaged in something—a bank transfer, a political argument, a shopping expedition, a flirtatious encounter—that’s happening somewhere else. ([Location 149](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=149)) - This book aims to make these connections explicit. In particular, it seeks to answer the following question: How can we design information environments that serve our social needs in the long term? ([Location 183](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=183)) - We must—in Alan Cooper’s memorable phrase—become better ancestors. ([Location 188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=188)) - So my approach to user interface design is informed by placemaking. ([Location 192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=192)) - We live today not in the digital, not in the physical, but in the kind of minestrone that our mind makes of the two. —Paola Antonelli ([Location 201](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=201)) ### Environments - Because they are composed primarily of information—words and images on screens—we refer to them as information environments. ([Location 225](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=225)) - When I say environment, I mean the “surroundings of a system or organism,” especially the aspects of those surroundings that “influence the system’s or organism’s behavior.” ([Location 237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=237)) - When you inhabit such an environment, use it for its intended purpose, and interact with other people there, it becomes part of your mental model of the world. You start using it as a reference point in your own personal geography. When you are there, you feel, think, and act in ways that are particular to that environment. We call such environments places, and they are central in our lives. ([Location 249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=249)) - Our effectiveness as individuals and societies greatly depends on how well these places serve the roles we intend for them. ([Location 262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=262)) - In his book The Great Good Place, sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place” to refer to places such as cafés, bookstores, hair salons, and bars that are not our home (the “first” place) or work (“second” place), and which allow us to socialize with our neighbors and fellow citizens. ([Location 267](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=267)) - Physically, they shelter us and provide us with contexts in which we can effectively perform our activities, including the secondary, but no less important, activity of socializing. ([Location 284](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=284)) - Symbolically, they embody and catalyze our cultural identities at the local, national, or global level; in other words, they ground us. ([Location 285](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=285)) - At the symbolic level, places convey information by using location, scale, symmetry, rhythm, material selection, and more, to establish their relationship to other elements in the environment. ([Location 291](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=291)) - In a very real sense, buildings and cities are the original social networks. ([Location 303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=303)) - it is no exaggeration to claim that architecture was our earliest, most enduring, and perhaps most important information technology. ([Location 306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=306)) - You can think of information as anything that helps reduce uncertainty so that you can make better predictions about outcomes. ([Location 321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=321)) - The chat application becomes your shared environment, its boundaries defined by the app’s user interface much as the boundaries of a physical room are defined by its walls and ceiling. ([Location 371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=371)) - Information environments create contexts that influence our behavior and actions. ([Location 378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=378)) - The writer and designer Edwin Schlossberg said, “The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” ([Location 379](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=379)) - I think the skill of designing—especially designing software—is creating contexts in which other people can work, learn, play, organize, bank, shop, gossip, and find great gelato. We’re in the process of moving many of these activities, which we have heretofore realized in physical environments, online. ([Location 381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=381)) - Wikipedia is a “living” document that is collectively written and edited by people around the world in real-time. ([Location 429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=429)) - With the growing pervasiveness of information systems in our daily lives, placemaking has started to emerge as a primary concern in the design of information systems. ([Location 443](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=443)) - Approaching software design as a placemaking activity—with a focus on intended outcomes and behavior rather than on forms or interactions—results in systems that can serve our needs better in the long term. ([Location 450](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=450)) - We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. —Winston Churchill ([Location 453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=453)) ### Context - Information architect Andrew Hinton offered a very useful working definition of context in his book Understanding Context: Context is an agent’s understanding of the relationships between the elements of the agent’s environment.1 ([Location 475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=475)) #### Where Are You and What Can You Do There? - The environment in such a place offers cues that tell you what you can and can’t do there. These cues are called affordances, a concept introduced by psychologist J. J. Gibson in the 1960s. ([Location 506](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=506)) - affordances are not inherent characteristics of objects. They only pertain to the relationship between an object and an agent in the environment. ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=519)) - The information conveyed by the book’s cover is an example of a signifier, “some sort of indicator, some signal in the physical or social world that can be interpreted meaningfully” in Don Norman’s definition.4 ([Location 525](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=525)) - When you’re walking on a sidewalk in a pedestrian-friendly city like Lyon, you perceive affordances and signifiers all around you. ([Location 527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=527)) #### How You Know What You Can Do There - Postman argued that effective communication required a shared understanding of the social relations between the agents that participated in an interaction, their goals in the interaction, and the particular vocabulary they used when interacting. He called this set of conditions “the semantic environment the agents were operating in.” ([Location 539](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=539)) - the words you use in the navigation systems and headings of websites not only help you find what you’re looking for, but they also help you understand what you’re looking at. ([Location 596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=596)) #### You Are Here - The success of the design depends on whether or not it supports the goals its users have for the sort of place it creates. ([Location 609](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=609)) - It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. —Upton Sinclair ([Location 614](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=614)) ### Incentives #### Types of Incentives - Remunerative incentives are those that reward you by offering you something in return for a particular behavior. Remunerative incentives are often monetary, but they don’t necessarily have to be. ([Location 663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=663)) - Social incentives are those that affect your social status or self-esteem. ([Location 665](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=665)) - Coercive incentives are those that punish you when you fail to act in a particular way. ([Location 667](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=667)) - As Steve Jobs said, “Incentive structures work. So you have to be very careful of what you incent people to do, because various incentive structures create all sorts of consequences that you can’t anticipate.”1 ([Location 676](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=676)) #### Factors That Drive Incentives - These include the degree of agency people have within the system, the power relationships between people in the environment, the stability of their identity over time, and the degree of transparency the environment affords them. ([Location 680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=680)) ##### Agency ##### Power Imbalances ##### Identity ##### Transparency #### Aligned Incentives #### Misaligned Incentives - We know that we are continually subjected to a huge range of sensory inputs and internal experiences of sensations and thoughts. In fact, almost anything existing in our universe, that can come into human and other animals’ purview, can be experienced as information. —Marcia Bates ([Location 788](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=788)) ### Engagement  ## New highlights added December 20, 2024 at 8:39 PM > “engagement”: the amount of time people spend looking at or interacting with components in the environment. ([Location 807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=807)) > Note how attention is closely related to the environment. Even though our mental chatter is among the pieces of information we need to sift amongst, much of what we focus our attention on are stimuli outside of us, conveyed to our minds by our senses. ([Location 824](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=824)) > In the late 1990s, researchers working at Xerox’s PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) noticed similarities between the way people search for information and the way that animals forage for food. The theory they developed, called information foraging, ([Location 837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=837)) > This shifting of attention between various pieces of information becomes the content of your life. You make decisions based on the stream of things you focus on. ([Location 859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=859)) > As José Ortega y Gassett said, “Tell me what you pay attention to, and I will tell you who you are.” ([Location 861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=861)) > In the first half of the 19th century, ... A New York publisher called Benjamin Day had a brilliant idea: he would sell a newspaper to the masses below what it cost him to produce it. ... selling access to information to the people who wanted to use it would be less lucrative than selling access to those people’s attention to third parties who wanted to influence their behavior. ([Location 886](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=886)) > In a newly industrialized world, which produced a surplus of goods, the ability to harvest attention to create demand became essential. ([Location 901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=901)) > The user of a website can find out about a new product online, educate herself about its benefits, and purchase it in one session without having to get up from her chair. ([Location 915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=915)) > The Sun deemed it appropriate to mislead its readers into believing the moon was populated by exotic creatures, because its business model rewarded engagement over elucidation. ... the incentives that drove the various parties were misaligned. On the one hand, the paper’s readers wanted to be accurately informed about the state of the world, and they expended their energy by focusing their attention on the pages of The Sun with that goal in mind. On the other hand, the publishers of the information received more money the more of this attention they attracted. ([Location 925](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=925)) > “[the site] has to keep poking you to get you to stay on the site. I liken this to holding meetings in a place designed to keep meetings going forever. ([Location 940](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=940)) > Ironically, the effects of pushing toward engagement may also be detrimental to advertising itself, since no brand that values customer trust wants to appear to support extreme positions, conspiracy theories, or sensationalism. ([Location 949](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=949)) > In 2017, Procter & Gamble—the world’s largest advertiser—announced that it was curtailing its investment in digital advertising in part because of what’s euphemistically referred to as “brand safety”: ([Location 951](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=951)) > These people don’t go to Starbucks merely because of the coffee, but because it provides them with a space to focus on their work, their leisure, or each other. The cost for using this place is obvious to its customers: all they must do is buy a beverage or food item. In exchange for their money, customers get a cup of coffee and the use of Starbucks’s facilities for a while. The ambiance is casual; for a small price, people can stay there as long as they like. (Of course, the longer they linger, the more likely it is they’ll make further purchases.) ([Location 974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=974))     - Note: This is how a third space is monetized, charging a fixed entry ticket to every person and giving them all they need to be fo used on their thing, business or goal... So people stay longer so they keep using the space and keep consuming and keep spending money. That Is similar to facebook or Twitter. > The neutrality of the place as a container for such conversations would be in doubt. You’d suspect the environment was studying you and nudging you in particular ways to keep you engaged and focused on things other than what you came there for—and you’d be right. ([Location 987](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07D85CVBG&location=987))