Empfohlen
Weitere ähnliche Inhalte
Was ist angesagt?
Was ist angesagt? (20)
Ähnlich wie Introduction to HCI (UCC)
Ähnlich wie Introduction to HCI (UCC) (20)
Kürzlich hochgeladen
Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)
Introduction to HCI (UCC)
- 1. AP3299 – Human- Computer Interaction
- 2. People and Technology Research Group - PATLAB Human Computer Interaction User experience Cognitive aspects of driving
- 4. A brief history of HCI
- 5. Origins of HCI • Information processing theories of cognition: thinking is ordered; follows defined processes. • Psychologists developed models and theories of human thought processes to improve work life. • Advancement of information processing theories coincides with important work-related developments: • Large-scale post-war industrialisation lead to rapid industrial automation and the race to dominate space. • Advancements in warfare technology showed humans beings prone to failure in highly stressful (war) situations.
- 6. Origins of HCI • Introduction of computing systems in the late 1960s and1970s culminated in the introduction of PC. • Until late 70s, only people who interacted with computers were professionals and computer hobbyists. • A number of things happened in late 1970s to make usability an achievable target: • developments in computer graphics and information retrieval that led to the graphical user interface • focus on the issue of usability by both computer scientists and psychologists who saw it as an area in which they could work together
- 7. Early interactions in HCI – Sutherland & Sketchpad, 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57wj8diYpgY
- 8. Early interactions in HCI – Engelbart & the mouse, 1964 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ7totFRh4g
- 9. Early interactions in HCI – Kay & the GUI
- 10. What is HCI?
- 11. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Human This is the end-user of program or technology, as well as the other people the end-user interacts with, such as friends, colleagues, etc. Computer This is the machine the program runs on. This can include a desktop, laptop or mobile device. This is not just a single device anymore, but a collection of devices split between clients and servers. Interaction This is the dialogue between the machine and the end-user: user tells the computer what he wants, the computer communicates the result.
- 12. User Interfaces (UIs) - Software The user interface allows a human-computer dialogue to take place. They are part of the application that allows the dialogue happen, and can include: • Menus • Widgets • Toolbars • Pop-up dialogues
- 13. User Interfaces (UIs) - Hardware User interfaces are not only pieces of software, they can also be hardware.
- 14. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) HCI is an interdisciplinary field, with two primary strands: Computer Science Applied Psychology
- 15. What does it have to do with psychology? • A variety of areas of psychology impact directly on our use of technology: • Attention and perception • Group decision making • Individual differences
- 16. Why is it important? Think of everything you use technologies for... Think of all the other activities and interactions this device supports... HCI tries to understand these activities and these interactions in the hopes of improving future technologies.
- 17. Note how many devices you interact with each day. What is the longest period you go without this interaction? How many times are you aware of this interaction – how many times do you use a piece of technology without consciously knowing? The idea that computing is everywhere is called ‘ubiquitous computing’. Quick activity
- 18. Now think about how usable these technologies were. How many have been easy and even enjoyable to use? How many require a bit of effort but are worth it? How many are more trouble than they are worth? Each time you use them you feel like you are reinventing the wheel. They involve you remembering a complex sequence of steps that are not intuitive. We have all used devices – maybe the photocopier in college or an old DVD player – where we must consult the manual or ask for help to use. This kind of interaction isn’t fun, is it? In fact, it is extremely frustrating.
- 19. Note how many times a day you use a device that is: • Easy to use • Difficult and frustrating to use Think about how you dealt with this inferior interaction – kick the machine, check the manual, stumble on the solution by trial and error, etc. Quick activity
- 20. What is the point of having a piece of hardware which is designed for use by people, that is unusable by people? HCI can help design devices and products that are useful and useable.
- 22. Functionality, usability & experience – McNamara & Kirakowski, 2006
- 24. Human Factors Human factors research looks at the limitations and capabilities of the individual user to improve the interaction between users and machines. Studies the interaction between different factors like individuals, environments, equipment, products and services & how we behave within this interaction. Has primarily centred on the safety of workplaces and design of physical objects.
