Borrowing the title from a very famous book called ”The Inmates are Running the Asylum” by Alan Cooper. This book talks about the problem for normal people when all functions and digital objects work according to ”programmer logic” which might seem like the best and easiest way for them since their brains are already wired to think in that way. For the rest of the population it requires a learning curve instead of working intuitively. One example of how complicated some objects can be are the remote-controlled who usually are very confusing unless you’re used to that or a similar model already. Everyone interested in usability should definitely read Cooper’s book.
The reason I’m writing this post about usability and technocracy right now is the frustration from spending an hour yesterday trying to install a new version of Tweetdeck. The first and biggest problem I have is with Microsoft and their ”safe” Vista7 that doesn’t allow me to install what I want even though I’m the sole administrator and user of this computer. Microsoft has decided that the average user is better off with less control of their own computer and therefore it requires a lot of tweaking and looking to find the right settings if one wants to do something more advanced. The second problem I encountered was that I had to update Adobe Air, a program that is required to run Tweetdeck. This program runs in the background of Windows and is very hard to find and uninstall. It kept telling me I had the wrong version installed even though I tried several times to wipe it out completely and make a fresh install. Even though I am a fairly technical guy I never managed to fix it and gave up after all that time I wasted on trying. Now running Seesmic instead of Tweetdeck because it was too technical to fix the issues that arose…
I am very much against the control that Microsoft exerts over the user. Unfortunately Adobe has decided to not support Linux at this stage which forces me to use a desktop I don’t like to be able to use Photoshop and Illustrator:/ Another company I’m liking less and less is Apple and their Iphone. The phone is a brilliant product and very easy and good to use but it destroys the market for the rest of the smart phones. By being as dominant as Iphone is right now on the market, all the suppliers produce apps primarily for Iphone and then if they have the time and resources for other phones. This is an evil circle where Iphone gets more and more users due to their good apps and the increased number of users create an even bigger incentive for the suppliers to produce apps for Iphone primarily.
Tech rant. end.
[pic: CC-BY-NC-SA, ewar woowar]
Going against established laws and copyrights have throughout history enabled a higher level of innovation to take place then would otherwise have happened. The public needs pirates to enhance the market. Big firms with high profits tend to get satisfied instead of aiming to constantly improve upon their services.
If we didn’t have pirates and copying then Walt Disney would not be the empire it was today. 20th Century Fox is another major company today that started with pirating film since the Motion Picture Patent Company (MPPC), consisting of 10 major companies, was using bullying and monopolizing to keep small independent film companies out of the market. There are a few more that started of as pirates to later on go and build an empire. The problem is that they forget their past and act as the big bullying actors of the past.
Once a firm becomes an established entity with a good profit they often restrict innovation in order to maintain their business profits. New innovations means a shift of power which is often bad for established players. One example is the delaying of FM-technology that RCA did to keep their share on the AM market even though they realized that FM radio was clearly a superior alternative. This restriction and suing of people to delay progress keeps repeating at each introduction of a new innovation that shifts balance within the market (radio, tv, cds, mp3, torrents etc). Another way of restricting innovation is locking down content in complicated laws and bureaucracy needed to clear rights. Netflix is an innovator that has had to fight it’s way to the position it is in today but that still has a long bureaucratic path in order to launch their business more global.
Innovation shakes the profitability of the market for the established players, sometimes to the better but sometimes to the worse. It is often the small and new players that are most keen on evolving their business ideas in order to make their way into the market. The larger a firm gets the larger the bureaucracy becomes and this means that the organizational learning most of the times gets very limited in its possibilities. The bigger control a firm has over the supply to a certain market the harder they will sue and use dirty tricks to keep other out of this market. With only a few players in the market the power shifts away from the consumers and towards the suppliers.
Pic: CC-BY-NC-SA, .nele
Sources: History of Film – The History of the Movies , Piraterna : de svenska fildelarna som plundrade Hollywood , Edwin Armstrong: Genius of FM Radio
As some may have noticed my blog gets updated a lot more right now. I’ve decided to post something daily in the blog for some time forward now. With daily I mean from when I wake up until I sleep and not the 24hr system most people refer to when they say daily.
The reason why I’m trying to post something daily is not to increase readers, there are a lot better ways to do that. The reasoning behind the constant updates is mainly to produce a lot of content (which hopefully maintains a high level later into this ”experiment” as well). Producing a large amount of content is good for formulating thoughts into coherent and processed output in various fields. It is also good since I get used to a high production rate, this makes it very easy later on when I step down the tempo.
Having this deadline each day forces me to constantly think about the blog and also about what to write here. It is also good for later on when one needs to get more used by working against daily deadlines. If I get used to it now it won’t be stressful and bad later on. A deadline is also good for me since it forces me to reflect further and more coherent then I would do otherwise. I normally don’t like to write much and tend to focus more on cognitive aspects of information.
[apologise for grammar, logic and dullness in above post that have arised from writing this at 4.30am]
I got inspired to write this blog post about inspiration after reading another blog post about inspiration;) A lot of people think that inspiration comes and goes at it’s own accord but this is not entirely true. Some people are more in tune with their inspiration and it seems like they have a natural gift but if you want to be inspired as well there are a few tricks. In this post I’m going to discuss three tricks (exposing, limiting and no requirements) to enable inspiration.
The first trick is probably the easiest. By exposing yourself to other creative art you will be inspired by something in those pictures to create something of your own. I try to post some inspiration each Sunday to be stimulated and get a good start for the next week. When exposing yourself you need to combine, either your own thoughts or two other pieces, to create something new and unique. This kind of trick for inspiration is limited by current copyright laws that force you to not use too much of the picture that inspired you.
Second trick is limiting yourself. In this age of information there is always something going on which is easier to focus on then the current task. Thus we need to restrict what we can do until we are done with our work. If one limits the field of thought and use it to focus on inspiration one will find something. Sometimes this means limiting physical surroundings, sometimes it’s enough to just limit the cognitive focus of your thoughts.
The last trick to getting inspiration that I will talk about is having no requirements of what you produce. This approach almost always fails at the first approach where one comes up with something really bad. But from this failure one often remixes parts of it and comes up with something inspiring to create with. Fail a few times without limiting yourself to what is good and there will for sure be something of value in some part of the attempts.
[photo: CC-BY-NC-ND, Dia]
