What is it about?
We frequently assume that our computational assistants — Siri, Alexa — and our tools ought to be friendly and transparent. They should serve us or remain silent. This might be a mistake.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
“User friendliness” is a delusion: your computer is not your friend. Neither are Facebook and Twitter.
Perspectives
Computational systems are our slaves of steel. In seeking to cast our hypertexts as seamless, subservient, unobtrusive and friendly assistants, we set ourselves a daunting challenge that amplifies failure and hides success. We don’t want a friend, we want a sidekick. We want to argue. We see more clearly if we see through other eyes, even if our own eyes are better.
Mark Bernstein
Eastgate Systems Inc
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bad Character, July 2020, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3372923.3404777.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
