I thought this reading had an interesting viewpoint. I’m not sure whether it was written in the 90s or closer to the current day, because it switches points of view sometimes (going from talking about the Razorfish visit in the present tense, and then moving to reflecting on it). Upon reflection, it seems like it is the latter option.
I was confused however, because I’m not familiar with the timeline of how workspaces began to transform from the traditional cubicle setting to more of what Razorfish has been doing. At the start the narrator was describing the discovery of Razorfish’s workspace as a futuristic and uncommon one, while from my point of view, it was simply a modern workplace. However, the fact that he was reflecting on this experience and still saw it as new created some confusion.
I thought it was interesting when the author said, “If with GUI the physical environment migrated into the computer screen, now the conventions of GUI are migrating back into our physical reality.” This was interesting, both because I’ve never thought about work spaces like that, even though I’ve worked in a start up that is laid out very similarly, and because It reminds me of Augmented Spaces. It’s not the same as those - they hadn’t integrated any innovative new technology into the spaces - but the idea of modeling digital spaces after physical spaces, and then later on doing the reverse is shown in both. It was also cool how they linked this to other real world institutions of their age - how libraries and museums were being replaced with computer databases. However, it was not necessarily a complete migration as we still have those (newly augmented) spaces. [Side Note: I noticed that what he mentioned about computer spaces, specifically using 3D navigable space to display the semantics of human language was very similar to a project happening in our class with the 3 boards]
It was interesting how they used a video game to talk about how narratives have been presented as continuous navigation through space, specifically Tomb Raider. This has become commonplace in not only (the majority of today’s) video games to a huge degree, but also physical entertainment experiences , like themed roller coasters (i.e. pirates & space mountain at Disney world).
One point I didn’t agree with was how the author attempted to reverse the assumed roles of informational and spatial communication. They said, “For instance, the user navigates through a virtual space both to work and to play, whether analyzing scientific data or killing enemies in Quake.” I don’t really think this negates the innate association of work with text, and entertainment/media consumption with spatial/graphic representation. Maybe if they pointed out that text-based adventure games existed, as well as 3D software for different types of work. But abstractly comparing a realistic, 3D world in a video game to the GUI usually found on a desktop doesn’t really do much for me.
When the author introduced the two goals (essentially creating interfaces for processing information, and creating a way of navigating spatial representations) I thought it was interesting how he related them, in that they were extreme ends of a spectrum tat one should strive to be in the middle of. However, when they used search engines as on a far end of the spectrum, claiming they want to “immerse” the user in its universe to prevent them from going to other sites, I was less satisfied, as the entire purpose of search engines is to find other sites. Maybe if they argued that Google, for example, has added numerous features to immerse the user in the improved and expanded functionality of the base search engine in order to prevent them from using other search engines, I thought it would have made more sense.