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Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine
Many people may be familiar with one of Norman's other books, "The Design of Everyday Things". Well, the good news is that this book is as engaging, and the bad news is that it isn't all that much different. Norman, the uber-advocate of person centered design, uses this book to debunk the motto of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair "Science Finds, Industry Applies, and Man Conforms".
Things That Make Us Smart has a double meaning. Norman spends a decent chunk of this book explaining how humans have very defined cognitive abilities, like pattern recognition. Not only do we have these cognitive abilities, but we're good at them. If you are ever at a cocktail party (which most geeks avoid) and someone says your name, you are likely to pick it up out of a host of other ambient noises in the room. So the first meaning of the title of this book is that humans have abilities that prove we are smart. The second meaning is that we have created cognitive artifacts to extend the limits of our mentalities. These are the "things" that make us smart. Now, we are used to thinking of tools expanding our physical abilities. We use a hammer so we don't pulp our hands while smashing them against the head of a nail. We use a car because we can't run that fast. What Norman explains is that we have also created a ton of tools that help us expand our mind's capability.
It starts with cuneiform. We have bad memories for facts, so when we wanted to remember facts we started writing them on clay tablets. Books were great innovations, since they help us not only remember stuff, but allow us to write down our thoughts and share them with people we'll never meet. Computers have developed as the latest tool we use to expand our cognitive abilities. They do things we can't do very well, and vice versa. We can only hold about 5-7 things in our memory at any one time. Computers can handle lots more. Still, before you start looking for your personal Hal, there are important things that we can do that our computers cannot. Even computers running un a Linux OS. A computer sees a picture of a butterfly as just dots on a screen (yes, I know they are working on this at Bellcore) while we are immediately able to apply meaning to those dots. My favorite example that Norman uses is shooting a free throw. The very things that for us are easy, like identifying the hoop, are incredibly tough for the computer. However, whereas we have big troubles with accuracy the computer can shoot all day once it has figured out the calculation.
Now this would be a great situation if we were intelligent about it. Technology helps us to do the things nature did not wire our brains to do. However, so much of the current market of technology is centered around what the machine needs or can do that we are expecting humans to conform to the technology, making us the tools to the machines. It's an easy trap to fall into. Humans can tolerate a lot of ambiguity. It's one of those things that makes us smart, but Norman argues that we should be designing in a way that augments our lives, not living in a way that validates our design.
What's Good?
This is a great introduction to Donald Norman for those who have not read him. A great bathroom book, you can skip around alot and the examples are engaging. The early part of the book also does a great job of teaching cognitive psychology, with sensical examples and descriptions of human cognitive processes. Also, the theory of user centered design is extremely important, and Norman does a wonderful job of supporting its tenets.
What's Bad? If you already know a lot about Human Computer Interaction, or are pretty good with cognitive psychology, this book may seem to slow. Also, it's only a mild variation on other Norman books, though if you've not read any to this point, start with this one. The second half of the book is light on quantative evidence, but that's more because you've entered the land of large statements about the meaning of life from the author rather than that he doesn't know how to quantify results.
So What's In It For Me?
If you do any programming, or put together sites for general viewing, this is a valuable book for the argument towards user centered design. Almost anyone can find something out of this offering, from the defense of lowly human cognition, to the descriptions of how we can use technology more intelligently.
Other important links... Buy this book at Amazon .
Buy Norman's latest book, The Invisible Computer, which we'll review soon. If you're interested in serious usability engineering, this is the book to get, Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen.
At that point, it'll be interesting to see if Darwin takes over. I don't foresee a "Terminator"-type war or anything like that; chances are we'd just get nervous and lobotomize or power off the thing.
I'm thinking that the evolutionary imperatives hardcoded into our wetware will probably eventually doom any really generally intelligent system. Instead, you'll probably see a Star Wars-type solution where you have systems that do one or two things really well, but are functionally inept in other places (C3P0 can understand 10 million forms of communication, but a unilingual battle droid could kick his shiny metal ass). That was, we can remain the masters (which, as a human, is the way I prefer it).
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
A good deal of the research is done in order to better understand ourselves.
There are also those who study just to do it. I don't know that anyone is doing it to make a better brain(yet).
There are also autistic people and idiot savants that actually demonstrate some of the tradeoffs we may have made to gain our intelligence. I also don't know if it can be reconciled, the ability to tap into our brains in the same way and still retain human flexibility and adaptability.
But the fact that people are born with supercomputing capabilities means that it may be very possible, for a slight trade off in social ability or manual dexterity or what-not, to gain ever more brain power.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
How do we know that it's possible to surpass human intelligence? That humans just won't keep advancing? Do we know that there are limitations to what we can do?
I'd say that our brains are marvelously developed but have been underutilized for the past thousand years, barring the musical genius or the uber-warrior-general. We keep pumping information and data into ourselves and our children, and surprisingly, we keep up. Imagine humanity years from now, born plugged into a network, some sort of global consciousness. Is it possible? I think so. Can we keep up? Yes to that, too. Imagine communications without all of the ambiguity and vagueness of body language and speech. Sure it won't be perfect, but it's an incredible vision.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Would anyone be willing to comment on this?
Just how much can we scale? No one really knows, right? We have extreme cases, like idiot savants and autistic people, as well as geniuses and prodigies and such, but as we become ever more connected and ever more indulged with an influx of information and sensory data, will we cope?
I would like to think so. I would imagine that even as computers get faster and more powerful, as we get more resources we'd just adapt more deftly. We'd invent languages and message passing technologies to reduce overhead and miscommunication, and increase the capbility and efficiency of our world. It's now the world of 24x7, right? I guess one of the biggest limitations right now is sleep. Once we can tackle that problem, we'd have twice as much brainpower*time, right?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
What happens if you boost the electrical charge, just a little bit mind you. Would you be able to theoretically 'overlock' your brain?
Well, first, overclocking has to do with increasing the frequency of the basic 'pulse' of the chip, thus making all operations a bit faster. There is no direct connection with increasing the voltage supplied to the chip. If you just increase the voltage supplied to the CPU, it will not run faster.
Second, if you stick electrodes into a human brain and send appropriate current through appropriate parts, you can get strange and interesting results. A typical effect is being able to remember with perfect clarity a scene that you thought you forgot completely. A Spanish researcher named Delgado (?) did a fair amount of experimentation around 20 years ago. I don't think a lot of people work on it now, mostly for ethical reasons. Most of the work is being done with people who are heavily mentally ill.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.