Peter Bøgh Andersen

Complex mediation

This article has its starting point in a large number of empirical findings regarding computer-mediated work. These empirical findings have challenged our understanding of the role of mediation in such work; on the one hand as an aspect of communication and cooperation at work and on the other hand as an aspect of human engagement with instruments of work. On the basis of previous work in activity-theoretical and semiotic human—computer interaction, we propose a model to encompass both of these aspects. In a dialogue with our empirical findings we move on to propose a number of types of mediation that have helped to enrich our understanding of mediated work and the design of computer mediation for such work.

The computer as medium

Series foreword Preface Contributors Part I. Computer-Based Signs: Introduction Peter Bogh Andersen 1. A semiotic approach to programming Peter Bogh Andersen 2. Structuralism, computation and cognition: the contribution of glossematics David Piotrowski 3. The shortest way between two points is a good idea: signs, Peirce and theorematic machines Keld Gall Jorgensen 4. Logic grammar and the triadic sign relation Per Hasle 5. Meaning and the machine: toward a semiotics of interaction Per Aage Brandt Part II. The Rhetoric of Interactive Media: Introduction Berit Holmqvist 6. Narrative computer systems: the dialectics of emotion and formalism Berit Holmqvist and Peter Bogh Andersen 7. Interactive fiction: artificial intelligence as a mode of sign production Peter Bogh Andersen and Berit Holmqvist 8. Plays, theatres and the art of acting in the eighteenth century: a formal analysis Jens Hougaard 9. The meaning of plot and narrative Jorgen Bang 10. Face to interface Berit Holmqvist 11. Drawing and programming Bjorn Laursen and Peter Bogh Andersen 12. Hypermedia communication and academic discourse: some speculations on a future genre Gunnar Liestol Part III. Computers In Context: Introduction Jens F. Jensen 13. Computer culture: the meaning of technology and the technology of meaning Jens F. Jensen 14. One person, one computer: the social construction of the personal computer Klaus Bruhn Jensen 15. Hi-tech network organizations as self-referential systems Lars Qvortrup Comment: disturbing communication Peter Bogh Andersen 16. Dialogues in networks Elsebeth Korsgaard Sorensen 17. Historical trends in computer and information technology Jens Christensen Comment: the history of computer-based signs Peter Bogh Andersen 18. A historical perspective on work practices and technology Randi Markussen 19. Hypertext: from modern utopia to post-modern dystopia? Bjorn Sorenssen Index.

CPN/Tools: A Post-WIMP Interface for Editing and Simulating Coloured Petri Nets

CPN/Tools is a major redesign of the popular Design/CPN tool from the University of Aarhus CPN group. The new interface is based on advanced, post-WIMP interaction techniques, including bi-manual interaction, toolglasses and marking menus and a new metaphor for managing the workspace. It challenges traditional ideas about user interfaces, getting rid of pull-down menus, scrollbars, and even selection, while providing the same or greater functionality. It also uses the new and much faster CPN simulator and features incremental syntax checking of the nets. CPN/Tools requires an OpenGL graphics accelerator and will run on all major platforms.

Teaching programming to liberal arts students: a narrative media approach

In this paper we present a new learning environment to be used in an introductory programming course for students that are non-majors in computer science, more precisely for multimedia students with a liberal arts background.Media-oriented programming adds new requirements to the craft of programming (e.g. aesthetic and communicative).We argue that multimedia students with a liberal arts background need programming competences because programmability is the defining characteristic of the computer medium. We compare programming with the creation of traditional media products and identify two important differences which give rise to extra competences needed by multimedia designers as opposed to traditional media product designers. We analyze the development process of multimedia products in order to incorporate this in the learning process, and based on this we present our vision for a new learning environment for an introductory programming course for multimedia students.We have designed a learning environment called Lingoland with the new skills of media programming in mind that hopefully can help alleviate the problems we have experienced in teaching programming to liberal arts students.

Tangible objects: connecting informational and physical space

Information technology has changed the role space and time plays in our lives. The Internet connects people that are geographically far apart, Timbuktu is only a mouse click away, virtual reality replaces the real space with a life-like simulacrum, and augmented reality smears an informational coating over real space.

Tearing Up Interfaces

This paper is a sequel to Instrument Semiotics that presents an analysis of multimedia interfaces in the domain of maritime navigation. In this paper, we shall: 1. Demonstrate how abstract semiotic analysis can be applied in designing architectures for tailorable instruments, and 2. Show how knowledge of work systems, language systems and functions of language can be useful for instrument design.

Work language and information technology

Abstract The main part of this paper presents some empirical findings from two research projects on work language. One project investigated communication in a Danish car repair shop, the other communication in the Postal Giro Office in Stockholm, Sweden. We stress the heavy interdependence between communication and the working context: tasks, work organization, role, shared knowledge and values, and social relations. The last part of the paper sets up a list of demands that a theory must meet in order to provide a systematical basis for studying work language, and we indicate how knowledge about work language may be useful in selected areas of the field of informatics.

Semiotics and informatics: The impact of computer based systems upon the professional language of nurses☆

Abstract The aim of this paper is to stress that the use of computers by an organization may entail very radical changes indeed in the professional languages used in the affected parts of the organization. A consequence of this is that analyses of professional languages may be applied advantageously in connection with systems development. The paper builds its arguments around a single example: the change in the professional language of nurses in connection with the use of computers in a hospital ward. In the first part of the paper we give a description of the situation before and after the computerized system concerned was introduced. Furthermore, we present some basic concepts of semiotics. The second part of the paper contains a semiotic analysis of the situation within the hospital ward under examination. And finally, the last part of the paper draws some general conclusions from the analysis.

Activity-based design

In many types of activities, communicative and material activities are so intertwined that the one cannot be understood without taking the other into account. This is true of maritime and hospital work that are used as examples in the paper. The spatial context of the activity is also important: what you can do depends upon where you are. Finally, human and automatic machinery alternate in filling certain roles in the activity: sometime the officer maintains the course, sometimes the autopilot. Such activities require us to rethink the traditional oppositions between communication and instrumental actions, between human and non-human participants, and between an activity and its spatio-temporal context. The advent of pervasive technologies, where active or passive systems become embedded in our working and living spaces, from where they offer their services to us, puts the need to reconsider these basic oppositions high on the research agenda. This paper presents a consistent framework called habitats for understanding communicative and material activities and their interplay, for understanding how activities can be associated to physical surroundings, and for understanding how humans and automatic machinery can replace one another in an activity. It also gives an example of how to use the framework for design.

CPN/Tools: A Tool for Editing and Simulating Coloured Petri Nets ETAPS Tool Demonstration Related to TACAS

CPN/Tools is a major redesign of the popular Design/CPN tool for editing, simulation and state space analysis of Coloured Petri Nets. The new interface is based on advanced interaction techniques, including bi-manual interaction, toolglasses and marking menus and a new metaphor for managing the workspace. It challenges traditional ideas about user interfaces, getting rid of pull-down menus, scrollbars, and even selection, while providing the same or greater functionality. CPN/Tools requires an OpenGL graphics accelerator and will run on all major platforms (Windows, Unix/Linux, MacOS).