Question Technology

Don Norman on Filling Space with Technology

Design and user interface guru Don Norman writes in a recent column about how we rush to fill empty spaces with new technology, when sometimes those spaces are better left unfilled.  Excerpt:

Holes, gaps, and voids are essential to civilized life. They give us respite from the press of modern civilization, returning us to ourselves, with our own thoughts and our own resources. It is the space between things that allows us to be at peace with the world, to be in silence, to be undisturbed. Many things need to be done by people, by us. Doing gives a sense of accomplishment, of participation, of belonging, Doing, thinking, dreaming: all are needs best left unfilled by products and designs.

We need more unmet needs, not less. How many times do the never-ending ethnographic studies coupled with ever-eager design groups lead to unwanted, unnecessary, overburdening, and environmentally insensitive products? How many times are these unmet needs best left unmet? Why must we rush to fill the essential voids in our lives?

Link: Filling Much Needed Holes

Book Notes

I recently read Tarleton Gillespie's Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture.  It's a remarkably comprehensive study of issues surrounding digital copyright.  He gets beyond the simplistic rhetoric heard from both sides to look at the broader story in historical, political, and social terms.  On digital rights management (DRM), in particular, he discusses how the strategy has moved beyond legal or public relations campaigns to a "turn to technology."  Enforcing a technological solution, by building the restrictions right into devices, is dangerous not only because it subverts tenets of copyright law like "fair use," but because it sets a dangerous precedent by hiding choice away from users.  There are also chapters on the Strategic Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), encryption in DVDs, and the FCC's "broadcast flag."  Tarleton Gillespie has a blog here.

The Best of Technology Writing 2007 is edited by Steven Levy and looks to be a great collection.  Several of the articles, such as a couple by Kevin Kelly and Jaron Lanier, will be familiar to anyone who paid much attention to tech media or blogs last year, but there are a number of lesser-known articles as well.

Aubrey de Grey has written a book, Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime.  After reading the material for Technology Review's SENS Challenge last year I think I've had my fill of Aubrey de Grey's prose for one lifetime (finite or not), so I think I'll pass.  Here is a review by Paul Boutin in the Wall Street Journal: Battling Time's Ravages.

NYT Gives Usability Professionals Some Love

The New York Times profiles usability professionals, who are increasingly in demand, though not yet as cool as librarians (see previous post).  Excerpt:

Sometimes there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it. The creator of a Web site may assume too much knowledge on the part of users, leading to confusion. Software designers may not anticipate user behavior that can unintentionally destroy an entire database. Manufacturers can make equipment that inadvertently increases the likelihood of repetitive stress injuries.

Enter the usability professional, whose work has recently developed into a solid career track, driven mostly by advancements in technology.

Jobs in the usability industry are varied, as are the backgrounds of the people who hold them. The work can involve testing products in a laboratory, watching people use products in the field or developing testing methods.

Link: Technology's Untanglers: They Make it Really Work.

Shoppers Step Over Stabbing Victim, Take Cellphone Photo

From the AP:

As stabbing victim LaShanda Calloway lay dying on the floor of a convenience store, five shoppers, including one who stopped to take a picture of her with a cell phone, stepped over the woman, police said.

The June 23 situation, captured on the store's surveillance video, got scant news coverage until a columnist for The Wichita Eagle disclosed the existence of the video and its contents Tuesday.

Police have refused to release the video, saying it is part of their investigation.

"It was tragic to watch," police spokesman Gordon Bassham said Tuesday. "The fact that people were more interested in taking a picture with a cell phone and shopping for snacks rather than helping this innocent young woman is, frankly, revolting."

The woman was stabbed during an altercation that was not part of a robbery, Bassham said. It took about two minutes for someone to call 911, he said.

Calloway, 27, died later at a hospital.

Link: Police: Shoppers Stepped Over Victim.

Tuning Out Technology

From today's San Francisco Chronicle:

For Leda Dederich, there came a point about a year ago when she realized her life was overly shaped by technology. The manager of an Oakland-based online consulting firm for nonprofit groups, Dederich was a leader in her field, but she started feeling that high-tech culture was dramatically out of balance  --  "like a combination of a hamster wheel and an echo chamber."

Dederich, 36, is one of a growing number of information technology users and professionals who feel teched out. Gobsmacked by the information tsunami, overwhelmed by the ever-growing tide of technology must-haves and convinced that a matrix of communication instruments was insulating her from friends and family, Dederich took a sabbatical six weeks ago.

