Computers have come far over the past few decades and allowed humans to increase efficiency. Despite how far humans have come developing computers, reading excerpts from Theodor Nelson’s “Computer Lib/Dream Machines” and working with computers this summer have both made it clear people don’t know nearly as much as they could and even should about computers. Most people use what is available to them as illustrated by the above web comic. This may not necessarily be what is the most convenient. A vast amount of unrealized potential lies within computers and technology. Most people use computers to surf the web, create word documents, and share artwork, this isn’t all computers can be used for. Douglas Engelbart touches on the productivity of computers in his article "Augmenting the Human Intellect" by discussing his referencing system using "thought kernels" and using the way people think to create a useful program. Theoretically everyone is capable of creating software to fit his or her needs. Individualized software would be the most effective way of increasing productivity because the program would be designed to promote productivity in each particular user. Unfortunately sharing information from an individualized program would become problematic. For example if you do not own Microsoft Word, then you would be incapable of opening a .doc document in the same format the creator intended it to be seen in. Sharing individualized programs becomes problematic because a person may not understand how to use the program that you designed for you or as Tim Berners-Lee puts it, your program may contain viruses. Sharing information is part of the reason the Web exists according to Tim Berners-Lee. If people could not share the information there would be little point to creating it. This is why free services such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. exist in such quantity. As Lev Manovich discusses in his article "Art after Web 2.0," these free services provide a common platform for people to share information and ideas about art and other things. This idea of sharing information is part of what has helped us advance so far with computers but because common platforms exist, people do not need to create individualized programs to suit their own needs. It is clear some productivity and efficiency potentials of computers have been sacrificed to allow the population as a whole to use computers to share work, art, and what they did last night.
Though both you and Ted Nelson seem to think that people can and should learn more about their computers, I would argue that people can and should learn about a lot of things, but our society functions because we don't. We only encourage some people to become doctors and lawyers and dancers. Yes, I could go to medical school. And assuming I worked hard enough I could probably graduate too. But our society functions because we have specialists. So instead of tons and tons of mediocre doctors who don't really want to be doctors, we have a bunch of really good doctors. Yes, sometimes people slip through the cracks, but in general we are more efficient and happier because we don't all try to fix all the other humans, whether or not we're capable of learning how. I will continue to leave surgery to the doctors and computer making and fixing and improving to the people who make, fix, and improve computers. And maybe they'll come see me when the want some sarcasm or handmade paper.
ReplyDeleteA faction of new media scholars believe that Facebook and all the other populist platforms are easy to police main roads. Instead, they argue, every community should write their own software and establish their own niche on the Internet. This would require everyone to learn how to write software or apps. Is it possible?
ReplyDeleteI really liked the angle you took with this. I hadn’t thought about the result of creating and establishing these free services like facebook was that we were actually limiting ourselves technologically. Although it is important to have easy ways of communication with these services, we are ultimately repressing the potential we can do with technology.
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