User-Designed Software
I've been interested in the idea of user-designed software for some time, and what I've seen recently of drupal sharpens the question a bit, and maybe brings it into reality.
Actually, I consider myself to be a user who, though necessity and personal interest, can write just enough code to satisfy my personal requirements for tools.
I finally learned to write code just before my 40th year. I enjoy the process of designing and writing programs a lot. I enjoy breaking down the tasks and the concentration involved in coding. But most of all its just great to decide I want or need something and then to write it myself.
I wrote a web application a few years ago, for my MSc project, that was to help people organise workshops and events. Why? Because I had many years of experience of the task, I could break it down into little pieces, I felt I knew all of its necessities and that building them into an application would be a way to distribute my experience to others.
So: what i am interested in is this possibility of being able to create an application without writing code. Users are experts in their own areas, and it seems to me that the advanced use of a system like drupal does allow people to bring their experiences to building an online system.
Armin, for instance, has many years of writing and publishing; he understands the issues and the processes, and the gaps and shortcomings of the various platforms he has already worked on. If I understand right, The Next Layer is his first chance to really shape a platform to be what he wants.
So: never mind user-contributed content, what about user-designed platforms?
For sure the learning curve with advanced modules like "cck" and "views" is big, and you have to sort of love the detailed mindset and absorbing technical information but nevertheless I think its exciting stuff. Or will it just lead to even more big messes out there ;)
Any comments?
category module opened for contributors
dear all
my main guiding thought in developing this site was to be on the cautious side. therefor people with the role 'contributor' did until a minute ago not have the right to edit categories. not any more considering Lindsay's latest idea about dictionary and generally how this develops here I think it would be stupid to deny this opportunity. dictionary is a good idea but developoing and understanding taxonomies is a good step in that direction. You can now add categories. This is a very important function in drupal because other modules, like for instance forum, depend on the categories module. with categories you can create 'taxonomies' depending on which content gets organised. which can be very beneficial but can also break thinkgs. there are different types of categories, with single and multi-hierarchies, single entry or multi-entry.
this can be used ot create hierarchical structures -- which is sometimes what you want -- but can allow also free tagging, which can be used to make nice tag clouds. so I would say go and have fun now;-) but please maybe also follow my design principle of cautiosness and trying not to go beyond what is repairable. maybe it is also good to read a bit of documentation before getting started with categories.
http://drupal.org/handbooks has a wealth of info on any drupal issues, and this would be the page on the taxonomy module
http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/taxonomy
best
admin
A New Dictionary
Perhaps language and translation is the way forward with a collaborative user-designed function. There is already a language function on this system with I presume, a number of default options. There is also an option to import a language. Being a lo-tech chic I do not know what this means as regards what the system is actually importing…another language written in computer code?
It struck me that since we have writers, artists, poets and commentators as users, why can’t we create our own language? Our ‘translation’ of words could simply be the creation of a new dictionary, a mix of symbolic meanings and slang? Ok, someone would have to take the time to design the framework to allow users the opportunity to ‘code-in’ their words, but would this not be a great way of working collaboratively and producing something that is ours? I am really excited about this…what do you think?!
Lindsay
stealth entrancement
"The Lovers' sounds intrigueing...wd like to check it out, or its traces
yes, walking backwards into the future on the soft feather slippers of ideas, solutions alwas a johnny-come-lately
re stealth, something i have been thinking a lot about also recently. My intuition is that it is a time for cloaking, but perhaps cloaking can best be effected through transparency ... the stranger looks straight through you
stealth (SM.art) bombs
hmm..remembering that femo-authurian fiction ..mists of avalon...the witch/enchantress makes use of 'glamour', it's a kind of dazzling of the beholder so they only see what they desire to see...i think a manifestation of the 'stealth gown'
in LambdaMOO the chief programmers were called wizards...
simple is aeffective
Like many artists I tend to work backwards from my ideas to find the practical solutions…so the best way for me to think about developmental requirements would be to talk through concepts that interest me, hopefully encouraging some practical and collaborative solutions.
