Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3272 mails)

[G T Smith <grahamsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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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
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