So I’m on Engadget, and they have this thing about the iPot (Information Pot) and how it’s used by Japanese folks to keeps tabs (without being invasive) on their elderly folks at home. Okay fine. Sort of a neat idea, a little creepy, but I get it.
Then I’m digging around and notice this piece on the iPot, and they had this little paragraph that struck me as poingnant somehow:
The experience for the participant is to speak the language of the machine and thus to more deeply understand and connect with the machine. The action may also bring about personal revelations in the participant, because in sounding with the blender one is likely to perform gesture and sound expressions not previously accessed which may open up hidden emotions or thoughts or feelings.
Now, this strikes a chord for me, ’cause I’m one of those people who, as a child, spent about four and a half-minutes trying to figure something out, and then I’d get frustrated, freak out a little, think I was obviously retarded, and then put it down, never to do it again.
Which makes me think about why the hell I got into computers in the first place. Immensely frustrating things. I intentionally and happily got myself into a professional field where I often wake up not knowing what I’ll need to know before the end of the day. My lack of organization actually helps me in my job, since it means that I sometimes have to be a little faster on my feet (faster on my fingers?) when it comes to figuring out why a particular piece of hardware/software/user won’t work. It’s gotta be fast, and it’s gotta be darn-near free, otherwise it won’t look like magic, as all good technology should.
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