Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Re: Cultural v. Technical Solutions
You're almost on the same page, but I still don't think you've quite grasped
what I was trying to say. Possibly I'm not saying things at all well. So here's
another attempt. (01)
All of what we're doing here is about people - endeavouring to have humanity
come up with tools that will help it along better.
In building any tool implementation there's an age old bugbear that designers
and budgeters run into: Human beings have psychology. In many cases this is
nothing like logic.
Thirdly, as George Soros notes, most if not all of the crises facing humanity
today are crises of shared positive values, not crises of technology or
intellect or reason. (02)
So the question is: Is what best helps us along more or less like logic?
(Bearing in mind one can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is', as the philosopher
Hume said.)
This question, for me anyway, runs deeper than humane interfaces per se, deep
into issues of what form our tools should take. (03)
My suggestion/hypothesis was that tools that don't impose rigid logics upon our
actions are actually more successful at promoting our collective well-being.
(E.g. tools that have minimal restrictive interference as a basis, like email.)
That might sound like heresy to some - well, tough, it just might be right.
By all means let's prototype away and see if I'm wrong though. (04)
--
Peter (05)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Park" <jackpark@thinkalong.com>
To: <ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2002 12:26 AM
Subject: [ba-unrev-talk] Re: Cultural v. Technical Solutions (06)
> Great!
>
> I suspect that the "bending to fit" is a context sort of thing, like the
> notion of a culturally-appropriate keypad in remote villages.
>
> Back to Doug Engelbart and the original question about why a secure future
> for his vision has not emerged, I am aware of various initiatives along the
> lines of software productivity, and others. One must still wonder why
> those are not off the ground and running.
>
> Jack
>
> At 12:06 AM 10/8/2002 +0100, you wrote:
>
> > > Shall I infer that your point would be:
> > > Doug Engelbart's vision of coupling masses of illogical humans to gobs of
> > > technology doesn't have a prayer of achieving anything sufficiently useful
> > > to be able to judge the effort worthwhile? (being somewhat akin to
> > > Gerald's earlier comments).
> >
> >[pj] No, that's absolutely not what I'm saying. I'm saying the tech needs
> >to be
> >bent to fit more. I believe that's in line with Doug's thinking (??).
> >
> ><massive snippage>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-74960-2.
>
> http://www.nexist.org/wiki/User0Blog
>
>
> (07)