Music 256A: Week 7 Reading
Derek Chung
Music 256a
Week 7 Reading
I'd like to start by taking the concept of means and ends and argue that we need other people to live.
During high school, I took a duel credit sociology class. There are two main concepts I want to outline: nature and nurture. Nature can be defined as our most basic, primitive qualities (it is part of our nature to be hungry when we haven't eaten for a certain period of time). I'll define nurture as the traits we develop as a result of the enviornment around us. For example, we wouldn't know how to speak our native language if our parents didn't nurture us in it. I'd like to focus on nurture more specifically within this context.
People with a lack of nurture have a tendency to be unsatisfied. As a very extreme example, feral children are children who have been neglected by their parents from a young age and have little to no interactions with humans. As a result, these children are often malnourished, cannot speak, and behave like animals. Here are 10 shocking cases of feral children today. The lack of human interaction at a very young age is what causes these children to exhibit behaviors that wouldn't even be considered human.
A less extreme example is during the vietnam war (surprisingly). During the war, some US soilders were sent into the jungle to listen for enemy troops. They spent months without human contact, surviving in the jungle. If they heard any noise indicating that the North Vietnamese army was present, they would call in an airstrike to firebomb the position. Typically, for a couple months, everything was fine. After that, the soilders started to hear stuff you wouldn't normally hear, like a party when there presumably wasn't human civilization around.
I wanted to use these two examples to emphasize the importance of human interaction. I'd even make the point that our nature responds positively to other people. Social interactions are what make us human. Regardless of our situation, we need to feel like we're with other people. If the design is poor, then we don't get the same authenticity that we would by interacting with others in real life. For example, I like to play first-person shooters over MOBAs or card games because FPS games often have microphones that allow you to talk to your teammates. MOBAs and online card games make me feel like I'm by myself (except when I'm getting spammed for being a bad teammate). I even find myself not enjoying the shooter game when my teammates don't have microphones.
It's not bad to play a game where you don't talk to others. But social interactions are just as important, even more important than some items of Maslows Heirarchy of Needs, because those are what make us human.
Music 256a
Week 7 Reading
Chapter 7: Social Design
Principle 7.1: Design for human connection (not as a means-to-an-end, but as an end-in-itself).I'd like to start by taking the concept of means and ends and argue that we need other people to live.
During high school, I took a duel credit sociology class. There are two main concepts I want to outline: nature and nurture. Nature can be defined as our most basic, primitive qualities (it is part of our nature to be hungry when we haven't eaten for a certain period of time). I'll define nurture as the traits we develop as a result of the enviornment around us. For example, we wouldn't know how to speak our native language if our parents didn't nurture us in it. I'd like to focus on nurture more specifically within this context.
People with a lack of nurture have a tendency to be unsatisfied. As a very extreme example, feral children are children who have been neglected by their parents from a young age and have little to no interactions with humans. As a result, these children are often malnourished, cannot speak, and behave like animals. Here are 10 shocking cases of feral children today. The lack of human interaction at a very young age is what causes these children to exhibit behaviors that wouldn't even be considered human.
A less extreme example is during the vietnam war (surprisingly). During the war, some US soilders were sent into the jungle to listen for enemy troops. They spent months without human contact, surviving in the jungle. If they heard any noise indicating that the North Vietnamese army was present, they would call in an airstrike to firebomb the position. Typically, for a couple months, everything was fine. After that, the soilders started to hear stuff you wouldn't normally hear, like a party when there presumably wasn't human civilization around.
I wanted to use these two examples to emphasize the importance of human interaction. I'd even make the point that our nature responds positively to other people. Social interactions are what make us human. Regardless of our situation, we need to feel like we're with other people. If the design is poor, then we don't get the same authenticity that we would by interacting with others in real life. For example, I like to play first-person shooters over MOBAs or card games because FPS games often have microphones that allow you to talk to your teammates. MOBAs and online card games make me feel like I'm by myself (except when I'm getting spammed for being a bad teammate). I even find myself not enjoying the shooter game when my teammates don't have microphones.
It's not bad to play a game where you don't talk to others. But social interactions are just as important, even more important than some items of Maslows Heirarchy of Needs, because those are what make us human.
