HWI

I want to design human-world interfaces: Ways human beings can relate to the world to make whatever of it that’s relevant to them useful, usable and, above all, desirable.

My own personal human-world interface, which I designed for myself, employs a metaphor of interface. And of course, interfaces are built on metaphors.

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The relevant question in research is less “Is x true?” than “If this group of people accepts x facts as true and interrelates these facts by y perspective, and interprets z situation according to this truth, will this group be able to respond to z situation more effectively?”

2 thoughts on “HWI

  1. Isn’t your body your HWI? What you’re describing seems more like an intermediary between you and the world.

    I’m not saying there’s the mind>body>world distinction, but more mind/body>world.

    Your description seems like you’re thinking about mind/body>HWI>world.

  2. It all depends on what HWI we are using to distinguish human and world. Do we frame it all up as spiritual mind intersecting physical world by means of the strange hybrid of brain and body? Do we see it through a Buddhist lens that takes world to be reducible to our own experience of it — mind as its precursor, and its constitution (to paraphrase the Dhammapada)? Do we take a materialist approach and understand consciousness as an emergent property of biological processes, which means it’s one mechanism by which an organism maintains itself in and against the world to which it fully belongs? By frameworks of this kind experience can be conceptualized into livable truths, with different notions of I, you, world, etc. and different forms of life.

    Despite all appearances, the HWI can be swapped out. Of course, system crashes are possible, but that’s the price of switching platforms.

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