"I felt like the only way for me to recalibrate was to stop completely," said Dederich, an e-mail user since 1991 and a high-tech professional since 1994. "It's difficult to think outside the box when you're always in it, and the box is getting stronger and stronger."

Link: Tuning Out Technology.

Today's News Brought To You By Buggy Software

It seems like every other story in today's news is about software bugs (all links are to the San Francisco Chronicle):

Drivers have been complaining since March that they're blinded by the glare from a new electronic billboard near the Bay Bridge in Oakland.  This is the same notoriously unsafe stretch of road where a tanker truck overturned recently and caused the freeway to collapse.  Because of buggy software the sign is running at daytime brightness levels both day and night, rather than dimming automatically at dusk.  It's unclear from what I've read whether the sign will actually be shut off and fixed; it sounds like Caltrans doesn't know what it's doing, and the Oakland schools that are promised advertising revenue from the sign are more concerned about losing money if the sign is shut off.  Links: Billboard at toll plaza too bright, drivers complain and Editorial: Warning -- Politicians at work.

Streetcars were delayed once again in San Francisco during rush hour because of a "software glitch."  The upside, we're told, is that this particular glitch, unlike all the previous ones, "happens infrequently."  I guess fixing the bug so it never happens is out of the question?  Link: Muni metro falls down on the job again.

Ike Turner was arrested Tuesday night because of a warrant from 1989 that erroneously popped up again on a police computer.  Lucky for them Turner seems oblivious: he's not mad and said, "They could have been right."  Link: Turner 'drug charge' a computer error.

San Francisco's voting machines have unspecified software "anomalies" and so ballots will probably have to be counted by hand in the upcoming local election.  Link: S.F. may have to count November ballots by hand.

And one story not about bugs, at least not yet: Latest technology will enable speedier purchases!  Throw out your cash and credit cards because "smart cards embedded with computer chips will take the place of the magnetic stripe, and keychain fobs, chips in cell phones and even biometrics linked to people's fingerprints could take the place of cash and credit."  Finally someone solves that horrible problem of not being able to spend money fast enough.

Risks of Mixing iPods and Pacemakers

From Reuters:

iPods can cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart, according to a study presented by a 17-year-old high school student to a meeting of heart specialists on Thursday.    

The study tested the effect of the portable music devices on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, outfitted with pacemakers. Electrical interference was detected half of the time when the iPod was held just 2 inches from the patient's chest for 5 to 10 seconds.   

The study did not examine any portable music devices other than iPods, which are made by Apple Inc.

In some cases, the iPods caused interference when held 18 inches from the chest. Interfering with the telemetry equipment caused the device to misread the heart's pacing and in one case caused the pacemaker to stop functioning altogether.

The study was held at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University. The results were presented at the Heart Rhythm Society annual meeting in Denver.

Link: iPods can make pacemakers malfunction: study.

I imagine this is not terribly surprising and from the little I've read I get the impression that  people with pacemakers are told to be cautious with any electrical devices.  So I doubt this is big news for most regular people who might actually be affected by it. 

What I find most interesting is two aspects of the coverage this story is getting online, based on articles and comments I've read at TechCrunch, CrunchGear, TechDirt, and Consumerist.

First there's the ageism: people assume that only old people have pacemakers and only young people use iPods.  Newsflash: old folks like music! and they too like to take it with them.  And one day you kids will be old and you'll still want your iPods, though you'll probably need extra large buttons by then because of the arthritis in your fingers from all the text messaging you're now doing.

Then there's the bizarre criticism that the study is invalid because they didn't test other music players, as if medical research is just Consumer Reports-style product testing.  Apple virtually owns this market -- it'd be strange not to start with an iPod if you were doing this sort of study.  I assume their message (to the heart rhythm specialists they presented this to) is that the medical community needs to be aware of this, study it further, and maybe make their patients more aware of it.  It's silly to think that they're saying to anyone "buy a Zune instead."

Of course I should know better than to take seriously the stuff at TechDirt and its ilk.  Reading TechSmug (as I like to call it) always irritates me.  I should have stayed away from it like I swore I would months ago.

(For the record, I use an iPod and a Mac too!)

Sherry Turkle on Technology and Alienation

New article by Sherry Turkle in Forbes: Can You Hear Me Now? Thanks to technology, people have never been more connected--or more alienated (via Michael Zimmer).

