Something that made my day: computers are not that smart after all.
At some point in life, the cursed comp has handed out to each one of us some gibberish error message. And made us feel stupid, coz we couldnt decipher the gibberish. How could we, its gibberish after all.
An article in the Economist, damn, I cant give the link, because its premium content, assures us that it is the comp, and not we who are stupid. A friend had made the same point a few days ago, but I didnt thnk much of it, because he was a geek. And geeks, I thought, can afford to look down on the comp, not non-geeks like me, who are forever trying to avoid the next error message.
The point is that, technology does not serve its purpose if it makes life more complex, and not simpler for everyone. If only geeks can be comfortable with computers, it cannot have a very strong mass following. Read: no market. If it has to be all-pervasive, it has to be all-friendly.
Again, its not as if geeks find comps manageable all the time: the article begins with an MIT prof whining about his comp the way you or I would. So IT, as it stands today, is flawed. Yippppppppppeeeeeeeee!! All IT majors from Intel to IBM to Microsoft agree that the challenge now is to simplify things. Intel has introduced the 'on-demand business' concept; others have their own jargon.
Ha, I cant stop smiling. If you dont make it simple enough, you geek, you just aint smart enough to figure me out: I am analog, not digital.
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5 comments:
The whole idea could be summarized as KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). I like the last part: I'm analog, not digital. It reminds me my old-time, often-used phrase: The world is analog, not digital!
"computers are not that smart after all"
---- More importantly, we need not depend on them in every walk of life
"The point is that, technology does not serve its purpose if it makes life more complex, and not simpler for everyone"
--- An important question is how simple we want our lives to be? You click a button and you get your perfect life partner? you click a button and a patient's life is saved? you click a button and thousands of people die instantly as if they were pawns in chess? what is it that we are trying to make simple? Its pretty horrifying you know
allo people,
nice post.....now i want my life to be simple, so i keeep it simple.
the people who kinda love a technical life , obviously have made simple by needing to press lotta buttons as sham says.but i have this rare insight that all the buttons are 'panic buttons'!!! so me off for fishing folks no button there...plain n simple.
Praveen: Yeah, KISS.
Sham: True, what is it that we want to simplify? Lifestly enhancing technology is getting all the hype at the cost of sustaining/survival technology.
Also true, the urge to simplify is horrifying. The Holocaust was a simple idea, after all. Dont like the Jews? Eliminate them.
ubermensch: How many fish did you catch? Chances are that you didnt end up with many, thanks to highly mechanised fishery. There is no escaping technology these days. Very few untouched places.
idu ubermensch andre enree??
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