- 25. Human Factors
- 26. Cognitive Ergonomics • Ergonomics - the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system • Cognitive ergonomics – specialises in studying the relations between people and their work, workplace and technology • Specialises particularly in studying relations between people and their work, workplace and technology • Also – study of ways in which people and environment interact and communicate with one another
- 29. User-centred design • User-centred design (UCD) emphasises, at each stage of the design process, the wants, needs, capabilities, and limitations of people as they interact with interfaces, products, and documents • First proposed by Donald Norman • UCD aims for a good fit between user and product, through simplified tasks, making interaction and design features visible, making use of people’s natural tendencies to approach objects in particular ways, and designing for the mistakes we make
- 30. Experience-Centred Design – what is experience? The whole of people acting, sensing, thinking, feeling, and meaning making in a setting, including their perception and sensation of their own actions.
- 31. The threads of experience - ECD The compositional thread is concerned with relationships between the parts and the whole of an experience. The sensual thread is concerned with our sensory engagement with a situation, which orients us to the concrete, palpable, and visceral character of experience, or the immediate sense of a situation. This emotional thread refers to judgments that ascribe to other people and things importance with respect to our needs and desires. The spatio-temporal thread refers to the way in which experience is always embedded in a particular space-time quality. (McCarthy & Wright, 2004)
- 32. Why study HCI?
- 33. Why should students study HCI? 1. Companies can gain from understanding customers’ and their workers experiences with IT. The implication of bad design for businesses are many – low productivity, poor employee satisfaction, low customer loyalty, etc.
- 34. Why should students study HCI? 2. We can improve our own and other people’s lives by understanding people’s experiences of technology. Imagine what you could do with a form video-conferencing that made you feel like you were there? – Families spread across the world could be together again, doctors could consult from 1,000km away, meetings would be alive, e-learning could provide students with the same experience of engagement as a real class, etc.
- 35. Why should students study HCI? 3. Technology is everywhere. Think about it. We live surrounded by technology. It behoves us to pay more attention to it, to the things that are left unsaid in our interaction with them, to the power they hold over us, and us over it. We all have mobile phones, and most of us have smartphones. What are the implication of this pervasiveness of computing? Are there health implications or social issues? What does it mean that Google can access our e-mails and chats, or the NSA has access to a variety of Americans’ (and others’) data? It is important to understand what technology can do and is doing for us, and how easily we let it.
- 36. Think about how often everyday you interact with a technological device or product. Think about how much our lives are subsumed by this use of technology. Try to list some positives and negatives of this technologically dominated world. For example, is it a good thing we are always ‘online’, always reachable? Quick activity
- 37. Module overview • Review of approaches to People and Technology • Experience-centred design • Participatory Design • Usability, standards, and heuristics • Usability Measurement, Evaluation, and Reporting • Forms of online participation (hanging out, messing around, geeking out) • Mediated communication and community • Social inclusion, development, aging, etc • Health 2.0 • The Role of Research in Designing Technology
- 38. Learning outcomes • Evaluate HCI theories, models and methods. • Appreciate the values entailed in different perspectives on experience-centred design and evaluation. • Carry out a usability evaluation. • Appreciate the ethics of human factors research and intervention. • Discuss psychological research on life online. • Evaluate the evidence of appropriation and experience of technologies in a variety of settings.
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Hi everyone, and welcome to the first unit of AP3299 – Human Computer Interaction. I’ll be guiding you through these slides which will hopefully augment what you’ve already learned in the in-class lecture. We’ll start by talking a little about research concerning HCI that’s currently being carried out in the School of Applied Psychology.
- The school of applied psychology organises itself around 3 research groupings, one of which is ‘People and Technology’. This group studies various aspects of our relationships with computers and machinery, such as:HCIThe study of the relationship between humans and the Information Technology (IT) tools we create Developing good measurement tools Usability of websites, computer games and Virtual Realities.USER EXPERIENCEUnderstanding the influence of emerging social, personal, and work technologies on people’s cognitions, emotions, values and relationships, and using that knowledge to inform the design of usable and enriching technologies.COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF DRIVINGSimulator and field studies of aspects of driving such as: the impact of fatigue and sleep on performance, impact of neuropsychological damage and disease on driving ability, estimation of ability, acquisition of driving skill and skill transfer and situation awareness.
- ThePaTLab run regular seminars and research meetings, as well as maintaining an active online presence. For more information or to join in on our discussion, visit our site here...Members of the PaTLAB will be checking in on your progress and adding to discussions on the forums. Check out Blackboard for more individualised videos of what members are currently working on.
- So where did the study of human-computerinteraction begin? Let’s take a closer look at how the field has evolved over the last half century or so.
