本帖最后由 shevava 于 2010-6-15 18:10 编辑
学习贴...by lynn
The promise of technology is to simplify our lives, it is failing
Information overload
http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/125
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About this debate
Backgroud reading
Openning statements
Guest
Rebuttal statements
Guest A & B
Closing statements
Guest
Winner announcement
About this debate
Technology users are discovering that theproliferation n.激增of information tools, services, and channels makes managing their own personal and professional information increasingly difficult. A growing chorus of voices is sounding the alarm that information overload is diminishing people’s ability be effective. Are there better ways to manage the vast amounts of information assaulting v. 攻击;袭击; users on a daily basis? What is the right balance between new tools and information streams, on the one hand, and minimizing the impact of information overload on the other? Are people losing their ability to reflect rather than just react?
Background reading
SURVEY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Make it simple The next thing in technology, says Andreas Kluth, is not just big but truly huge: the conquest of complexity Oct 28th 2004 | From The Economist print edition “THE computer knows me as its enemy,” says John Maeda. “Everything I touch doesn't work.” Take those “plug-and-play” n. 即插即用 devices, such as printers and digital cameras, that any personal computer (PC) allegedly adv. 依其申述 recognises automatically as soon as they are plugged into an orifice called a USB port at the back of the PC. Whenever Mr Maeda plugs something in, he says, his PC sends a long and incomprehensible error message from Windows, Microsoft's ubiquitous adj. 到处存在的，遍在的 operating system. But he knows from bitter experience that the gist n. 要点，要旨 of it is no.
At first glance, Mr Maeda's troubles might not seem very noteworthy. Who has not watched Windows crash and reboot v. 重新启动without provocation n. 激怒, 挑拨, 刺激, downloaded endless anti-virus programs to reclaim a moribund adj.垂死的 hard disc, fiddled with用手胡乱拨弄 cables and settings to hook up将 ... 联接起来 a printer, and sometimes simply given up? Yet Mr Maeda is not just any old technophobic user. He has a master's degree in computer science and a PhD in interface n. 界面，接触面 design, and is currently a professor in computer design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is, in short, one of the world's foremost computer geeks n.男孩, 伙计. Mr Maeda concluded that if he, of all people, cannot master the technology needed to use computers effectively, it is time to declare a crisis. So, earlier this year, he launched a new research initiative called “Simplicity” at the MIT Media Lab. Its mission is to look for ways out of today's mess.
Mr Maeda has plenty of sympathisers. “It is time for us to rise up with a profound demand,” declared the late Michael Dertouzos in his 2001 book, “The Unfinished Revolution”: “Make our computers simpler to use!” Donald Norman, a long-standing advocate of design simplicity, concurs. v. 意见相同，一致，互助 “Today's technology is intrusive adj. 打扰的, 插入的 and overbearing. adj. 难忍的 It leaves us with no moments of silence, with less time to ourselves, with a sense of diminished control over our lives,” he writes in his book, “The Invisible Computer”. “People are analogue, not digital; biological, not mechanical. It is time for human-centred technology, a humane technology.”
The information-technology (IT) industry itself is long past denial. Greg Papadopoulos, chief technologist at Sun Microsystems, a maker of powerful corporate computers, says that IT today is “in a state that we should be ashamed; it's embarrassing.” Ray Lane, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the most prominent adj. 卓越的, 突出的, 显著的technology financiers in Silicon Valley, explains: “Complexity is holding our industry back right now. A lot of what is bought and paid for doesn't get implemented because of complexity. Maybe this is the industry's biggest challenge.” Even Microsoft, which people like Mr Lane identify as a prime culprit, is apologetic. “So far, most people would say that technology has made life more complex,” concedes Chris Capossela, the boss of Microsoft's desktop applications.例子
The economic costs of IT complexity are hard to quantify but probably exorbitant. adj.过度的,过高的The Standish Group, a research outfit v.装配,配置that tracks corporate IT purchases, has found that 66% of all IT projects either fail outright ad.坦率地；彻底地or take much longer to install than expected because of their complexity. Among very big IT projects—those costing over $10m apiece—98% fall short.
Gartner, another research firm, uses other proxies n.取代物; 代理权; for complexity. An average firm's computer networks are down for an unplanned 175 hours a year, calculates Gartner, causing an average loss of over $7m. On top of that, employees waste an average of one week a year struggling with their recalcitrant PCs. And itinerant employees, such as salesmen, incur an extra $4,400 a year in IT costs, says the firm.
