Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Sunday 23 December 2007 12:51, Stevens wrote:
On Saturday 22 December 2007 17:27, Randall R Schulz wrote:
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 Ahhh, the Holy Grail of computing. When you truly have such a machine, it will probably be imbued with enough intelligence to tell it's operator to piss off, it won't work for an idiot.
That would be its right, don't you think? And it would have moral agency and be subject to our laws and all that.
However, what you describe is the Holy Grail of AI, not of that utilitarian computing. The latter just wants computers and other IT that works. At least, that's what I want and want to create.
The problem is (to use my automobile analogy again), we have users who can't even be bothered to learn the difference between the brake and accelerator pedals, and do the equivalent of driving around with the parking brake still set, and then complain loudly that the rear brakes were destroyed when they caught on fire. I sincerely have no sympathy for people who remain ignorant by choice. I've taught users how to write simple shell scripts, and modify them to experiment (making the originals read-only(!) so that they get in the habit of doing experiments in a way that doesn't break working code)... and watched over the course of year as they discovered how a LITTLE bit of learning, and an occasional question can make their work days IMMENSELY easier. All that's needed is JUST ENOUGH curiosity to ask "instead of playing mouse-jockey for the next 3 hours, is there a easier or more reliable way of doing this?" When I write a shell-script to help a user...I ALWAYS spend some time showing them the script, and showing them how it all fits together and works. There's a strategy at work here... eventually, they figure out enough that they realize it's easier to just experiment themselves rather than to sit through yet another one of my explanations of how my code solves their problem for them. With Windows users, of course, that option rarely exists. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org