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Top-level
 Today on Tumblr, Wil Wheaton responded: "[T]here is very much no longer a feeling of 'How can this change/improve my life?' and a constant dread of 'How will this complicate things as I try to maintain privacy and sanity in a world that demands I have this thing to operate.'" Wil finished with, "Cory Doctorow, if you see this and have thoughts, I would LOVE to hear them." 12/ 6 comments
That's what makes the phrase "So easy your mom can use it" particularly awful "Moms" are the kinds of people whose priorities and difficulties are absent from the room when tech designers gather to plan their next product. The needs of "moms" are mostly met by *mastering*, *configuring* and *adapting* technology, because tech doesn't work out of the box for them: https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/19/the-weakest-link/#moms-are-ninjas 14/ (As an alternative, I advocate for "so easy your boss can use it," because your boss gets to call up the IT department and shout, "I don't care what it takes, just make it work!" Your boss can solve problems through raw exercise of authority, without recourse to ingenuity.) 15/ Technology can't be understood separately from technology *users*. This is the key insight in Donald Norman's 2004 book *Emotional Design*, which argued that the ground state of all technology is broken, and the overarching task of tech users is to troubleshoot the things they use: https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#cuckoos-egg 16/ Troubleshooting is both an art and a science: it requires both a methodical approach and creative leaps. The great crisis of troubleshooting is that the more frustrated and angry you are, the harder it is to be methodical *or* creative. Anger turns attention into a narrow tunnel of brittle movements and thinking. 17/ In *Emotional Design*, Norman argues that technology should be *beautiful* and *charming*, because when you *like* a technology that has stopped working, you are able to troubleshoot it in an expansive, creative, way. *Emotional Design* was not merely remarkable for what it said, but for who said it. 18/ |
Gregory's Server
I've got thoughts. I think this all comes back to the Cuecat.
When the Cuecat launched, it was a mixed bag. That's generally true of technology - or, indeed, any product or service. No matter how many variations a corporation offers, they can never anticipate all the ways that you will want or need to use their technology. This is especially true for the users the company values the least - poor people, people in the global south, women, sex workers, etc.
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