Technology should help us or entertain us
Alex iskold writes about “The Future of Computer Applications: Help me or Entertain me”. I think that this question is right on the ball. If you look at the latest iPhone or Facebook application development craze you realize that the most popular definitely fit into one of these two categories. He says:
These days work and entertainment increasingly mix. So we need software that understands what mode we’re in. When we work, we search for information. When we play, we’re browsing and we want to be entertained. The information for work must be precise, whereas that for entertainment can be imprecise and casual.
About helping us which is centered around productivity, order and context, he says:
….In business we have a set of tools to help get things done. From Microsoft Office to the skinny gems from 37 Signals, business tools enable us to collaborate, manage projects, sales pipelines, contacts, etc. While we complain about these tools, the fact is we couldn’t do without them.
The most important factor about business tools is context. The best tools understand what we’re doing. The best tools encode business flows and processes, and guide us through the process.
And about entertainment, which he says has three core aspects brevitry, casualness and randomness:
The new entertainment is based on a couple of patterns. First is brevity. With increasing (and nowadays unbearable) amount of information and choice, modern entertainment software knows it has your eyes for only a limited time.
Modern entertainment is more casual and short because with ubiquitous web access, rise of the social web and work from home, people want to be entertained during the day. Nothing that takes a long time could work, but checking Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook for a few minutes is fine in most people’s minds.
The other face of casuality is randomness. Apple made a brilliant move when it released iPod shuffle; a lot of people don’t care about the order songs play.
He concludes:
Software is increasingly polarized into utilities and entertainment. Utilities help us work and are becoming more rigorous. We’re looking for helpful software that understands our context and guides us through the process, whether it is search or a complex business task. Entertainment software is at the opposite spectrum, being casual, brief and random. We’re unwilling to spend hours browsing, but instead seek quick and satisfactory entertainment.
So, how do you think that educators develop ‘edutainment’ for the junior youth, that is, educational materials that are both educational and entertaining?
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[...] course, the wrap-up reminds me, of a previous post ‘“Technology should help us or entertain us”, where I ask the question: “So, how do you think that educators develop [...]
[...] course, the wrap-up reminds me, of a previous post ‘“Technology should help us or entertain us”, where I ask the question: “So, how do you think that educators develop [...]