denise

In the Norman reading and/or human computation video, what did you find interesting and non-obvious?

I found interesting the fact that many of our everyday activities where designed to make our life easier. We use symbols, sounds or gestures to represent things, but what if we thought about them for a minute? We could see that their representation form is what makes them work. For example, I found interesting when Mr. Norman explained how we use numbers, we know they are everywhere, I’ve learned them since I was very little but never stopped to think why they looked like that. The fact is that our mind remembers images in an easier way than remembering calculations or algorithms that would be easier for machines, our mind reacts to this (Arabic) images because of their representation form, they make it easier for most of our everyday activities and calculations as well as for machine communication, but when we are looking at graphics statistics we need another kind of representation, something that leads us to compare values in an easier and faster way, in this case Arabic numbers for computers will still be fine, but for an average human, graphics as a chart would do the job.

Human intelligence can do many things that computer intelligence can’t, although we pay attention to those who perform machine-like tasks, we need mind aids to avoid errors and spend less time doing things that something without mind can easily do.

It’s an non-obvious thing to think that human mind has more attributes than a machine, because in an era where machines rule, almost everyone becomes dependant on them. But machines without concept or brilliant ideas are almost useless, but human mind plus machine power can rule everything.