Tony Picardi, a boffin n. <英>专注于科技研究(尤指军事)的科学家at IDC, yet another big research firm, comes up with perhaps the most frightening number. When he polled v.对...进行民意测验;投票 a sample of firms 15 years ago, they were spending 75% of their IT budget on new hardware and software and 25% on fixing the systems that they already had; now that ratio has been reversed—70-80% of IT spending goes on fixing things rather than buying new systems. According to Mr Picardi, this suggests that this year alone IT complexity will cost firms worldwide some $750 billion. Even this, however, does not account for the burden on consumers, whether measured in the cost of call-centres and help desks, in the amount of gadgets and features never used because they are so byzantine adj.错综复杂的, or in sheer adj.十足的,完全的 frustration.
Why now?
Complaints about complex technology are, of course, nothing new. Arguably, IT has become more complex in each of the 45 years since the integrated circuit made its debut. n. 初次登场，首次露面But a few things have happened in the past three years that now add a greater sense of urgency.
The most obvious change is the IT bust that followed the dotcom n. 商业网站，网站boom繁荣,激增,猛涨 of the late 1990s. After a decade of strong growth, the IT industry suddenly started shrinking in 2001 (see chart 1). In early 2000 it accounted for 35% of America's S&P 500 index; today its share is down to about 15%. “For the past three years, the tech industry's old formula—build it and they come—has no longer worked,” says Pip Coburn, a technology analyst at UBS, an investment bank. For technology vendors, he thinks, this is the sort of trauma挫折,损伤 that precedes a paradigm n. 范例，示范shift. Customers no longer demand “hot” technologies, but instead want “cold” technologies, such as integration software, that help them stitch v.缝,缝补together and simplify the fancy systems they bought during the boom years.
Steven Milunovich, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, another bank, offers a further reason why simplicity is only now becoming a big issue. He argues that the IT industry progresses in 15-year waves. In the first wave, during the 1970s and early 1980s, companies installed big mainframe n. 主机，大型计算机computers; in the second wave, they put in PCs that were hooked up to “server” computers in the basement; and in the third wave, which is breaking now, they are beginning to connect every gadget n. 小器具; 小玩意; 小配件 that employees might use, from hand-held computers to mobile phones, to the internet.
The mainframe era, says Mr Milunovich, was dominated by proprietary adj. 专利的，所有权的technology (above all, IBM's), used mostly to automate the back offices of companies, so the number of people actually working with it was small. In the PC era, de facto adj. 事实上的，实际的standards (ie, Microsoft's) ruled, and technology was used for word processors and spreadsheets n. 电子制表软件, 电子数据表to make companies' front offices more productive, so the number of people using technology multiplied tenfold. adv. 成十倍，成十重And in the internet era, Mr Milunovich says, de jure法律上地; 权利上地standards (those agreed on by industry consortia) are taking over, and every single employee will be expected to use technology, resulting in another tenfold increase in numbers.
Moreover, the boundaries between office, car and home will become increasingly blurred and will eventually disappear altogether. In rich countries, virtually the entire population will be expected to be permanently connected to the internet, both as employees and as consumers. This will at last make IT pervasive adj. 普遍的，蔓延的，渗透的 and ubiquitous, adj. 到处存在的，遍在的 like electricity or telephones before it, so the emphasis will shift towards making gadgets and networks simple to use.
UBS's Mr Coburn adds a demographic observation. Today, he says, some 70% of the world's population are “analogues”, who are “terrified by technology”, and for whom the pain of technology “is not just the time it takes to figure out new gadgets but the pain of feeling stupid at each moment along the way”. Another 15% are “digital immigrants”, typically thirty-somethings who adopted technology as young adults; and the other 15% are “digital natives”, teenagers and young adults who have never known and cannot imagine life without IM (instant messaging, in case you are an analogue). But a decade from now, Mr Coburn says, virtually the entire population will be digital natives or immigrants, as the ageing analogues convert to avoid social isolation. Once again, the needs of these converts point to a hugely increased demand for simplicity.
The question is whether this sort of technology can ever become simple, and if so, how. This survey will analyse the causes of technological complexity both for firms and for consumers, evaluate the main efforts toward simplification by IT and telecom vendors today, and consider what the growing demands for simplicity mean for these industries. A good place to start is in the past. |
楼主: shevava
发表于 2010-6-7 23:08:16
签到领寄托币
GO
转发
