The trade-off between awareness and interruption is a crucial aspect in network fault notifiers: Low severity alarms should not distract operators from other primary tasks, however it might be crucial that operators promptly react to critical notifications. A notification system should hence determine when a particular interruption is appropriate and how it should be presented. In this direction, this paper presents a multistep design path beginning from the objective of designing a proof-of-concept for a glanceable alarm notification component for telecommunication network management systems based on a peripheral display approach. In particular the goal was a notifier guided by severity-based strategies and offering the information expressiveness of a one-notification-at-the-time perspective while enriching it with overview capabilities to guarantee (possibly subliminal) long-term local and global content comprehension and prompt reaction only when the interruption from the foreground task is dictated by the fault severity. A first design macro-phase led to the simple yet effective GLANCE (GLanceable Alarm Notification for a User Centered Experience) model, based on a visual coding technique oriented to comprehension and reaction, and a transition strategy oriented to interruptions and reaction. A second design macro-phase studied the application of GLANCE to a personal customizable multichannel notification tool and to a service-oriented fault monitor for digital terrestrial television broadcasting networks.

In Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, Deleuze and Guattari point to three characteristics of minor literature: deterritorialisation of language, immediate connection between the individual and political, and the collective assemblage of enunciation. The artist, because of his/her minor and weak position, can create a people never existed, a people to come. This chapter deals with the concept of becoming minor, specifically with reference to cinema. The goal is to make clear and deepen the connection between minority and the ‘power of false’ (Time-Image). Modern cinema unhinges the element of truthfulness, that is the encounter of the two points of view, thereby making impossible any definite identification. The power of the false offers to the characters, as well as the director, the political possibility to invent her story into ‘the flagrant offence of making up legends’.