Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction (Hardcover)

by Paul Dourish (Author) "It is a truism that computers are becoming faster and more powerful all the time..." (more)
Key Phrases: Illuminating Light, Media Lab, Locales Framework (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Engagingly written...."
— R. Keith Sawyer, Philosophical Psychology

"Important reading for anyone engaged in designing computer-based systems to support human activities... full of interesting ideas and insights."
— Richard Mateosian, IEEE Micro

Product Description
Computer science as an engineering discipline has been spectacularly successful. Yet it is also a philosophical enterprise in the way it represents the world and creates and manipulates models of reality, people, and action. In this book Paul Dourish addresses the philosophical bases of human-computer interaction. He looks at how what he calls "embodied interaction"-—an approach to interacting with software systems that emphasizes skilled, engaged practice rather than disembodied rationality—-reflects the phenomenological approaches of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and other twentieth-century philosophers. The phenomenological tradition emphasizes the primacy of natural practice over abstract cognition in everyday activity. Dourish shows how this perspective can shed light on the foundational underpinnings of current research on embodied interaction. He looks in particular at how tangible and social approaches to interaction are related, how they can be used to analyze and understand embodied interaction, and how they could affect the design of future interactive systems.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262041960
• ISBN-13: 978-0262041966
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,394,188 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very clear, very interesting, very inspiring, but also a little like a religion, July 7, 2007

By	twark maine (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction (Bradford Books) (Paperback)

One of the strong sides of this book is that it makes it really easy for the reader - things are generally summarised and repeated exactly in the right places. It can serve as an introduction to the world of phenomenology, sociology and philosophy as pertaining to Human-Computer Interfaces.
It felt more like a mixture between a proposal and an introductory philosophical treatise than an overview of the current state of the field (it carries the word "foundations" in its title for a reason).
After reading it however, I still wasn't convinced that "social computing", "tangible computing" and "embodied interaction" really add up to a construct that can effectively inform the design of new HCI devices even though this claim was repeated throughout the book almost like a prayer wheel.
Interestingly, while the book points out the meaning of embodyment in already existing work practices, it fails to give any strategies on how these theories can actually be applied to the design of effective new HCI devices that go beyond the shiny toys produced at MIT Media Lab.
The loophole seems to be that embodied practices can only arise once the tools are defined, so that it is hard to predict what practices will be used once it's out there - since the way we use tools is largely improvisatory, as Dourish points out.
I also can not stop to wonder if the term "embodyment" is akin to "multi-media" - a belief system that can mean so many things that it effectively desintegrates sooner or later.

So, while it left me not exactly sure that there really is another end to it, it was certainly worth and inspiring to work through this book in a thorough manner - I now feel courageous enough to put my nose into "Being and Time" by Heidegger.
A friendly way to get your brain going!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good if a little heady, January 3, 2007

By	Michael Bernstein (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction (Bradford Books) (Paperback)

This is one of the more influential books to grace the HCI academic's shelf in recent years. Dourish's thesis, that tangible and social computing have their genesis in a sense of embeddedness in our real world and not some foreign, constructed environment known as "The OS," is stimulating material but does not dramatically change my outlook on the topic. However, it does a good job of providing useful terms and theory to support our intuition surrounding why TUIs and CSCW are useful things. I also believe that the author's goal of providing a sound philosophical and theoretical groundwork for HCI in general is a great idea, as there are few works that deliver well on this promise. As someone with limited exposure to computer-supported cooperative work before reading this book, I have to say that Dourish also has some excellent (and very readable) reviews of the most important literature in both tangible and social computing, giving a newcomer solid ground from which to consider new research.

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a major work on the human/computer Interface, January 2, 2002

By	J. T. Riley "Certified Space Cadet" (Baltimore, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a major work on the redesign of the human/computer interface. It is well written but very deep. Excellent academic research is clearly demonstrate throughout. I would not say, however, that it is an easy read.

Engineering research does not generally have to be as strongly academically founded as scientific research. The controlling factor is "does it work," not how does it relate to previous work. This tendency leads to problems when it is necessary to do multidisciplinary work involving both engineering and science. The redesign of the human/computer interface is just such a problem.

As an engineer working independently in this field, I have often wished for the time and resources to do proper academic studies. Paul Dourish has now done them for me. All my future publications will have to show consistency with this book, show they are clearly outside the area covered by this book, or show the book is wrong. The last alternative is most unlikely. I think I can show my work, based on Darwinism and ontology, complies with the first option. I am certain that my work will be stronger for this effort.