While You Were Sleeping

December 5, 2011

"A lot of convenience and power could be gained, and a lot of unhappiness, irritation and missed opportunities avoided, if the industry thought about design, instead of always making it the last thing on the list. We need more people who are at home in the worlds of art and the humanities and who are less diffident in the presence of technology. There are not enough articulate Luddite, anti-technology voices."

—

David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale and a man who, 20 years ago, described with disturbing accuracy the internet as it is today, thinks computers are still too complicated.

“The industry doesn’t grasp the fundamental lack of sympathy between, conservatively, at least half the population and the software they’re using,” he says.

In other words, we aren’t frustrated enough, impatient enough, skeptical enough, with the technologies we use every day. Machines are still made by and for specialists. And even if Apple has come closer to an ideal of simplicity, we are simply not being demanding enough.

Good technology is like good writing. If your grandmother doesn’t know what it’s about, you have failed.

— From SF.

(Source: economist.com)

8:06pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/Z9DOYyCruD3C
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(Notes: 10)