So, we strip the bride bare and we are left with her flesh and soul, presumably we can’t live without that as we married her/him/it. So if I were to marry a computer system, I could not live without the electromagnetic energy and the code; the way they interact with each other providing its uniqueness, the way I interact with that providing my entrancement. One piece of work that came to mind was Sneha Solanki’s ‘The lovers’ where ‘two networked machines, one infected with a virus, slowly infects the other through the interface of classic romantic poetry.’
This brings me to another interest, stealth and the ability to disguise oneself or to hide. This could be in a military, electromagnetic or gender sense; or as a virus as stated above. I like the idea of using images, or at least using them for a starting point to work out what it is we want from the system. So, how could I combine these concepts and the use of images to provide a starting point for artworks? What functions would I require to allow me ‘stealth’ with my image gallery? Who would be aware of the stealth function? How could I go about making a ‘hole’ to hide in, in my gallery page? Could my stealth allow me to enter somebody else’s page unnoticed? The bride is not bare...she is just wearing a stealth gown.
Lindsay
simple is beautiful
howdy layers!
i think a lot of sites get swamped by too many features, choices ...
and so for my contribution to the many-festo on form and function i contribute
* simple is beautiful
* remember web minus two. Web -2
* let's strip the bride bare of her/his layers, and see what we still are entranced by, and cannot live without
collaboratively user designed
I like the notion of user designed, because this is really what it is. I am a drupal user, not a developer. However, this is a very powerful tool capable of allowing dynamic website design. And I am still quite at the beginning, trying to learn it. So the temptation is high to think up this or that feature that I would like to see implemented and then ask a professional to do it. But I think this would be the wrong way to do it. This project is as much about learning and collaboration as only about tools and efficiency. Thus, I think the most beautiful and important bit is the conversation which has started about site building here and hopefully mmore participants will engage in this discussion. So, what I propose is, we should a) jointly define what we would like this platform be able to support and then set out realising it in a way that is sustainable (not getting the easy fix but learning and building up knowledge together)
b) for lack of a better word define policies; I mean I hate policies, this country the UK, is full of policies, but what I really mean is that whatever you do there are so many decisions along the wayside which all have a meaning; for instance, do we allow self-registration of users? The first spambots have registered and I deleted them but in the long term that is no solution. Another policy area is clearly the rights which different users have on this site, etc. In this early stage I have made some initial decisions but those can all be overriden by consent. nothing is fixed
c) so this leads to, maybe we should jointly define the goals ... write some sort of many-festo as marc garret would call it
d) and more directly, technically speaking, we should jointly formulate requirements and specifications for this site; what should it be able to perform? A sort of missing features list.
My head is full and to empty it would lead to a much too long forum posting. But relating to what Lindsay has said, this might be one specific area to look at, how could such a collaboration be facilitated? Would one way be to start with images, with the way we work with images? Currently we use the most simple image module and image gallery module. Could this be expanded into something where we can tell strories through iamges and work collaboratively with images?
I would like to encourage you to think about such ideas and try to refine the idea into such a way that a development requirement can be formulated. Shall we start collecting such development requirements? And what is the way ot communicate and discuss them, this forum?
best
Armin
User-designed
My initial view on building the next layer would be one of partial user designed. My reasons for using the word partial is simply because I consider myself to be at the low-tech end of the spectrum, and could not state that I support a fully user-designed system when I had no idea of what that would practically entail.
However as a practitioner that started her artistic life through sculpture, and could now be said is involved in producing installation art with a performative edge, the act of producing work rather than viewing and talking about work, politics and open source, is an extremely important factor. We do after all need other languages apart from linguistic ones. The next layer could include a platform for collaborative art-making with whatever edge through the making of user-designed software. Instead of becoming just another magazine with taxt after text (!) the next layer could potentially hold a very dynamic opportunity; to explore collaborative practice at a very basic but fundamentally important level of skill and ideas sharing as part of an individualised but coherent community.
So on an idealistic level, I very much support the partial user designed framework, with a view to becoming fully user-designed. Lets sort out the messes later?!
Lindsay