The intelligence of environments 175
or a modification limited to a well-defined area of application might have more
wide-ranging repercussions than its original context would have suggested. In all
cases that involve human beings as users, transformations of informational environments will obtain in the use of, or interaction with, these artefacts that at some
points and in some respects transcend the limits of specific and well-established
contexts of application and interaction. Nor can these transformations be exhaustively explained by reference to the abilities of the machines.
These more profound transformations obtain if and when first, returning to the
distinction made by Robert Brandon and discussed on p. 78 in Chapter 5, the
construction or addition of elements to external environments has lasting effects
on the ecological environment of the actors involved. Whenever, second, some
such effect is neither transient nor has already been accommodated, situations of
informational uncertainty ensue whose relevance is coupled with the relevance
of that effect in ecological terms. There will be no clearly delimited domain of
signals of the world affair in question that the actors have already learned to track
and on which they could rely. Whether the informational relations thus added or
altered are regular, stable and unequivocal as such is not the same issue as whether
a relation of convergence or isomorphism between the domains of the new or
modified signals and the domains of natural information that the receivers are
accustomed to can be determined in practice. Resolving these uncertainties is an
equally practical matter.
In this respect, the clearest of the cases under discussion here is to be found in
MMMOGs. It bears some resemblance to the issue of the (hitherto still partial)
accommodation of mobile phone use in public contexts to the realm of socially
accepted behaviours. Until the day when these games have become a normal part
of everyday practice, they will, with some likeliness, be sources of irritation to
non-players as to whether their gaming behaviour, being unpredictable to the
uninitiated, will be considered harmless or annoying, amusing or inappropriate.
The everyday contexts in which the gaming situations occur will provide no cues
unless, first, external observers are able to unequivocally identify the gaming situations as such and, second, a set of implicit or explicit rules has emerged that will
tell players when and where joining a fight or challenge will count as appropriate.
Once these two conditions are fulfilled, the possibility of everyday environments
suddenly being turned into mobile online gaming environments will be taken for
granted by players and at least tolerated by non-players.
Conversely, AR might confront its users with designs of virtual objects that
may or may not or not yet strike the right balance between making the similarities
to physical objects appear natural enough while making the differences to physical objects obvious enough to the user, so as to both facilitate interaction with
the virtual objects and allow for the recognition of their identity as virtual. The
introduction of virtual objects into real-world environments is likely to require
some degree of habituation and accommodation from their users, so as to put
the similarities and differences in context. Complete intuitiveness of interaction
might be a convenient fiction anyway, where ease of learning should be the design
paradigm instead from an ergonomist’s perspective (LFE-a/b-2015). The lower
or a modification limited to a well-defined area of application might have more
wide-ranging repercussions than its original context would have suggested. In all
cases that involve human beings as users, transformations of informational environments will obtain in the use of, or interaction with, these artefacts that at some
points and in some respects transcend the limits of specific and well-established
contexts of application and interaction. Nor can these transformations be exhaustively explained by reference to the abilities of the machines.
These more profound transformations obtain if and when first, returning to the
distinction made by Robert Brandon and discussed on p. 78 in Chapter 5, the
construction or addition of elements to external environments has lasting effects
on the ecological environment of the actors involved. Whenever, second, some
such effect is neither transient nor has already been accommodated, situations of
informational uncertainty ensue whose relevance is coupled with the relevance
of that effect in ecological terms. There will be no clearly delimited domain of
signals of the world affair in question that the actors have already learned to track
and on which they could rely. Whether the informational relations thus added or
altered are regular, stable and unequivocal as such is not the same issue as whether
a relation of convergence or isomorphism between the domains of the new or
modified signals and the domains of natural information that the receivers are
accustomed to can be determined in practice. Resolving these uncertainties is an
equally practical matter.
In this respect, the clearest of the cases under discussion here is to be found in
MMMOGs. It bears some resemblance to the issue of the (hitherto still partial)
accommodation of mobile phone use in public contexts to the realm of socially
accepted behaviours. Until the day when these games have become a normal part
of everyday practice, they will, with some likeliness, be sources of irritation to
non-players as to whether their gaming behaviour, being unpredictable to the
uninitiated, will be considered harmless or annoying, amusing or inappropriate.
The everyday contexts in which the gaming situations occur will provide no cues
unless, first, external observers are able to unequivocally identify the gaming situations as such and, second, a set of implicit or explicit rules has emerged that will
tell players when and where joining a fight or challenge will count as appropriate.
Once these two conditions are fulfilled, the possibility of everyday environments
suddenly being turned into mobile online gaming environments will be taken for
granted by players and at least tolerated by non-players.
Conversely, AR might confront its users with designs of virtual objects that
may or may not or not yet strike the right balance between making the similarities
to physical objects appear natural enough while making the differences to physical objects obvious enough to the user, so as to both facilitate interaction with
the virtual objects and allow for the recognition of their identity as virtual. The
introduction of virtual objects into real-world environments is likely to require
some degree of habituation and accommodation from their users, so as to put
the similarities and differences in context. Complete intuitiveness of interaction
might be a convenient fiction anyway, where ease of learning should be the design
paradigm instead from an ergonomist’s perspective (LFE-a/b-2015). The lower