Carr's article highlights a growing concern in HCI -- that sophisticated technology can result in degradation of human skills (both motor and cognitive). How do we reconcile the important benefits of computational offloading and computerized checks within systems at the same time that we prevent human users from becoming "rusty"? In your answer, provide a concrete example of how a system designer may counteract this concern within a specific design for educational technology. (I.e., describe a feature, set of controls, or type of interaction that you think could effectively combat this problem.)
Increasing automation in whatever industry is driven economically, meaning more tasks can be done by artificially intelligent automation than by manual human effort. That is a bit of an over-simplification. However, as long as industry is driven by greater efficiency, automation will continue to take over "human" jobs.
I see nothing wrong with this. Though early efforts in automation of information work are leaving out things to be desired - as in the glaring case of the first Ebola death - upgraded algorithms within programs will catch those near misses. The job is not to make computers coax less responsive human operators into responsiveness - it's for computers to become more human-like in their diagnoses and broad coverage of situations. The computer can then take into account that larger array of variables in a decision-making process that were left out in previous iterations of programming. And this much is inevitable.
Humans can prevent themselves from becoming less rusty by trusting their minds more and retaining the discipline that we were required to use pre-information age. This takes some discipline. However, I see no reason to design interfaces with paradoxical training wheels, simply to keep humans from becoming intellectually lazy in their endeavors. Those training wheels & prompts will be hacked around by smart humans that realize the machine can do more and that the "humane" design is a silly vestige of humans wanting to remain useful in a situation where it is becoming increasingly less necessary.
With all that Terminator-speak out of the way, I think it is very valuable for there to be processes like low-fidelity, colored-pencil/paper prototyping, for example. Such steps will retain that human element prior to the placing of the design into a terminal.
I do believe, though, that economic thrust will be the ultimate driver of what becomes automated, not human aesthetic.
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