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Slide 2 of 20

Let me begin by setting the context for my talk with a couple of images. The first is an advertisement for an unnamed computer company, taken from a personal computing magazine some years back.

The ad expresses three common assumptions, each of which I think we should question:

1. The answer to the question that the ad asks us is self-evident.
Instead we should take it seriously, as empirical rather than rhetorical.

2. Each new medium will completely displace those that came before.
Instead we need to assume, and aspire to support, a mix of heterogeneous media.

3. We can answer the question simply by considering each artifact as a singular object, floating in white space.
We can only fully understand artifacts in the social and material environments of their use.