Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2007
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2007
What does your desk look like? Where do you really work? In your car? At the coffee shop? Home, office? Where are you most productive?
Yesterday I saw this pic of Al Gore’s office from This American Life’s photo gallery (I added the callouts). My first reaction was “Wow, he’s messy!” but then I looked closer. This “mess” is the environment of a super productive information dependent person. Note all of the forms of media that are being delivered to Al at the same time: television, internet, fax. If only we could see his RSS ompl file. I’d love to know how he manages the potential info glut.
Whether you agree with Gore’s politics or not, you’ve got to agree that he’s an intelligent man. So what can we learn from the kind of chaotic work environment that he chooses to surround himself with?
He’s a hypermediate as many of us are. I first heard of hypermediated environments back in 2000 when I read J. David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s book Remediation. Even seven years later it’s worth a read. In hypermediated environments (such as MSNBC’s split screen with scrolling stock ticker, headlines, weather updates, and talking head all on one screen) the medium itself is an integral part of understand the information being presented. For example, the same headlines from the MSNBC screen, when printed in a newspaper, don’t function the same way as they would as headlines on an RSS feed. The method in which the information is delivered changes the way we understand it. This is critical to understand as we choose the methods in which we consume and deliver information.
When people are able to receive info on tv, paper, computer screen (email, web search, RSS, blogs, IM, widgets, etc), pocket PC and cell phone, billboard…on and on…How do we know how best to deliver information? How do we choose our own methods of information consumption?
What does your hypermediated environment look like? Link us to a picture. Give us a list of your media delivery choices.
UPDATE: Submit a photo of your hypermediated work space to this Flickr group.
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I’m certainly going to blog about this later, but you made me get up, take a photo, upload it to Flickr and then add all sorts of notes to it there.
Picture is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cc_chapman/510819203/
Keep up the great writing on this blog. REALLY loving it!
I posted on this as well, and compared it to mine. (but I merely discussed the monitor situation). But I like your take on it. Post my pic to the Flickr group as well.
http://jeremyvaught.com/blog/2007/05/20/al-gores-nice-monitor-setup/
A Transliterate Truth?…
Via Ubernoggin comes this interesting annotated photo of Al Gore’s desk. The author grounds the discussion in Bolter’s concept of the Hypermediated work environment. In hypermediated environments (such as MSNBC’s split screen with scrolling stock ti…
Interesting analysis. I haven’t read Bolter for a while but your use of him is productive. I’ve just blogged about this from the perspective of transliteracy (http://www.hum.dmu.ac.uk/blogs/part/2007/05/a_transliterate_truth.html).
I also really like your notion of using Flickr to explore this. I’ll add my desk once I get around to getting new batteries for my camera. It’s a power hungry world in which we live.
[...] Hypermediated Work Environment (May 23, 2007) Image by CC Chapman This blog post inspired me to just stand up and take a picture of my work environment. If you mouse over it there [...]
[...] Hypermediated Work Environment (May 23, 2007) Image by CC Chapman This blog post inspired me to just stand up and take a picture of my work environment. If you mouse over it there [...]
[...] Hypermediated Work Environment (May 23, 2007) This blog post inspired me to just stand up and take a picture of my work environment. If you mouse over it there [...]
What an awesome way to explain this-now I know eveyirthng!
[...] Hypermediated Work Environment (May 23, 2007) Image by CC Chapman This blog post inspired me to just stand up and take a picture of my work environment. If you mouse over it there [...]
[...] Hypermediated Work Environment (May 23, 2007) Image by CC Chapman This blog post inspired me to just stand up and take a picture of my work environment. If you mouse over it there [...]