blips

Don Norman on “socializing our interactions with technology” (what sounds to me like a very Latour-ian phrasing):

The next peeve on the machines’ list, just after their dislike of people, is paper handling. They just can’t move paper about reliably and efficiently, especially things like tickets that their owners have touched. People don’t have any trouble with these things, but machines can’t manage. So what do machines do? They don’t say, “I’m sorry, but I’m kind of clumsy around paper.” No, never in a million years. They blame us. They issue strong warnings: Don’t touch the paper, put it in pockets, spill drinks on it, or worst of all, fold. “Do not fold, mutilate, or spindle,” went the saying several decades ago, even though nobody even knew what “spindle” meant. “Oh,” they add, “and don’t use paper when there is high humidity.” In other words, we should just keep our hands off of paper altogether. Paper is for use by machines, and once people touch it, the machines grow irate. It never occurs to a machine that the problem might be theirs. Oh no. It’s us pesky people who are to blame.

It is time to socialize our interactions with technology. Sociable machines. Basic lessons in communication skills. Rules of machine etiquette. Machines need to show empathy with the people with whom they interact, understand their point of view, and above all, communicate so that everyone understands what is happening.

via Don Norman’s jnd.org / People Are From Earth, Machines Are From Outer Space.