- In the late 1940's and early 1950's information processing theories ofcognition suggested that thinking is ordered and follows certain definedprocesses. This notion allowed psychologists and other cognitivescientists to develop models and theories of human thought processesin order to apply these models to improving work life. It is interestingto note that the advancement of information processing theoriescoincides with important work-related developments. In the late 1940'sand early 1950's the world was gripped by large-scale post-warindustrialisation. Most significantly, the industrial context wascharacterised by rapid industrial automation and the race to dominatespace. In the industrial arena engineers discovered that rapidadvancements in warfare technology showed that human beings wereprone to failure in highly stressful (war) situations. Their naturalreaction was to design systems and processes that would reduce theinfluence human beings would have on the functioning of the system.Hence, the investment in technology that would enable automatedcontrol in industrial manufacturing and in aircraft and spacecraft.
- One of the most significant developments in automated systems wasthe introduction of computing systems in the late 1960's and early1970's. In the mid to late 1970's, this culminated in the introduction ofa computing system small enough to fit onto a desk (the PC orpersonal computer). Until the late 1970s, the onlypeople who interacted with computers were information technologyprofessionals and dedicated computer hobbyists. Prior to this,computers were vast machines, that filled laboratories, and that oftenrequired manual manipulation for operation, such as toggling switchesor hooking up wires. The emergence of personal computing changedthis. It made everyone in the developed world a potential computeruser. When the general public could use computers, the kinds ofusability problems that specialists either put up with or did not evensee were highlighted. A number of things happened in late 1970s tomake usability an achievable target, for example, developments incomputer graphics and information retrieval that led to the graphicaluser interface, development of interactive devices, focus on the issueof usability by both computer scientists and psychologists who saw itas an area in which they could work together.
- In 1963, Ivan Sutherland introduced the first direct manipulation of onscreenobjects in his SketchPad programme. The SketchPadprogramme was a major leap forward into user-centred design. TheSketchPad programme allowed users to move objects around on screenusing light pens. A light pen is a device, held much like a normal pen,which is pointed at the computer screen. It tracks the position of thepen in relation to the screen. With Sutherland’s SketchPad users were,for the first time, able to do things like draw, manipulate objects andso on. It was the first time that users could directly interact with onscreendisplays without the need for a programming language. Even anovice computer user could manipulate objects. The design ofcomputers was, for the first time, about facilitating and involving theuser.
- The development of SketchPad and direct manipulation of objects isseen as a precursor to the development of both the computer mouseand windowed interfaces, such as the Graphical User Interface (GUI).The computer mouse, designed by Doug Engelbart in 1964, allowedthe user to interact with the computer in the familiar way that we knowas “point and click”.
- Engelbart also demonstrated that files could belinked to one another using hyperlinking, a precursor to both the GUIand the internet. This meant that users could point and click on filesand be taken to them, instead of having to issue text commands tomove to where the file was located. The GUI was further developed byAlan Kay and others at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). TheGUI allowed users to see the computer in terms of objects, such asicons, windows and so onThe work of Engelbart, Kay and Sutherland amounts to improving theinterface between user and machine. We are so used to the idea of themouse and the GUI that it is difficult to imagine computers withoutthem. Most importantly, the development of interfaces such aswindowed displays and icons began to use natural ways ofunderstanding objects and devices in order to improve humancomputer interaction. Documents were represented with icons thatlooked like a document. A folder looked like a paper folder. The resultis a much more user-friendly system.
- By now I’m sure you’re getting a better idea of what HCI may be about. Let’s fast forward a bit and see what the area looks like today.
- Think about Engelbart and his mouse. What were the constituent parts of that scenario? There was a human, a computer or piece of technology, sure, but there was also the interaction – the way the person acts with that technology.These are the constituent parts of human-computer interaction – but with time this has opened up. It’s now not only a single human acting with a technology, it’s a variety of people and users.Computers are now not only single devices... But collection of technologies that may be split between clients and serversAnd the interaction is growing ever more complex and interesting. The dialogue between machine and end user is not just point and click anymore – now we interact with technologies every day which may be hidden or otherwise unobtrusive in our environment.
- Most technologies that we interact with day to day have interfaces. An interface is the point of interaction for a piece of hardware or software. They can display or send information to the user or to the computer system itself.In software,the user interface allows a human-computer dialogue to take place.We saw a little earlier how graphical user interfaces allows us to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons.These interfaces are often made up of menus, widgets, tool-bars and dialog boxes.The alternative to GUIs are text-based interfaces, which would necessitate us typing commands in order to get our computer to do something for us. A GUI is an example of how software has been adapted to fit the interaction between user and computer.
