Design in a [Virtual Community (VC)] can actually be performed using speech acts that in-real-life wouldn't perform any design. We call these acts `design speech acts'. We present, as a starting point, a list of verbs which can be used in a VC for design and the implications of using these verbs to design cyberspace. We present a methodology for structuring and defining design speech acts, so that a language for design in a VC can be subsequently developed. We are developing a specific environment for a virtual community in which designers can articulate their needs and produce text-based design objects.Relatively obvious, but useful.
A more interesting question would be how we take these observations and map them to other spaces. If a MOO, for example, is understood as a space that's both textual and inhabitable, do we also inhabit other spaces? Jay Bolter (drawing on other sources) made famous the idea that texts in general embody spaces--scrolls, novels, hypertexts, etc.. And numerous people have already discussed MOOs as textual spaces.
But is email a space that we occupy? Is IM a space we inhabit? How do these heterogeneous spaces overlap and conflict? What about non-virtual texts? Not merely things we see spatially, but work within and across.
Postmodernism, Foucault said, was the shift from the temporal to the spatial. It seems like we're only now starting to recognize the implications (and possibilities) of this shift on text.
[via Blackbelt Jones Work]
Posted by johndan at January 24, 2004 12:03 PM
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