On 25 Sep 98 at 8:32, xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu wrote:
>
> Having read the first two chapters of Mind as Action I keep getting
> the feeling that this book is talking to somebody else. I'm just
> overhearing. Why? Well as one example I read at the bottom of p.59:
> "An example of how a cultural tool may actually have been designed
> to impede our performance in ways that have escaped our conscious
> reflection can be found in the very instrument I am now..." and I
> expectantly turn the page, hoping for something subtle and
> substantial about genres of academic writing as cultural tools that
> impede... and find two pages of QUERTY-bashing.
well, it's a rather popular example; I sort of like it
because it challenges people's intuitive belief that the artifacts
they use are *always* the product of conscious design and
development, as it is argued in the book...
consider the following: would you get on plane if they told you that
they are testing some sort of new beta autopilot software?
nope; in fact, this is a silly question to ask; why? Because that's
not how things work (or are *supposed* to work); we could not
tolerate this type of testing cause it's too risky: waiting for the
planes to start falling from the sky to discover the
bugs is not really a very good idea... the point is that we all
expect efficient and error free performance when we use
certain artifacts and we tend to assume that a lot of thinking and
effort has been devoted to their development, but as Jim claims we
are largely 'ingorant' and 'unreflective' consumers of these tools.
I find the idea plausible, cause when I first read about the qwerty
story I was amazed because I usually thought that we devise
artifacts to make it easy on ourselves...
>Moreover, the book
> assumes stuff about its reader: "unless you have heard about the
> Dvorak or other keyboards, you are likely to have a misguided theory
> about why the QUERTY keyboard is the one made available to you, a
> theory that assumes that someone designed the QUERTY keyboard to
> make typing easy and fast."
> Now, I cannot remember having much of ANY theory about keyboards
> before I read Papert's Mindstorms back in 85, because that was when
> my life trajectory brought me both into keyboarding and reading
> acadedemic stuff.
well, I don't remember having *any* theory either - which makes me
an 'ignorant' and 'unreflective' consumer of keyboards, but the
point is that I was assuming that the keyboard was optimized for
speed and/or convenience; this was not an explicit assumption and I
don't recall ever thinking about it; it was only in a touch-typing
course I followed that they mentioned that the arrangement of keys
was not optimal for speed...
why was I assuming that? I have no clue...
>Papert writes (on his way to a bit of
> BASIC-bashing): "The top row of alphabetic keys of the standard
> typewriter reads QUERTY. For me this symbolizes the way in which
> technology can all too often serve not as a force for progress but
> for keeping things stuck. The QUERTY arrangement has no rational
> explanation, only a historical one. It was introduced in response to
> a problem in the early days of the typewriter: The keys used to jam.
> The idea was to minimize the collision problem by separating those
> keys that followed one another frequently. Just a few years later,
> general improvments in the technology removed tha jamming problem,
> but QWERTY stuck." I have a feeling that similar QUERTY-bashing is a
> commonplace in more popular computer literature, although I cannot
> remember having actually read the Dvorak story before.
> Of course, as a commonplace QUERTY-bashing can be appropriated by
> anybody who cares to use it. The stone in my shoe is rather the
> disciplining of the reader: either you see things the way the book
> does, or you are misguided.
>
> ??
> Eva
well, I think that the point is that artifacts are not
always the product of conscious design; a lot of other
contextual factors are involved in their design and development as it
is argued in the book;
consider the following:
It took M$ 10 years to come up with an operating system as
user-friendly and stable as Apple's. By all accounts
Windows95/98 does not compare to the MacOS but today M$ dominates the
market. How come?
A number of academic institutions in the Netherlands have decided
that they would neither support Mac users nor make
any Apple hardware/software purchases anymore; eventually
all Mac users would have to switch to wintel machines. Why?
Poor marketing is a reason; improper planning and strategic decision
making is another (see Levy's 'Insanely Great' book; Wired's June
1997 issue); the bottom line is that the worst hardware/software
company thrived.
Apart from 'ignorant' and 'unreflective' consumers, are we
'irrational' too? I mean, what's wrong with us?
Regards,
Ilias
_______________________________________________
Ilias Karasavvidis
Department of Curriculum Technology
Faculty of Educational Science and Technology
University of Twente, P.O. Box 217
7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
Voice: +31534894473
Fax: +31534892895
Email: Karasavvidis who-is-at edte.utwente.nl
http://130.89.40.26/www
http://130.89.40.26/ilias
"The ancient Greeks did not know the main thing
about themselves, that they were ancient Greeks"
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin
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