[Xmca-l] Re: Prototyping

[Greg Thompson]

Thanks to Philip White for pointing me to the alternative (and preferred)
spelling "jury-rigged". In looking that up, I also found "jerry-built" as
another term.
(My dad was from Indiana and he always pronounced it "jerry-rigged").

These all differ from the term "hack" which, for me, simultaneously has
connotations of elitism and cultural critique but I'm not sure I could say
why (maybe because I've heard it frequently used with Ikea - Ikea hacking).

"Jailbreaking" is an interesting one too - as in "jailbreaking your
iPhone." That is where you take an existing technology and rebuild it for
some design other than what it was intended. (I had a friend who was
building an online educational credentialing website that used the phrase
"jailbreaking the college degree" - some real trouble there, but I support
the idea in principle).

Really appreciate Zaza's paper as well as Shirin et al's paper...

-greg

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 11:58 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Oops, I sent this directly to Zaza and not to the listserve and it seems
> relevant to the Vossoughi et al paper that Mike just posted. It is in
> response to Zaza's list of kukiya-kiya equivalents in other languages:
>
> A personal favorite in English is "jerry-rig". Although I should add that
> this has slightly more of a sense of hasty and perhaps a little bit clumsy
> assembly - suggested to have originated in WWII as somewhat derisive way to
> refer to equipment slapped together by the Germans. Somewhat different from
> other contexts where the sense of necessity is emphasized and haste and
> clumsiness are less emphasized - if at all. Maybe has something to do with
> the tendency in the U.S. to (be able to) rely on "expert" manufacture in
> the U.S.
>
> And, I wonder if this might have something to do with different
> cultural-ideological contexts of the maker movement vs. kukiya-kiya.
> Whereas kukiya-kiya is an act born of necessity, the maker movement has
> more of a leisure-class bougie feel to it - an attempt to recover one's
> creative species being - if you'll allow the drive-by Marx reference (and
> Mike's earlier example seems some mix of the two - a kukiya-kiya attempt to
> make ("Engineering") makers out of these kids (something that they
> certainly already are in many non strictly "Engineering" ways)).
>
> Zaza, I wonder if this kind of distinction between innovation of necessity
> and innovation for pleasure makes any sense for what you see there on the
> ground in the kukiya-kiya case as compared to the maker case? Or if this
> distinction is perhaps a bit overdetermined and are there actually both
> things happening in both cases? (e.g., is there a sense of joy in
> creativity and making in the kukiya-kiya case?)
>
> Enjoying your lovely paper as well as the conversation around it!
>
> Very best,
> greg
>
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 11:49 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>
>> For those interested in pursuing the implications of Zaza's work on Kukiya
>> kiya and the maker movement fashionable in affluent societies, I suggest a
>> new thread with the title, prototyping.
>>
>> Attached is the paper by Vossoughi, Hooper, and Escudé suggested by Molly.
>>
>> mike
>>
>> --
>>
>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
>> object
>> that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>



-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson