Tuesday, January 29, 2019

About truth as "getting it right" -- great text by Michela Massini


Now and then you meet a text that really resonates with your own thinking. It is always a wonderful experience.

Today I stumbled on the Aeon article "Getting it right - truth is neither absolute nor timeless. But the pursuit of truth remains at the heart of the scientific endeavour" by philosophy professor Michel Massimi at the University of Edinburgh.

Massimi explores the notion of truth in science in a way that is both profound and straightforward. A wonderful text that is beautifully written, has clarity and excellently argued.

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

The transfer of rationality

In 1994 I wrote a paper on design and rationality. I have not recently looked at this text but I did today. It is always interesting to see what you worked on 25 years ago. And not surprisingly, I am still
struggling with the same ideas. I am actually at the moment working on a text about improving design practice. Of course, I realize that I am making more or less the same arguments as I did 25 years ago.

I still like the paper though! You can download it here.

Reference: Stolterman, E. (1994). The transfer of rationality - adaptability, acceptability and the transparency of methods. i Baets, W. (eds) Proceedings of the second European conference on information systems. Nijenrode University Press, Breukelen.















Revisit: Explainable AI, interactivity and HCI

Early November I wrote a post on explainable AI, interactivity, and HCI. It is interesting to see how this topic is developing. I see almost every day articles, blogposts, papers that address AI from other perspectives than traditional AI. People (and researchers) are engaged with all kind of legal, social and societal aspects of the use of AI. Of course, some also point to the ultimate question which is if the growth of AI will lead humans to be second-hand citizens and not in charge of our future.

It is a good thing that so many are concerned with what technology can do. At the same time, it seems as if many researchers take on the issue without grounding it in their own expertise. This means that they start by trying to explain AI almost on a technical level, which in many cases becomes too simplistic and sometimes not even correct. I prefer when experts approach this issue based on their expertise. One of the best texts so far in my view is Zerilli at al. "Transparency in algoritmic and human decision-making: is there a double standard?". These researchers come from the legal field and they approach it from their expertise. I wish that HCI researchers will do the same, that is, approach the question of AI and its use from the perspective of interaction and interactivity.

Monday, January 07, 2019

Designing has no given problems, no given processes, and no given solutions

We have made a paper available as a preprint on SocArXiv. It is a paper written by Jordan Beck and me. I think this is a good paper, but we have not been successful so far to get it accepted.

Beck, J., & Bergqvist, E. S. (2018, November 5). Designing has no given problems, no given processes, and no given solutions. Retrieved from osf.io/dz9xr 

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/dz9xr