Observations

Observe interactions between people and people, people and the environment, people and machines. Record your observations in the blog.

People using self-checkout machines at the grocery store is a really fantastic interaction between humans and machines. There's this notion that the self-checkout is faster and replaces the human teller. What is most often the case, however, is an experience filled with mechanized error which usually brings another, very annoyed, human onto the scene to arbitrarily scan an access card while the person waits in line wishing they were dead. 

At the phospherous mine we visited with Steve Rowell humans and machines are pulverizing and blending environment. Like children in a mud hole. Machines as an extension of humans interrupting environment and shaping it. What is an environment after being shaped? Paper with a human mark is not paper but drawing, or painting. 

People with people regarding machines and environment, I return to the phospherous mine where our PR host desperately exhausted his breath to convince us (himself) what they were doing was in no way harmful. Nobody on the trip ever accused their operation of being detrimental (though we all have our perspectives). He repeatedly asked us if we "still thought they were the bad guys"; met with silence.

People and environment - relavant to my mini project. Repurpose Project receives donations of unwanted building materials, electronics, and like...pretty much everything else under the sun. Rather than putting these things in the landfill folks know where to take it for their trash to become another one's treasure. The workers at Repurpose interact with environment as they act as a reservoir to keep these things out of landfills and challenge the affordance of objects and the environment of the business place.