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Multi-implications ofmulti-dimensional authoring;

or,“everything you wanted to know aboutgeek herding, but were afraid to ask”

tim@menzies.usCSEE, WVU

SLS 2007Nov-2-07

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Curse of dimensionality

Good news, everyone: giant ants can’t take over the world

Square-cube law

e.g. grow 3 times– 33 = 27 times

as heavy– Legs, 27 times

weaker

Lesson: what works in the small has to change for the LARGE

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How big is multi-media?

3 hyperlinked pages,can be read 15 ways:

1. 12. 1,23. 1,2,34. 25. 2,36. 37. 1,38. 2,19. 3,110. 3,211. 1,3,212. 2,1,313. 2,3,114. 3,1,215. 3,2,1

Testing that users ofyour multi-mediamasterpiece can travelto all paths20 hyper-linked pages– Connections=

• 1018=• 1,000,000,000,

000,000,000

That’s a lot of testing– (We’ll come back to this)

15 / 2 =750 %

Standardassumptions ofessay writers

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Many dimensionsto multi-media

Metaphor : e.g.– stewardship (SimCity)– adventure games (LOTR quest)

Visual style : e.g– actors on a stage,– race cars on a track

Ontology; e.g.– Physical, mental, economic

Control : e.g– Linear (turn to next page)– Hyper (turn to any damn place you

want)– Search (computer-aided tuition

controls where can go next)

Rhetorical style; e.g.– Team vs first person perspective– Strategic vs tactical (e.g. shooter games)– Write once (and comment): Blogs– Rewrite often (Wikis)

Formats: e.g.– Binary: jpg, pdf, svg, msword,…– Textual: ascii, html, xml, docx,…

Platform; e.g.– Hardware: intel/ PowerPC– OS: windoze, linux, mac– Versions: vista, XP, leopard, tiger

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Each dimension has its own besttools, its own required skills

Specialized toolkits let you built thisstuff, fast– But only by eliminating most

choices

Now,at the birth of new media ...– … do you really want to walk fixed

dimensions?– Are you doing new media or

“cliched” media?– Should new media research try the

path less traveled?

visual style

metaphor

control

blogger

wikiSimCity

(Btw, to write a multi-media Ph.D.,generate art works at any two,randomly selected parts of this spaceand discuss their deltas.)

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How to tame the dimensionality problem:crowd sourcing

You can do more if youtake more folks along withyouMars DVD

– Kendrick,– Burgess,– Markley,– Higgs,– Tripp– Hamming– Altmann,– a gang of consultants

Biofutures DVD– “Rhillip”,– Burgess,– a gang of consultants

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Our institutions activelyblock crowd surfing

Fixated on ownerships or corporate property “rights,”Academic institutions– (read “tenure committees”)– give little credence to

“team players.”

Yet modern media authors– must enlist in an army– to complete multi-dimensional

masterpieces. (And no “team” in “tenure”)

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The open source advantage

Why is open source software so successful?– Testing = $0

Linus’s law– "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”– Given a large enough beta-tester and co-

developer base, almost every problem will becharacterized quickly and the fix will beobvious to someone.

BTW, testing is not some post-hoc bolt-on– Rather, it is feedback to build better products– So multi-media authors aren’t finished when

they hit the “save button”.• Testing is not “design-neutral”

– Experience with hammers, changes hammers• Lucy Suchman’s situated action

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If lots of people are holding the pen,the pen must change

Not “product” but“architecture” forcreating “product(s)”.

Don’t write “stories”,write “dependencies”and “transforms”.

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Other changes

Group think– The gang, including you, negotiates a

shared view of the emerging produceLicensing

– BSD, Creative Commons, GPL,…Tools

– No proprietary product (No Microsoft,no Director)

– No (few) binary formats (the textadvantage)

Environment– Tight version control– Apart from “it”, need installers of it, and

tools that walk the dependence graphsDevelopment process

– Take a depth breath…

e.g. 6 people, 5months, conductingexperiments, writing results,40 page final report plus 2*PP slides

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The development process

Not enough to just write “it”Before writing “it”:– plan the groups activities

After writing “it”: testing– unit test

• test your bits– Integration tests

• Can you bits even connect toother bits

– system test• Does everyone play well

together?– Acceptance tests

• test on user groups• ? multiple platforms/versions

(BTW, “coding” is what youused to call “writing”)

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1/6

1/3

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Do you like the ten peoplesitting next to you?

You’d better:– The curse of dimensionality cometh– Your neighbors just become your

most critical tool for completingyour next multi-media masterpiece.

But before you get together,– Your going to need new pencils– Change how you share/grow ideas– Change how you work, day to day

on a project– Change models of accreditation

• move beyond concepts of “I”,• acknowledge “us.”

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Questions?

Comments?

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FAQ

(frequently asked questions)

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“We are using a COTS product”

COTS = commercial off-the-shelf software– Which, presumably, the developers test.– Right?

U.S.S. Yorktown missile carrier.– Laid low by COTS

September 1997– a divide-by-zero in some manually entered data

in a Windows NT application• (legend has it, the Microsoft Access database program)

– Dead in the water for 2 hours 45 minutes2 May 1997– A previous loss of propulsion– Also due to software.

Note for testing: can youprobe all paths within program as well as all possible user inputs?

But we donít need all that since ....

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“Our multi-media isn’tmanaging nuclear weapons”

No, but Englishfaculty have their own“mission critical”issuesBiofutures.– Not-so-good

version control.Robert Mitchell’stenure reviewcommittee– For several days– Unclear if they were

given wrong disk– One that would

not play

But we donít need all that since ....