The text “Maiking by Making strange” by Genevieve Bell (Bell is an anthropologist and researcher who has worked in the field of technology and culture for over 20 years. She is currently a professor at the Australian National University and a Senior Fellow at Intel Corporation) is about how we can desing things so that they work diffrently, from how we’d expect them to. The text mainly makes examples from the household, looking at different households from around the world. It shows how technology has changed the structure of the day.

The author invites us to design things differently than we are used to. In this way, one can discover the essential use of an object and gain insights into why things are the way they are. Only when you change their purpose do you realise their true use. An example would be: a smartphone with an unconventional surface, e.g. a touchless surface that uses hand gestures, or a keyboard that requires the user to type upside down.

As I read the text, I look around me and wonder how I can defamiliarise my laptop, for example. No more keyboard, only voice input instead? Instead of a display, everything is printed out? What exactly is the point behind all this? It quickly becomes clear to me what the method can bring. You can see why something is the way it is. And if you change it, you can draw attention to it or make people think.

My own Notes:

defamiliarization = makeing an object in a diffrent than know way, so you have to adapt again to use it

• “art removes objects from the automatism of perception”

drudgery? = Schufterei

By defamiliarization one can better understand why and how e certain object is used. By chageing its tipical use, one recognizes what really was the use. It tho isn’t a scientific Method!

Entertainment technologies appear to be a greater priority than task-based technologies.