Wednesday’s Big Idea
Today's Big Idea: Magical Thinking
We may not yet possess those cool transparent computers they have on CSI, but we live in a science fiction fantasy world of seamless information exchange, one in which even our telephones seem to possess magical powers. The less you know about technology, the more magical it seems, so the more the sophisticated the tech becomes, the vaster the cultural gulf between the computer literate and the computer-challenged.
This is a dangerous situation, says Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget. Lanier, an early virtual reality pioneer and researcher for Microsoft Kinect has been a vocal critic of what he sees as a dehumanizing trend in our relationship with technology.
Understanding that machines aren’t magical, and grasping at least the essentials of how they “think” can enable individuals and businesses to make smarter IT decisions about which problems machines and software can solve independently and which require direct human intervention.
