Comments on: Technology and De-skilling

By: Tanguy

Tanguy — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:27:34 +0000

It’s always a discussion about technology inside and technology use. Before one would have to know the way the car motor works, now the technology has made it impossible to really work yourself on a car motor; instead there are some neat sensing devices that warn you of a technical problem in the car, and in the meantime you enjoy driving.
I would worry the day that technology would start playing around with time and our sunlight, and if we would turn out all in industrial chickens in a huge chicken farm, with no way to know whether it is day or nigth outside; But don’t we fly down to Florida to get more sun too? What if technology would provide us a Florida in my garage…food for thought

By: Russell Buckley

Russell Buckley — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:20:37 +0000

Miguel – thanks for the comment. I’m not really “remorsing”, just pointing out that there’s two sides to technology advances.

Russell

By: Miguel

Miguel — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:20:02 +0000

I think about this all the time, but have a small comfort in that everything is backed-up in plaxo should I lose my phone (I synch my phone and outlook at least once a day so even fairly new stuff info is always available online should I need it.) In this scenario I would only need to find a web enabled computer (or use one of my other webenabled devices) to find my wife’s number and call or sms.

Instead of remorsing over the effect of technology on our ability to remember numbers and addresses, should we not look forward to the day when technology will remove the need for us to remember impossible hexodecimal combinations to begin with? We should touch a button on our vest and say “computer, contact my wife and tell her she’s late.” Start-trek had it right.

By: FJ!!

FJ!! — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:28:55 +0000

My smartphone’s backed up through mobical.net, so I could go into any place that has web-access and look all the numbers up.

By: George

George — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:31:10 +0000

Interesting observation Russell. My parents still keep a nicely hand written “phone list” (using pencil btw) of all their relatives right next to their phone (land line).

That’s pretty old fashion I’d say.

By: Kevin Arthur

Kevin Arthur — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:13:49 +0000

Great points. I recommend checking out Don Norman’s new book (The Design of Future Things) — he talks about issues like this.

Too often, systems are over-automated, which makes users become complacent and inattentive, so they effectively become de-skilled, like you say. A good design needs to keep the human in the loop so they stay informed and engaged with the system and are better able to take control when the system fails. An example Norman cites is airline pilots — make the autopilot system too good and pilots will fall asleep.

With respect to phones and email, maybe it would help if these systems didn’t hide so much information. Phones usually display a contact’s name and number on the screen but nobody looks at that; maybe they should also recite the number before each call. Our ‘advanced’ email programs hide email addresses of contacts — they shouldn’t.

By: Simon Jones

Simon Jones — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:49:34 +0000

I still have problems with German grammar (and always will, I fear) but I can remember most of my old phone numbers, car registration plates, UK postcodes and bank account numbers. We were Mundford 464 in the early 70s…