- Similarly, Uis are not just operating systems and programs. It’s also important to design for the interaction between a user and a piece of hardware, such as Engelbart’s mouse.The Nintendo Wii has a controller, containing an accelerometer and a gyro, which is an integral part of the interface.The Reactable music table allows you alter the music by placing blocks called tangibles on the table.
- As we saw earlier, HCI arose from computer scientists and psychologists working together to create new and better technologies for use by users.Computer ScienceThe technology is mainly taken from this field, with electrical engineering an important field also.Applied PsychologyKnowing what elements a user interface should contain is taken from psychology, as well as the methodologies to understand the interaction. The design of the interface is based on our inherent capabilities and limitations.
- HCI can focus on a variety of different areas in psychology – for example, studying attention and perception might tell us how best to design user interfaces in nuclear power stations, or tell us just how challenging a video game should be before it stops being enjoyable. Studying group decision making and group formation might tell us how distributed workers may best coordinate their work through collaborative software. Studying individual differences in cognition and experience tells us how best to design and build technologies which may help vulnerable populations – think people with dementia or homeless people. What we know from psychology, whether it’s at a cognitive, social, or behavioural level can tell us a lot about how people interact with and use technology.
- Think of everything you use technologies for – you're looking at these slides on Blackboard, maybe on a UCC computer, but maybe also on a mobile device – a tablet, a laptop, your phone. Think of all the other activities and interactions this device supports – between you and your friends, you and your family, you and your work or even between you and others you don't know, other users on the internet on forums and on sites like Youtube. HCI tries to understand these activities and these interactions in the hopes of improving future technologies.
- Now think about how usable the interactive products and systems havebeen. How may are easy and even enjoyable to use? How manyrequire a bit of effort but are worth it? How many are more troublethan they are worth? Each time you use them, you seem to have toreinvent the wheel, or drag out of your memory a complex sequence ofsteps that do not come easily and are not supported by the interaction.You know the ones where the machinejust doesn’t seem to help you to remember what to do next and youhave to check the manual, call a colleague, or just try to dig it out ofmemory or work it out by trial and error. That kind of interaction is notgreat, is it? In fact, it is extremely frustrating.
- What is the point of having a piece of hardware which is designed for use by people, that is unusable by people? A smartphone could have the most innovative functions and technologically advanced hardware on the market, but if the user, us, cannot not operate it then the manufacturer might as well of not made it. It all boils down to the idea that if we, the user, cannot extract the maximum potential from a device then it was pointless designing the device with that potential. HCI can help design devices and products that are useful and useable.
- For example:Imagine an internet browser that didn’t show you what you had just typed in the search bar because it prioritises it’s resources into browser speed over everything else. It presumes you can remember what you just typed because, after all, you just typed it a few seconds ago. Of course the fact we have limited working memory, limited attention and the fact we are prone to error-making means that an internet browser designed this way would be inferior, regardless of its maximum potential for browser speed.
- What are the important elements of assessing the human-computer interaction? Research by McNamara & Kirakowski delineates the areas of…Functionality- A technical issue that refers solely to the device or system. - Functionality asks, What does the device or system do? - Usefulness, maintainability, and reliability are some of the issues that could be addressed in an evaluation of FunctionalityUsability - A characteristic of the interaction between user and system. - Usability asks:Can I make this device or system do what I want it to do? How well can I make it work? How easily? - Any evaluation of usability requires the involvement of real users.User experience -Wider relationship between device or system and user -Person’s experience of using the system -An evaluation might include “how the person felt about the experience, what it meant to them, whether it was important to them, and whether it sat comfortably with their other values and goals” (McCarthy and Wright, 2004)
- By now I’m sure you’re getting a better idea of what HCI may be about. Let’s fast forward a bit and see what the area looks like today.
- Human factors research is an approach to technology that looks at thelimitations and capabilities of the individual user as a means toimprove the interaction between users and machines. It also studies the interaction between different factors like individuals, environments, equipment, products and services & how we behave within this interaction. Traditionally, Human Factors has primarily centred on the safty of workplaces and design of physical objects, concentrating its efforts on largeprocess control systems that involve interaction between people andsystem, and where safety and efficiency are significant issues e.g.aviation, manufacturing, chemical process, and automotive systems.
