Nelson and fantics

I question the continued relevance of Nelson's call to action in his definition of fantics. Fantics, as he describes them, are the interface through which the user participates in new media. Nelson claims that computer experts should not be the ones who define fantics, but instead that it is users who can best describe their needs and figure out ways to achieve them. This is a very pro-capitalist response, but I think many of the problems that Nelson brings up have been solved by the market. For instance, the way that windows appear on a computer screen, and different ways of interacting with these windows have been presented by IBM and Apple, and users have the opportunity to choose between the two options. The quality of design, and tendency towards ease of use is a result of the need to convince individuals to buy computers. If computer experts were doing all the designing for their own needs, I’m sure certain things would be different, but because the personal computer is a marketable product that must be sold directly to its users, the companies that make computers have to have a sense of fantics built into their production process. I think the reason why Nelson did not address this point is because he was not thinking of the computer as a product in the enormous way it is today.

That beings said, I’d be interested to learn more about the history of computers that exists between this current moment and the moment at which Nelson was writing. For example, the internet (which it almost seems that Nelson predicts at some points in this article) developed in a slightly similar way, as I understand it, with experts beginning the process and the space slowly opening up for the general user. A similar dominance by capitalistic development seems to have taken place on the web, with corporations now attempting to eliminate net neutrality and make the totality of the internet into a commodity. So the process is on of expertise leading to a short period of apparent democratization leading to corporatization. I hope that the corporatization period can be followed by a re-democratization, yet it might be more productive if this dialectic churned out something entirely new. What that would be, I’m completely unsure of. It would be interesting, though, for me or you to be able to have a say in how our interactions with computers occur, as I think most people today take those interactions for granted as a specified process that makes a good enough amount of sense.

I guess I would say that online art I’ve seen through this class and through looking at the ART333 class blog is an example of ways of re-democratizing or taking back control of the fantics. By extrapolating certain technologies and re-configuring them to completely different uses, groups like the Critical Art Ensemble are able create arrengemtns of interaction with new media that work specifically for them. Had they tried to work within the existing options presented, their creativity would have been much more stifled, or at least they probably would have ended up with a much less novel final product.

I was exploring the Second Life website and it’s interesting to me that on the one hand, this “alternate universe” provides users with the opportunity to build what it’s creators say is “almost everything” but on the other hand it merely continues the process of the capitalization of new media space by setting up a system of purchasing land and creating a virtual marketplace that can translate into tangible income in the real world. This seems to be yet another continuation of the fantics of new media. I assume these aspects of Second Life weren’t present directly from the beginning, but that they were added as people felt they wanted the virtual world to mirror the real world. I’m finding it hard to make the point I want to make.. but I really think that not everyone wants to use a virtual world to have a parallel marketplace interaction to that in the real world, and that this fantic decision might be a mistake on the part of the creators of Second Life.