The "core weirdness" of dynamic spatial media -- environment as media and objects as representations -- is so hard to convey in the abstract, and sometimes I feel like no one will ever understand it.

(Certainly, I've learned that simply saying the words "media" and "representations" a lot doesn't help -- nobody knows what they mean.  Double-nobody knows what "dynamic media" means.  "Dynamic spatial media" is almost hopeless from the get-go.)

[ re electronics in realtalk objects ]

If we bring out a Monopoly board and take out the pieces, and we've all learned the rules, then we're now in a domain where those pieces have special meaning.  The Monopoly pieces don't need to have electronics built into them in order to exhibit interesting behavior.  They take on the behavior specified for them in the rules, simply because all of us humans have agreed to play along and treat them in a certain way.

That's how most media works.  When you read text, the physical words -- the blobs of ink -- have no inherent magic.  They gain their communicative power because we've collectively agreed to interpret them in a particular way.  The same with spoken language, information graphics, and so on.

The thesis underlying Realtalk is:  what if computational processes could also play the game?  Computational processes could interpret ordinary objects in the world as meaningful, and give them behavior according to rules, in the same way that we interpret the Monopoly token as meaningful, and give it behavior by moving it along the board with our hands.

The essence of all media is "objects stand for concepts".  Most spoken or written media consists of abstract, inert objects given meaning through interpretation in a cultural context.  The objects themselves (ink blobs, sound waves, etc.) aren't the focus -- they even become "invisible" when someone is fluent!  With Realtalk, we're starting to think about "objects" in the sense of physical tangible things-in-the-world, but we're keeping this media perspective -- we care more about what our physical objects stand for than what they are.  Our objects may be physical, yet abstract.  ("Tokens".)

Like a word on a page or a dot on a scatterplot, an object's shape and placement might be more meaningful than what it's made of or what it "does".


[ product vs media ]

The vocabulary of "prototyping", "building", and "engineering" comes from a product-development perspective.  Our system comes from a media-authoring perspective.

You give a person a product so they can use it.  You give a person media so they can learn from it.  The media is just an intermediary, a carrier, intended to induce a state-change in a person's head.  

You "use" a hammer, but you "read" a book or "browse" a gallery.  Knowledge flows through them.

The purpose of building prototypes is to eventually produce a product.  But the purpose of sketching in media -- say, writing notes on paper or a whiteboard -- could be simply to understand something for yourself, or explain something to others.  Once the thought is in the head, you're done.

And yes, sometimes you want to publish what you've discovered, and then you may go into a more production-like mode.  But even then, the goal is to induce an understanding in another person's mind, not to provide them with an object with useful physical properties.  Some books make good doorstops, but that's not why the authors wrote them.