GEOCITIES TEACHER ON THE COUCH cont'd
When this lesson is completed you will be given some step-by-step directions for building a basic geocities web site. They will include directions on how to create text, pictures from a pre-assigned geocities repertoire and scan in pictures of your own.
It is first to illustrate the problem of GT which is typical of the affliction associated with modern high technology to which Norman, Gelernter, Stoll and others have drawn our attention. Its purpose is to teach you an ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT. Your expectations of teaching machine service should be the highest. The machine is your slave.
How many consumers get the best use out of their VCR and DVD machines, fax machines, telephone answering machines, digital watches, microwave ovens ... and desk top computers? The slogan, "The customer is always right" has long been abandoned by those who market such devices. The "technolords" have created a priesthood of technicians and you are the "technopeasant" in this new social order. No more! IMP is calling for a technopeasant revolution...you must rise up against the machines and overthrow their tyranny, comrades. Welcome to the Glorious Techno-Revolution!!!
NEVER, NEVER APOLOGIZE TO A DOOR
When the door fails to communicate with us because of its tiny sign, we blame ourselves as Don Norman apprises us. Why should we do that? If you bump into another human in daily society, the normal thing is to blame oneself for a small transgression and then to apologize. If we continue to blame ourselves for the communication and teaching failures of machines, why do we not go to the next stage and apologize?
The hyperbole in the above example makes the point. If you think it is silly to apologize when you bump into a door because the tiny sign said pull and you pushed, then why not stop blaming yourself altogether when machines fail to communicate and teach?
At the beginning of a Geocities web building session you will notice a small window which tells you the software is loading. At the end of the session, it remains and the sign says to not close this window. Naturally the web builder will wonder if dire consequences are going to follow from closing the window, as dire as for example clicking the Delete "icon" or symbol on the top horizontal tool bar during a Geocities session. That will have the consequence of wiping out all of your hard work. Don't apologize for not knowing what to do with that window at the end of a session. Never apologize to a machine.
Here is where we have to disagree with Norman and for that matter Gelernter. Complexity is inherently a property of sophisticated, computer controlled machinery and it is not, in itself, our problem. For certain machines and the instructions which go with them can be made excessively complex but CONFUSION is the major problem. GT is inherently complex. There are dozens of counterparts to the door sign in a typical GT session. But each can teach you what to do with CLARITY or with CONFUSION. Those two concepts are central to the differentiation between the sound psychology vs. the psychopathology of everyday things. Who is to decide what constitutes confusion and what constitutes clarity? The user or student of course. Just as the customer is always right in marketing, "the student is always right" when it comes to teaching machines. How easy it is with this marvel of modern communications, the Internet, to find out when students understand and when they do not.
The material you are reading is called "courseware". The courseware for machine psychology along with the associated software and hardware required to deliver it to you is also a teaching machine and it must pass the clarity test. IMP is a teaching machine which is teaching you the basics on teaching machines and other aspects of machines which substitute for the many phenemona deemed to be the subject matter of psychology. If you have a phobia or simply a small aversion to technology because of its complexity, get over it. The major cause of technophobia and aversion to technology is not complexity but confusion.
The cure comes when you change your attitude and demand clarity from the machines which you use.
Don Norman is currently (2003) a Professor of Computing Science at Northwestern and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group at <htttp://www.jnd.org>. This group is for "user advocacy and human-centered design" we are told at the JND web site.
The concept of (healthy) psychology vs. psychopathology in everyday things constitutes one of the great ideas in modern thought. Great ideas in history seem to come in twos, eg debits and credits (Pacciolo), dominant and recessive (Mendel) , good and evil (God). Don Norman seems to be too modest to put his work in these terms but consider the comparison with the contribution of Pacciolo to science. Pacciolo was the monk who came up with the idea of debits and credits at the start of new world commerce.
How else could the Europeans have kept a sound record of all of those commercial transactions as ships began to sail around the globe? The science of debits and credits carries with it an internal check on accuracy. Add up your credits at any time and they must equal your debits (this is also called "trial balance"). If credits do not equal debits, there is certainly something wrong with the record of business transactions. If credits do equal debits, at least the record of transactions is straight.
We are enteing a new era in which intelligent machinery is taking its place in society for the first time. Norman has given us a way of evaluating every instance of human-machine interaction. The design of these machines must be human-centered. The machines are here to serve humans. When they fail to do so, that is a machine psychopathology and it is to be remedied.
TBC