Comments on: Split-Screen Computer Use?

By: Lou Paglia

Lou Paglia — Sat, 12 May 2007 02:22:07 +0000

Stephen: I can't say I see the value in the one person driving and the other watching approach to the experiment. Perhaps inconclusive results was the best possible outcome.

As far as the "virtue of the periphery", sure sounds a lot like "virtue of eavesdropping". It does make you wonder how much valuable contributions are made from things "overheard" in the workplace where employees were able to excel at that task-at-hand with information they would otherwise not have been knowledgeable.

Thanks for sending me the link to your blog with additional information on the topic: Confronting the Ghost of Knowledge Management Past. I will certainly take a look...

By: Lou Paglia

Lou Paglia — Sat, 12 May 2007 02:22:00 +0000

Stephen: I can’t say I see the value in the one person driving and the other watching approach to the experiment. Perhaps inconclusive results was the best possible outcome.
As far as the “virtue of the periphery”, sure sounds a lot like “virtue of eavesdropping”. It does make you wonder how much valuable contributions are made from things “overheard” in the workplace where employees were able to excel at that task-at-hand with information they would otherwise not have been knowledgeable.
Thanks for sending me the link to your blog with additional information on the topic: Confronting the Ghost of Knowledge Management Past. I will certainly take a look…

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:43:04 +0000

I hope there is a critical mass of readers who remember Terry Gilliam's future-technology vision in Brazil, based on really small monitors with really large magnifying glasses; I could not shake that image while reading the above report!

On a more serious note, back before I was a member of the community, Xerox PARC ran some experiments in what I heard John Seely Brown call "shoulder-to-shoulder software development." This involved two people sharing a single workstation. The screen was not split but could support any number of windows of any size and rectangular shape. This was supposed to be an experiment in collaborative work, but I do not recall any conclusive results coming out of the experiment. There was only one keyboard and mouse, meaning that, while the "driving" could be shared, there was only one "driver" at a time.

I suspect that Brown wanted this to be an experiment to demonstrate the "virtue of the periphery." The hypothesis was that, wherever your attention happened to be focused, you could be very good at detecting cues that something on the periphery might help you with your focal concern. (Beyond the domain of the screen, this involves things like overhearing something from a cubicle within earshot.) I definitely "believe in" this hypothesis, even if it his not yet been resolved through the discipline of scientific method; and I have plenty of personal anecdotes about that "virtue of the periphery." My question about sharing a workstation or a screen is whether that leads to constraining the scope of the periphery, in which case it becomes less "peripheral," so to speak. This strikes me as a case in which people have been asking "What can we do that's really cool?" when they should have been asking "What is the real problem that needs to be solved?"

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:43:00 +0000

I hope there is a critical mass of readers who remember Terry Gilliam’s future-technology vision in Brazil, based on really small monitors with really large magnifying glasses; I could not shake that image while reading the above report!
On a more serious note, back before I was a member of the community, Xerox PARC ran some experiments in what I heard John Seely Brown call “shoulder-to-shoulder software development.” This involved two people sharing a single workstation. The screen was not split but could support any number of windows of any size and rectangular shape. This was supposed to be an experiment in collaborative work, but I do not recall any conclusive results coming out of the experiment. There was only one keyboard and mouse, meaning that, while the “driving” could be shared, there was only one “driver” at a time.
I suspect that Brown wanted this to be an experiment to demonstrate the “virtue of the periphery.” The hypothesis was that, wherever your attention happened to be focused, you could be very good at detecting cues that something on the periphery might help you with your focal concern. (Beyond the domain of the screen, this involves things like overhearing something from a cubicle within earshot.) I definitely “believe in” this hypothesis, even if it his not yet been resolved through the discipline of scientific method; and I have plenty of personal anecdotes about that “virtue of the periphery.” My question about sharing a workstation or a screen is whether that leads to constraining the scope of the periphery, in which case it becomes less “peripheral,” so to speak. This strikes me as a case in which people have been asking “What can we do that’s really cool?” when they should have been asking “What is the real problem that needs to be solved?”