Replies: 3 comments
6. Good technology does not require parts.
If the car is bad technology because it has many parts needing repair, then the computer is also bad technology.
I take issue with this point. All technology can break, regardless of its number of parts or frequency of needed repair.
The author's point really seems to be that good technology is inexpensive. If my phone breaks, I do not repair it. I buy a new one. That's fine, but when my computer or my car breaks I'm happy I can get it repaired instead of buying a new one. Parts in machinery are unavoidable. No machines run on magic.
The important issue here is the user interface and what is required of the user. When I boot up I do not also have to turn on the interior fan. To play a CD in the CD-ROM drive I do not have to plug in any wires. I am not dealing with the parts. I deal only with the minimum interface requirements required to operate the machine.
Posted by Jack Schonchin (JS) @ 01/07/2002 02:02 PM EST
Of course, a television, a telephone, and a notebook aren't really the examples the author thinks they are. Telephone and TV are exampes of quite complex technology that we've eventually learned to use. Was it Nielsen or Norman who points out that dialing a phone requires a good deal of effort, memory, and failure-tolerance? I've never seen a TV or remote that is really simple to operate beyond on/off--there's invariably a channel-programming period before the thing will work.
Even a notebook benefits from years of the user developing note-taking schemes that work for her, handwriting skills painfully acquired as a child, and mental classification abilities to distill, say, a lecture into notes that are meaningful a week later.
That this comes from an educational viewpoint is understandable. Technology in education has been the dumping ground for half-baked ideas since long before CDROMs. For every good use of instructional technology, it's easy to find dozens that are total wastes of time. I agree with Cliff Stoll that technology in education has been an almost total "snake-oil" sales job: it has few, if any, demonstrable benefits to students, and it's rarely accompanied by even rudimentary tech support.
Posted by Andrew @ 01/09/2002 06:24 AM EST
Of course, a television, a telephone, and a notebook aren't really the examples the author thinks they are. Telephone and TV are exampes of quite complex technology that we've eventually learned to use. Was it Nielsen or Norman who points out that dialing a phone requires a good deal of effort, memory, and failure-tolerance? I've never seen a TV or remote that is really simple to operate beyond on/off--there's invariably a channel-programming period before the thing will work.
Even a notebook benefits from years of the user developing note-taking schemes that work for her, handwriting skills painfully acquired as a child, and mental classification abilities to distill, say, a lecture into notes that are meaningful a week later.
That this comes from an educational viewpoint is understandable. Technology in education has been the dumping ground for half-baked ideas since long before CDROMs. For every good use of instructional technology, it's easy to find dozens that are total wastes of time. I agree with Cliff Stoll that technology in education has been an almost total "snake-oil" sales job: it has few, if any, demonstrable benefits to students, and it's rarely accompanied by even rudimentary tech support.
Posted by Andrew @ 01/09/2002 06:24 AM EST