Week 3 Reflection
Reflection Week 3
Article 1 "Being Analog" (formerly published as Chapter 7 of The Invisible Computer) by Donald Norman (1997)
This article only slightly changed my pre-existing view of the man-machine relationship. I tend to see the line between man and machine growing more and more invisible. I feel we are starting to treat machines with respect as if they have feelings and starting to treat humans as if they are machines with no feelings. :)
In the subheading "Humans versus Computers", an interesting point is made about becoming a truly well-educated citizen. Each generation grows upon the heritage left behind by previous generations and while this advances us, it also sets us back. Time increases the amount to be learned and while it takes us several decades now, how long will it take us in the future?
My favorite example in this article is when it askes us "How many animals of each type did Moses take on the Ark?" Yes, I totally fell for it, Moses wasn't on the Ark-Noah was. But our human brains saw the INTENDED question not the technical question the way a computer would.
Taylor invented the concept of scientific management which lent to humans being treated like machines and in my opinion has unfortunately lent a strong foundation to American work that is difficult to look past even now. But we know people are people-not machines.
Even though this article is almost a decade old, I think most of its content is still very applicable to us today especially because human logic has not changed. (In the greater issue of nature versus nuture, I usually tend to side with the nuture point of view.)
Article 2 "Introduction to Internet Architecture and Institutions" from Berkman Center for Internet and Society by Ethan Zuckerman and Andrew McLaughin (Aug 2003)
I didn't like this article as much as the first one but it brought out some ah-ha's for me concerning the "behind-the-scenes" internet cooperation. There were lots of acronyms but they did a great job at explaining them with the use of examples/analogies. Already knowing about TCP/IP, I found the information on routers pretty cool.
Using the example of two guys just sending an email to eachother around the globe and then disecting the process held the ideas of packets being sent back and forth cohesively for me. But overall, I found this article on the dry side in comparison to the first.
Discussion Questions:
* How long will it take us to be a "truly well-educated citizen" in 50 years? 100 years? Justify.
* Do you think Taylorism has helped mankind overall? Explain.
* What can we actively do to separate man and machine but still have effecient work accomplished?
posted by Gina @ 1:11 PM
2 Comments:
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Hey Gina,
What an interesting thought, “ I feel we are starting to treat machines with respect as if they have feelings and starting to treat humans as if they are machines with no feelings.” I’m not sure I follow how we are starting to treat machines as though they have feelings? Do you mean in that we are working toward creating computers and software that have artificial intelligence?
I can however, certainly can see your point of treating humans as though they were machines. Now more than ever in this “information age” era we live in, the emphasis seems more about the amount of knowledge an individual has acquired vs. what an individual can contribute. There seems to be a disconnect between creativity and acquired knowledge. It certainly seems that the emphasis is not on creativity and ingenuity, but on scores and degrees (by and large certainly not exclusively). I will certainly be seeking an employer that not only values acquired knowledge but creativity and ingenuity in accomplishing tasks as well. Or maybe I’ll just start my own business :).
Overall, I really disliked the Analog article. I felt it was very poorly written. Even though I tried to keep an open mind the author lost me as a reader within the first few pages, where I found him to be making hasty generalizations, without fairly considering other viewpoints.
Yes, I to fell for the Noah and Moses trick (you and I of all people should have got that one, heh..heh.. :).
I also found the second article to be a bit dry. Someone, somewhere made the point (I think Professor Gill), that we should have a basic understanding of how the “tools” we use operate, to truly make the most efficient use of them. For this purpose I found the second article to be excellent, and really for the material, it wasn’t as dry as it could have been.
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