A Month Without the Net

Writer Stephen Elliott describes what it's like:

I was in Gaza when the Israeli soldiers were snatched from their posts. I was in New Orleans three days after Katrina smashed the levees to bits and the city flooded. But of all of my various adventures, people have been most curious about my recent decision to go offline for a month. I bought an old word processor and left my fancy laptop with a friend.

"How will you exist?" my roommate asked. "You'll have no idea what's going on. You won't be able to find anything."

[...]

So what did I do during my month offline? "You must be getting so much done!" was the refrain I heard constantly. That wasn't exactly true, not initially. My first week offline was mostly spent in a state of withdrawal. I suffered from bouts of extreme boredom. I realized I hadn't been bored in years because I'd gotten in the habit of never giving myself the chance.

But slowly I began to find other activities to fill my time. During weeks two and three, I watched the first three seasons of The Wire (something I might have done anyway). I subscribed to the New York Times and spent almost two hours every morning reading it from cover to cover. It was only in the fourth week that things started coming together. I wasn't just breaking the Internet habit, I was breaking the habits I had learned on the Internet: that addiction to continual bursts of small information.

Link: Surviving a Month without Internet (Poets & Writers)

via Maud Newton

I've read Stephen Elliott's book Looking Forward To It, which is about the 2004 Democratic presidential campaign, and really enjoyed it.

MIT's Baby Surveillance Project

An MIT researcher is recording the first three years of his child's life in order to collect data to teach robots how to learn language.  Excerpts from a Wired story:

Almost every new dad breaks out a videocam to record his kid's early years. But Roy is working on a much more ambitious scale. Eleven cameras and 14 microphones are embedded in the ceilings of the Roy household and connected by some 3,000 feet of cable to a terabyte disk array in the basement. Roy has already captured more than 120,000 hours of footage. Data from the disks gets backed up to an automated tape library, and every 40 days Roy shows up at work with a rolling suitcase to download his new haul of data onto a dedicated 250-terabyte array in the air-conditioned machine room of the MIT Media Lab.

Roy, 38, directs the Media Lab's Cognitive Machines Group, known for teaching remedial English to a robot named Ripley. By recording the early stages of his boy's life, Roy is seeking to supplement his steel-and-silicon investigations: His three-year-long study will document practically every utterance his young son makes, from the first gurglings of infancy through the ad hoc eloquence of toddlerdom, in an unprecedented effort to chart — uninterrupted — the entire course of early language acquisition. The goal of the Human Speechome Project, as he boldly calls his program, is to amass a huge and intricate database on a fundamental human phenomenon. Roy believes the Speechome Project will, in turn, unlock the secrets of teaching robots to understand and manipulate language.

Disarmingly convincing with a calm manner and understated black attire, Roy goes on to explain how the project will ultimately let him combine human observation and robotic experimentation to address some of the most basic questions about how words work and what language reveals about cognition. There's a practical side to this: the motivation of an engineer who wants to make machines talk and think. There's also a speculative side: the motivation of a scientist who wants to explore language as a means of investigating the brain.

Over the past months, though, such grand problems have been the least of Roy's concerns. Kubat, along with grad students Philip DeCamp and Brandon Roy (no relation to Deb), has been wrestling with the task of managing and analyzing the hundreds of thousands of hours of raw multichannel video that are accruing. With input from his wife, Northeastern University speech pathologist Rupal Patel, Roy is attempting to make the project scientifically meaningful without turning baby Dwayne's life into The Truman Show. Even if Roy's work — endorsed by academic luminaries like experimental psychologist Steven Pinker and philosopher Daniel Dennett — fails to provide major linguistic insights, the data-mining techniques he's developing and the experimental protocols he's establishing will change how early childhood development is researched. His colleagues in the field are watching his methods with interest. "This is groundbreaking work ," says Carnegie Mellon developmental psychologist Brian MacWhinney, keeper of the world's leading repository of childhood speech transcripts. "More and more, it's the technology that drives the science."

[...]

Still, there are gaps in the record, and not only while Dwayne sleeps or when the family goes out. (Despite rumors circulating on the Internet, Dwayne isn't under house arrest and has even had his first summer vacation.) Sometimes several cameras are down; other times the spectrograms register hours of silence. These blank spots are intentional, blinders that Roy allows himself in the eye of his self-imposed panopticon. In fact, Roy is fanatical about privacy, declining all requests from reporters to visit his home and refusing to reveal his baby's real name. ("Dwayne" was chosen for this article in keeping with Roy's practice of naming his robotic research subjects after Aliens characters — in this case, Corporal Dwayne Hicks.) "It comes down to managing privacy issues in an experiment that's the first of its kind," Roy says. "I've been erring on the conservative side because right now I'm living it and my wife is living it, so I don't trust my intuition."