- For example, there has been a tradition of Human Factors researchconcerned with driving. When driving people need to carry out anumber of tasks while processing large amounts of information. If wewere perfect drivers this would be no problem to us. However, we areprone to significant, and sometimes fatal, errors while driving. Theseare due to a number of limitations we have in processing all theinformation we are presented with. As such, some driving errors can beunderstood as limitations of Human Cognition.
- Cognitive ergonomics is related to Human Factors. Ergonomics is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system especiallybetween people and the workplac, and between people and themachines and equipment they use at work. Cognitiveergonomics is that part of ergonomics that specialises in studying therelations between people and their work, workplace, and technology,where the work is mainly knowledge work and the technology is mainlyconcerned with information and communication. An alternative moreinclusive approach sees cognitive ergonomics as the study of the waysin which people and environment – particularly the informationenvironment – interact and communicate with each other. Note thatthis definition does not limit the definition of cognitive ergonomics towork settings. In the world that we have created for ourselves,information and communication technologies are part of our home,social, and leisure lives as well as our working lives.
- Cognitive ergonomics focuses on cognition.Cognition is concerned with how the human mind comes to knowthings about the world around it (through processes such as perceptionand attention) and how it uses that knowledge to remember,communicate, reason, and perform skilled tasks. One of the insights that cognitivepsychology has produced is that humans have characteristic strengthsand limitations in their mental processes. The most widely known suchconstraint is the working memory limitation. Most people understandthat we can remember a certain number of bits of information, withoutwriting the information down, and that beyond that limit we startforgetting the information. We generally remember about 7 chunks ofinformation and start forgetting after that.There is no point in designing a system that requires people toremember 10 chunks of information if we are likely to forget some ofthem. We humans are not only limited in what we can remember, wealso have weaknesses, strengths, and biases in other cognitiveprocesses. While driving we can become overloaded with information.We are also limited in what we can perceive, especially at the speedand in the conditions in which we drive our cars. This is why road signsare brightly coloured and have simple but clear symbols.
- Doors have flat panels for “push”, and handles for “pull”. Mobilephones have green buttons for “Call” and red buttons for “End Call”.These design features may seem obvious to us. Why would you use ahandle for a “Push” door, when a flat surface is easier to push? Whywould my phone have a Red button for me to make calls? As we willsee later the use of panels and handles, green and red makes use ofsimple affordances - An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action that associate a stimulus and a response without much thought.When something is red, we have a fair idea that it signals danger orstop. When something has a handle, an object that fits neatly into thehuman hand and suggests pulling, we tend to grab it and pull. Ofcourse there are cultural and contextual differences in how peoplerespond to these stimuli. Red may not signal stop in every culture andmost of us will only pull the handle if we want to open the door.Nonetheless, there are some mappings between the properties ofobjects and the actions they elicit that can be exploited in designIt is often quite difficult to find and exploit those mappings ininteractive products and systems, the ones that are most relevant inthis module. By interactive we mean those products and systems thatinvolve interaction between humans and computers, for example,satellite navigation in a car, word processing systems, mobile phones,air traffic control systems, social network sites, and online learning.There is no obvious push/pull or on/off function in those systemsbecause the interaction between people and computers to make themwork is complex. Think of something as apparently straightforward asa word processing system and consider how complex it really is. Lookat all the choices that have to be made, the large number of menus,the out-of-sight preferences and settings, and the interactions betweenthe word processing system and other systems such as the printer orthe photo collection from which you select photos to include indocuments. Clearly the interactions that go on between people andcomputers are complex.
- For a number of decades, a field of study and practice, calleduser-centred design, has tried to develop and apply the knowledge thatwould make using these systems fairly intuitive. User-centred design(UCD) emphasises, at each stage of the design process, the wants,needs, capabilities, and limitations of people as they interact withinterfaces, products, and documents. User-centred designers try to findout about the actual people or the kinds of people for whom they aredesigning systems. With this knowledge they model people’sinteractions with the systems they are developing. They also test theirmodels and assumptions about users with real users performing real,or at least realistic, tasks with prototype systems.User-Centred Design was first proposed by Donald Norman. Some ofthe examples we’ve just talked through, such as the different “interfaces” for push andpull doors, come from Norman’s book The Design of Everyday Things.UCD aims for a good fit between user and product, through simplifiedtasks, making interaction and design features visible, making use ofpeople’s natural tendencies to approach objects in particular ways, anddesigning for the mistakes we make. In later work, Norman alsoincluded consideration of emotional and sensory aspects of interactionin UCD.Norman’s pposition is that people have to be the main focus whendesigning technology.
