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Permeable Portals: Designing congenial web sites for the e-societyRichard Coyne, John Lee and Martin ParkerPage 1 ¦ Page 2 ¦ Page 3 ¦ Page 4 ¦ Printer-friendly version 6. Portal as fetishBut what if we have a multiplicity, an over-indulgence, a surfeit, of portals? As we have already hinted, the web can be thought not only as a series of spaces into which one gains access via a special site or link, but as a surfeit of interconnected links. This is not just to give priority to links rather than nodes, but to acknowledge the place of the web as a matrix of entrances and exits, a profusion of links, with the content of a page as an ever-receding and transient moment in the relentless quest for information. Here we would have something of the evasive character of text as perpetrated in the rhetoric of hypertextuality, and something akin to the elusive concept of the rhizome, as promoted by Deleuze and Guattari [16]. Were we to translate this surfeit back to the architectural metaphor of spaces and doors then we might end up with an architecture such as that depicted in fig. 5, or the cute but clever fetishisation of doors in the animated film Monsters Inc. But portals do not exist in isolation. Unlike the city gate, many digital channels can be open at once, some streaming content, others offering potential, some affording glimpses, others gaping wide. It is the multiplicity of portals and their various conditions that provides the value of networked computing, as we integrate, synthesis, compare, and juxtapose. These are common processes for designers, who are used to drawing stimulation from a promiscuous range of sources. Now the Internet provides this profusion, which is not without dangers. But who, as an author, can resist the temptation to use a Web search engine as an instant means of checking up on a “fact,” the usage of a word, or conjure up an appropriate image? Then, when these images a thrown together we have a “portal” into something new. Permeability and profusion enable this to happen.  Fig. 5. Portal fetish: a series of portals in navigable three-dimensional space. Images by Armeet Panesar. 7. Conclusion on riskWe have presented a polemic on the idea of permeability. Permeability is risky, but rendered feasible simply by the fact that a site is actively in use. In the risk society [17], leaving the door of your house open to the street is hazardous, but less so if there is a stream of active comings and goings, and if trusted neighbours are passing by. Crowds are not always safe places, but active communities where people are watching out for each other are as secure as it can get. Architecture and urbanism have long been suspicious of fortress design, where higher fences and more CCTV cameras are meant to reduce antisocial behaviour. The result is barren cityscapes made up of impermeable walls, uninhabitable edges, and devoid of people and activity. Where they succeed in barring delinquency at all, they also exclude carers and concerned citizens. In the case of our work-in-progress site, security is maintained due to its constant use by a community. A stranger would be challenged, which is not to say un-welcomed. But what about the holiday periods, when the site is barely in use, or if the site simply peters out into disuse and we forget to check it. This is when security is most likely to be an issue. This is the downtown office precinct on a Sunday, or the holiday camp out of season. There is a temporal dimension. The next phase is to configure our work-in-progress web site so that it exhibits successive degrees of permeability depending on use. So if there is a period when the site is hardly in use then the gate swings shut, and you need the password to reopen it. As long as messages are being posted, and there is friendly traffic, then the restrictions diminish: your password cookie has a longer life, or you don’t require a password at all. This is an automated solution to a low risk problem, but one that could be extended to other corporate and institutional contexts, as one strategy to encourage permeable portals. AcknowledgementThanks are due to Bruce Currey for drawing the matter of inclusion and permeability to our attention. Footnotes16. Bolter, J.D., 2001. Writing Space : Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, N.J.: Tapia, op. cit: Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F., 1988. A Thousand Plateaus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Athlone Press, London: Smith, R.G., 2003. World City Actor-Networks. In Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 25-44. return 17. Beck, U., 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage, London. return | |