Erring on the conservative side means killing the system if he or his wife is in a bad mood and might want to vent over dinner. They can also switch off the cameras while Patel is breast-feeding or hit the "oops" button when something too personal gets recorded. In fact, a glowing, wall-mounted "oops" button can be found in every room, allowing them to make Total Recall's archive something less than total. Roy pressed it one day after emerging naked from the shower when the cameras were running.

Link: Wired 15.04: The Power of Babble,

via Bryan Appleyard,

see also: Human Speechome Project.

While it sounds like they're making an effort with privacy, this still seems pretty close to the ethical line.  And I don't get how using a pseudonym for the baby but not the parents makes a bit of difference.

Slow Down, Brave Multitaskers (NYT)

A good article by Steve Lohr in today's New York Times debunks some of the current mythology surrounding multitasking:

Confident multitaskers of the world, could I have your attention?

Think you can juggle phone calls, e-mail, instant messages and computer work to get more done in a time-starved world? Read on, preferably shutting out the cacophony of digital devices for a while.

Several research reports, both recently published and not yet published, provide evidence of the limits of multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that many people would be wise to curb their multitasking behavior when working in an office, studying or driving a car.

These experts have some basic advice. Check e-mail messages once an hour, at most. Listening to soothing background music while studying may improve concentration. But other distractions — most songs with lyrics, instant messaging, television shows — hamper performance. Driving while talking on a cellphone, even with a hands-free headset, is a bad idea.

In short, the answer appears to lie in managing the technology, instead of merely yielding to its incessant tug.

“Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes,” said David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. “Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information.”

The human brain, with its hundred billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections, is a cognitive powerhouse in many ways. “But a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once,” said René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.

[...]

In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.

“I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft research scientist and co-author, with Shamsi Iqbal of the University of Illinois, of a paper on the study that will be presented next month.

“If it’s this bad at Microsoft,” Mr. Horvitz added, “it has to be bad at other companies, too.”

Link: Slow Down, Multitaskers, and Don’t Read in Traffic - New York Times.

These findings are not completely new, but I guess a new generation of multitaskers needs a new generation of evidence.  And that last point about work interruptions was made twenty years ago in the software management classic Peopleware.

Cory Doctorow on e-Books

A disjointed little essay by Cory Doctorow tries to argue that you do like reading off of screens.  In it he makes light of the fact that he welcomes distractions from e-mail, IM, YouTube, etc., though it could help explain his bizarre logic.  Some excerpts:

"I don't like reading off a computer screen" — it's a cliché of the e-book world. It means "I don't read novels off of computer screens" (or phones, or PDAs, or dedicated e-book readers), and often as not the person who says it is someone who, in fact, spends every hour that Cthulhu sends reading off a computer screen. It's like watching someone shovel Mars Bars into his gob while telling you how much he hates chocolate.

But I know what you mean. You don't like reading long-form works off of a computer screen. I understand perfectly — in the ten minutes since I typed the first word in the paragraph above, I've checked my mail, deleted two spams, checked an image-sharing community I like, downloaded a YouTube clip of Stephen Colbert complaining about the iPhone (pausing my MP3 player first), cleared out my RSS reader, and then returned to write this paragraph.

This is not an ideal environment in which to concentrate on long-form narrative (sorry, one sec, gotta blog this guy who's made cardboard furniture) (wait, the Colbert clip's done, gotta start the music up) (19 more RSS items). But that's not to say that it's not an entertainment medium — indeed, practically everything I do on the computer entertains the hell out of me. It's nearly all text-based, too. Basically, what I do on the computer is pleasure-reading. But it's a fundamentally more scattered, splintered kind of pleasure. Computers have their own cognitive style, and it's not much like the cognitive style invented with the first modern novel (one sec, let me google that and confirm it), Don Quixote, some 400 years ago.

The novel is an invention, one that was engendered by technological changes in information display, reproduction, and distribution. The cognitive style of the novel is different from the cognitive style of the legend. The cognitive style of the computer is different from the cognitive style of the novel.

[...]

Or look at digital video. We're watching more digital video, sooner, than anyone imagined. But we're watching it in three-minute chunks from YouTube. The video's got a pause button so you can stop it when the phone rings and a scrubber to go back and forth when you miss something while answering an IM.