- Everyone experiences technology in a different way. You can’t design experiences – you can only design for experiences. Experience-centred design goes a step beyond user-centred design and takes into account our subjective, lived experience when designing technologies. WHAT IS EXPERIENCE?A useful way to think of experience is as the whole of people acting,sensing, thinking, feeling, and meaning making in a setting, includingtheir perception and sensation of their own actions. It is not any oneof these things but all of them together. In short experience can onlybe approached as a holistic concept that brings the person, action,feelings, and meaning making together.McCarthy and Wright (2004)identified four intertwined threads of experience and applied them to McCarthy and Wright hoped that they would be a useful tool forshaping the design and evaluation of technology-mediatedexperiences. The threads are described as follows:The compositional thread is concerned with relationships betweenthe parts and the whole of an experience. In Internet shopping, thechoices that are laid out for us can lead us in a coherent way through‘the shop’ or can lead us down blind alleys. Attention to thecompositional thread evokes questions like: "what is this about?";"what has happened?"; "where am I?"; "what will happen next?";"that doesn’t make sense?".The sensual thread is concerned with our sensory engagement witha situation, which orients us to the concrete, palpable, and visceralcharacter of experience, or the immediate sense of a situation. Forexample, the look and feel of a mobile phone, the garish colours andgrating sounds on a website, and the sense of warmth and welcome ina room (even a chat room).This emotional thread refers to judgments that ascribe to otherpeople and things importance with respect to our needs and desires.Our frustration, anger, joy, and satisfaction acknowledge our need forothers or the other in our struggle to achieve emotional unity. Relatingto a character in a movie is an obvious example. Relating to thecharacter of a computer or mobile phone is less obvious but no lessvalid.The spatio-temporal thread refers to the way in which experience isalways embedded in a particular space-time quality. Time may speedup or slow down, pace may increase or decrease, spaces may open upor close down. Space and time may be connected or disconnected. Inour construction of the spatio-temporal aspect of an experience wemight distinguish between public and private space, we may recognisecomfort zones and boundaries between self and other, or present andfuture. Such constructions affect experiential outcomes such aswillingness to linger or to re-visit places or our willingness to engagein exchange of information, services or goods.
- You may already have seen some of the implications of things like“bad” design. If you have ever had to use a badly designed device, youunderstand the reluctance of people to engage with such products andthe frustration that interacting with them involves. The implication forbusiness of such reluctance and frustration is significant. Lowproductivity, poor employee satisfaction, and low customer loyalty arelikely consequences of bad devices and practices.A design approach to understanding interaction allows us to see whatis happening and how we can change it. This module will contain themethods necessary to see that. Designing “good” devices hasenormous benefits. Just look at the success of the Apple iPod. Thebenefits are not just commercial. The iPod is a cultural icon. The focusis not just on objects though, we have to consider how people thinkand feel about technology too.
- The benefits of good design are also social, political, and ethical.Imagine what you could do with a form of video-conferencing thatmade people feel like they were having a face-to-face meeting? Youdon’t have to be sitting in a boardroom, or be a CEO, to benefit fromsuch a medium. Imagine all the families with brothers, sisters,children, parents, and grandparents spread out over the world whocould feel like they were at home again. Imagine a doctor being able toconsult and operate on his patients from a distance. A specialistsurgeon could potentially provide services to a much wider anddispersed group of people. E-learning could provide students with thesame experience of engagement with a class of other students that areal class have.
- This may seem like a strange statement to propose as a benefit of thismodule. Technology is already everywhere. And that is where theadvantage of thinking deeply and critically about technology, the focusof the HS modules, comes into play. We live and work surrounded bytechnology. It behoves us to pay more attention to it, to the thingsthat are left unsaid in our interactions with them, to the power that ithas over us, and us over it. What are the implications of thepervasiveness of mobile phones? Are they just health implications oralso social problems? What does it mean for me when Google can readmy e-mails and serve me “targeted” advertisements based on them?In the emerging digital and knowledge economy Intellectual Property ispriceless, yet we often unwittingly hand control, and sometimesownership, over to technology. Where are your important documentsstored? On paper? On a computer? On a server? Who owns thatinformation? What do you if your digital photographs get erased andlost? Who do you blame? Yourself? Technology? What does it mean tohand over our social graph and control over it to Facebook, oreven Google? Why does being a member of Facebook make it difficultfor me to share my life with members of Google Plus? It is important that wekeep a critical eye on what technology can do and is doing for us, andhow easily we let it.