-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Randall R Schulz wrote: > On Saturday 22 December 2007 15:53, James Knott wrote: >> Randall R Schulz wrote: >>> On Saturday 22 December 2007 15:14, James Knott wrote: >>>> ...
<snip> >>> Shall we deny access to these things to people who cannot pass a >>> test on their inner workings? >>> >>> No, it is the responsibility of the practitioners of IT to make its >>> artifacts accessible and useable to people without the need for an >>> understanding of the inner workings of those technologies. >>> >>> >>> Randall Schulz <snip> > Productivity? This is not about productivity. This is about access to > information. > <snip> > What you're really talking about is a value judgement. But you don't > have the right to dictate to the user of an everyday consumer > technology the standards of understanding of the underlying technology > that is required to avail one's self of the benefits of that > technology. > <snip> > We're talking about everyday, end users. Everything from school children > to harried parents to senior citizens. > > If IT professionals cannot make this technology self-evident, they have > failed. > > And so far, we have far too many failures to answer for and rectify. > > > Randall Schulz I have followed this thread with some interest. While I agree with the comments about value judgements, I think the comments on I.T. Professionals are a bit harsh. There is a branch of academic research into what was originally called the Man Machine Interface (usually called MMI) it may be called something different now. This not purely an I.T area and disciplines such as cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and mathematics are involved, and computing is only one area of interest. To give very crude and extremely broad summary of the underlying problem. The computer presents and uses information in a formally logically structure in a highly literal manner. Logic is fairly limited as a reasoning process. If human beings used only formal logic to reason it is rather unlikely that we would have got round to working out that we could make fire by banging rocks together. (c.f. Hume and the Induction Problem)... Logical reasoning is fairly alien to most humans. Humans use much more complex cognitive processes to understand their world and communicate. We have a limited understanding of what they are and how they work, but that is a different issue. Basically in the computer human interaction the computer is the 'idiot' (and not only an 'idiot' an alien 'idiot) and as can be observed from some messages on this list, some people have a bit of a problem talking to those they perceive to be idiots. A problem could be restated as not such as getting people to communicate with computers, but getting computers to communicate with people. The latter is very hard thing to to do, (partly because have not really worked out how to do this with people yet :-) ).... - -- ============================================================================== I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone. Bjarne Stroustrup ============================================================================== -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHb47VasN0sSnLmgIRAleyAKDOPl7b6gF3+Nf/uABmDGJUHnWh1ACg5ccE SXFt5sJoliB8upmgpkT2sZY= =qay7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
