20+ key ideas from Sherry Turkle's 2009 book. Highly recommended. Funny how Slideshare forces people to pick one category for a presentation. This is as much about design as it is about education, technology, etc.

1. SIMULATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Sherry Turkle
MIT Press, 2009

2. What does
simulation want?
20+ key ideas

3. “These days, professionals who voice discontent
about simulation in science, engineering, and
design run the risk of being seen as nostalgic or
committed to futile protest.
The early skeptics wanted to preserve the “sacred
spaces”, places where technology might disrupt
sacrosanct traditions linked to core values.”

4. “Twenty years ago, professionals in science and design
flirted with simulations even as they were suspicious of it.
Today, they are wary but wed to it.
An older generation fears that young scientists,
engineers, and designers are “drunk with code”. From
both sides of a generational divide, there is anxiety that
in simulation, something important slips away.
Attitudes towards simulation do not neatly sort by
generation.”

5. “Simulation makes itself easy to
love and difficult to doubt”

6. (By the way, Turkle’s simulation I think today applies
more broadly to computation and can be useful when
thinking about AI, VR, ChatGPT, etc) R.S.

7. “The more powerful our tools
become, the harder it is to imagine
the world without them”

8. “Professional life requires that
one live with the tension of
using technology and
remembering to distrust it”

9. “Screen versions of reality: We accept them
because they are compelling and present
themselves as expressions of our most up-to-date
tools. We accept them because we have them.
They become practical because they are available.
So, even when we have reason to doubt that
screen realities are true, we are tempted to use
them all the same.”

10. “[The 1980s] Both critics and proponents felt the
ground shifting; the fundamentals of design
practice were being called into question. It was a
thrilling, yet confusing time.
Design is a volatile combination of the aesthetic
and the technical.
Over time, factions for and against the computer
have been replaced by individuals expressing
ambivalence about what has been gained and
lost.”

11. “Computer drawings make all buildings look as
though they have been fully considered, designed
down to the last detail.
This creates an illusion of commitment.
Often, when designers object to a computer
system, they are really objecting to how the
machine forces them to abdicate control over
their design.”

12. “I didn’t become an architect to sit in
front of a computer”
-Howard Ramsen

13. “In a Spring 2005 MIT workshop on simulation and
visualization, an MIT architecture professor trained
during the Athena years contrasts designers and
technologists: “I’m absolutely skeptical. Can those
two mentalities exist in the same brain? I haven’t
met the person yet who is a designer and a
programmer.” An MIT student at the workshop
concurs by distinguishing between design logic
and computer logic, complaining that the
codification intrinsic to computer logic inhibits his
creative thinking.”

14. “Across the professions, software has
become increasingly uniform and
black-boxed, even as there is demand
for nonstandardized tools that can
accommodate users with different
intellectual styles”

15. “The fancier the computer system, the
more you start to believe that what comes
out of the machine is just how it should
be. It is just a visceral thing.
At a certain point, the graphics are so
spectacular, the sketches so precise, that
possibilities can feel like inevitabilities.”

16. “In digital format, even
preliminary ideas look
finished”

17. “In simulation, it often turns out that the
first idea wants to be the last idea.
The fine resolution of screen drawing is
more likely to persuade people to accept
it as a fait accompli.”

18. “Beautiful images mislead”

19. “A critical stance toward simulation enforces
modesty.
Computer precision is wrongly taken for
perfection.
As technology becomes more and more sexy,
the problem is that we get lured into it, the
seduction, and we actually come up with what
we think are good displays, but actually they’re
bad”

20. “Simulations are never right. They’re all
wrong. Forget it. That’s it. They’re wrong.
Guaranteed. There is more entropy in the real
world than there is in your computer.” Adam
Luft
He means that they are incomplete. Luft does
not see simulation as a way to see what is
‘true’, but to engage in a dialogue with
code.”

21. “A critical stance is no longer
about vigilance to protect
simulation from error. It is about
living with shadows that bring us
closer to the forms beyond them”

22. “Whitman works in an informed partnership
with simulation. It generates alternate
realities and enables him to do experiments
that would otherwise be impossible.
Whitman makes progress by chastening
simulation, by increasing his understanding of
what it cannot tell, and in the end, deferring to
human judgment.”

23. “How many times have you heard the
story of someone musing about a truly
inspirational vision coming to them while
they were staring at clouds?” –Roberta
Drew

24. “Understanding comes out of
simulation, out of discontents,
and out of nowhere”

25. COMPUTATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Excerpts by: Ricardo Sosa, PhD
ricardo.sosa@monash.edu