by Donald A. Norman
The first chapter of The Design of Future Things presents Norman's basic argument for the entirety of the book: machines and future technology must get better at communication with humans and learn to understand their limitations and when to relinquish control. Norman argues that true "artificial intelligence" is not possible in the near future. Current systems are not intelligent but are instead a bank of possible outcomes that designers have programmed the system's reaction to. But, it is not possible for us to program all possible outcomes - we will always forget at least one. Norman says that instead of programming each possible solution, we need to program our machines and technology to listen to us and react with better communication, acting in a "symbiotic relationship." If machines can recognize what they're good at but also recognize their limitations, then we can take advantage of technological advances without the risk of being controlled or overruled by the decisions that our creations make for us.
The first chapter of this book was very interesting because it raises some interesting questions about the growth of technology, specifically: "What happens when technology thinks that it's smarter than us?". While we have all of these new versions of traditional technology: cars that can sense other vehicles, washing machines that can detect the size of the load, and recommendation systems that claim to know our preferences, what keeps these technologies from overruling the decisions that we make? I agree with Norman in that we need to have limitations on the authority of our technological devices, thus having them "recognize" that if a human turns a feature off or makes a decision that they must know best. The problem is that human interactions are so subtle and different between cultures, situations, and people that it is impossible to accurately program this in. There is no way to completely cover all your bases, and also impossible to program a device that can make decisions in a human way. While Norman agrees with this and says that such innovations are many years away, it is hard for me to imagine a time like that at all, no matter how far in the future.
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