Sunday 15 January 2017

Nonsense of direction

Jan 14
Technology steers people away from their own commonsense and instincts. It disorients people's natural heuristic decision making. Science has proved  that our personal judgement, intuition, common sense is flawed, but the way it has steered us towards becoming tech dependant is  a bit much. Lets say a common sense, rule of thumb, based on experience, common knowledge decision is 90% right but sometimes wrong, and a piece of technology or an app is 95% right, isn't it best to adopt that? yes but what if the use of it overrides the user own decision making apparatus, disables  and disorientates the user, disempowering them and taking away any sense that they can  have effective agency in the situation. For example take sense of direction; I was in a cafe this morning, and gave directions j to a young woman  and I think her parents (I think they were airb'n'bing it.  ] She had an address in Cato St, scribbled on a piece of paper she wanted to go to. She had probably been told that it was near Baker Street, but London is a big city.    I explained how to get there-it's about ten minutes walk and involved turning left and right about 4 times- not obvious but very possible. She listened closely gave me every impression she understood, and thanked me. Now, 10 minutes later, she was still in the cafe looking confused. Was I just  assuming that a sense of direction and ability to absorb directions is innate? - she looked confused and disorientated and stared helplessly into her mobile phone as if' they' the unseen ones that she was trying to connect with should help her. It was more important that she gave me the right response, appearing to understand was more important to her than actually understanding.
'You're still here' I said as I was leaving
'Yes' she said helplessly, and looked outside it was raining. was she waiting for it to stop before walking to Cato Street, or using it as an excuse?

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