And attention spans don't increase when you move from the PC to a handheld device. These things have less capacity for multitasking than real PCs, and the network connections are slower and more expensive. But they are fundamentally multitasking devices — you can always stop reading an e-book to play a hand of solitaire that is interrupted by a phone call — and their social context is that they are used in public places, with a million distractions. It is socially acceptable to interrupt someone who is looking at a PDA screen. By contrast, the TV room — a whole room for TV! — is a shrine where none may speak until the commercial airs.

The problem, then, isn't that screens aren't sharp enough to read novels off of. The problem is that novels aren't screeny enough to warrant protracted, regular reading on screens.

Link: Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen.

via  BoingBoing: Why ebooks' success has nothing to do with screen quality.

All a-Twitter

I don't know much about Twitter -- maybe it's truly useful, but I find this column by Ivor Tossell amusing:

You have to keep an eye on the computer nerds. One day they're abuzz about some new Internet widget — something with a funny name and indistinct purpose — and the next thing you know, everybody bar nobody (except you) is using it. They're kind of like college kids that way.

So here's an early warning: Something new is brewing amongst the nerds. The next new thing is called Twitter, and for once in this Web 2.0 world, its name is both correctly spelled and apt: It exists to fill the ether with an endless chirping.

Twitter lets you post public updates about your status; it presents a simple page with a text box, that asks "What are you doing?" The catch is that you're only allowed an answer that's 140 characters long — but you can post as many updates about your day as you like.

Judging from the postings from around the world that are continually updated on the Twitter website, that's more or less what they get — and by the thousands. Here are three updates that popped up from random Twitter users (Twitterers?) in the last few minutes: "Done with grading! Time for a break!"

"Very, VERY pleased with how Apple and UPS handled this."

"Twitter won't let me post Pi to the first 140 characters. What's up with that?"

[...]

Its brand of micro-blogging hits a sweet spot: it has the shout-it-to-the-world appeal of blogging, but without the strenuous effort of ideas and paragraphs. It has the immediacy of instant messaging, but carries no obligation of getting embroiled in an actual conversation.

It's the ultimate in relaxed communication: little farts of consciousness, unpackaged and unaddressed, sent out into the void without the pretension of being of any interest to anyone. It has its appeal, and soon, everybody and their dog (except, possibly, you and your dog) will be on it. Brace yourself.

Link: globeandmail.com: Reading online column now.

Cellphone Cameras and Public Shaming

The Montreal Gazette has a feature on the growth of "cyber-shaming" using cell-phone cameras and the web:

Hey you, the scofflaw parked illegally in the handicapped spot. Smile! You're in cyberspace. And that goes for all you other wrongdoers out there: the jerk parked in a bike lane, the flasher on the metro, the negligent nanny, the litterbug, the loud-mouth cellphone user and the reckless driver.

It's time for your close-up.

Public shaming isn't just for celebrities any more, thanks to a new crop of websites that expose those who commit crimes and misdemeanours that often used to go unpunished.

Cellphone cameras and the World Wide Web have ushered in a new era of cyber-vigilantism in which offenders risk instant, global notoriety.

"People really are more afraid of appearing on a website than getting a $150 ticket," said Fred (not his real name), a former Montrealer living in New Zealand and founder of caughtya.org. The site blows the whistle on people who steal handicapped-parking spots by posting photos and licence-plate numbers of illegally parked vehicles.

Parking offences are just one of many transgressions that can land you in the modern-day equivalent of the pillory.

Link: All eyes on you,

Via Michael Zimmer.

Technology Addiction

The BBC covers the ongoing discussion over technology addiction.  An excerpt:

The seemingly exponential growth of portable technology has sparked fears that people are becoming addicted or swamped by gadgets and their uses.

One major consequence of this phenomenon is that the line between work and private life is much more blurred, now that e-mail and phones provide a 24-hour link between employers and staff.

Experts believe that even the decision-making process of the average person can be adversely affected.

However, others think that the bombardment of various communications can enhance the brain's ability to process information.

Addiction symptoms

Nada Kakabadse, a Professor at the Northampton Business School, said: "Your judgement is impaired. Equally your decision making processes are impaired.

"It's like losing your spatial judgement, so instead of walking through the door you walk into it. You're more prone to have a car accident if you drive."

Prof Kakabadse added: "It's addiction to portable technology, which you take with you practically to bed, the cinema, to the theatre, to a dinner party. The symptoms are, like with any other addiction, that people spend more time using their technology than spending it in socialising or in family time."

Link: BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click | The rise of technology addiction.