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User Error: Resisting Computer Culture
User Error explodes the myth of computer technology as juggernaut. Multimedia educator Ellen Rose shows that there is no bandwagon, no out-of-control dynamo, no titanic conspiracy to overwhelm us. Instead, there is our own desire to join the fraternity of users, a fraternity that confers legitimacy and power on those who enter the brave new world.
Rose exposes how we surrender decision-making power in personal and workplace computing situations. As users we willingly grant authority to the creators of software, support materials, and the seductive infrastructure of technocracy.
"Smart" users are rewarded; reluctant users are pathologized. User identity is deliberately constructed at the crossroads of industry, consumer demand, and complicity. User Error sounds a timely alarm, calling on all of us who use the new technologies to recognize how we are being co-opted. With awareness we can reassert our own responsibility and power in this increasingly important interaction.
Savvy, accessible, and up-to-date, User Error offers insight, inspiration, and strategies of resistance to general readers, technology professionals, students, and scholars alike.
Rose exposes how we surrender decision-making power in personal and workplace computing situations. As users we willingly grant authority to the creators of software, support materials, and the seductive infrastructure of technocracy.
"Smart" users are rewarded; reluctant users are pathologized. User identity is deliberately constructed at the crossroads of industry, consumer demand, and complicity. User Error sounds a timely alarm, calling on all of us who use the new technologies to recognize how we are being co-opted. With awareness we can reassert our own responsibility and power in this increasingly important interaction.
Savvy, accessible, and up-to-date, User Error offers insight, inspiration, and strategies of resistance to general readers, technology professionals, students, and scholars alike.
216 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2003
7 people want to read
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April 4, 2020
This was a difficult book to read at times because it does read very anti tech for a lot of it. But I think the key is the conclusion, where Rose calls not for not less tech, but for more careful consideration of whether a particular tech is the best choice to meet a human need.
That said the examples here are fairly dated - it was written in 2003, in the hey day of enterprise software, Microsoft, Myspace, waterfall development, post cellphone but pre iPhone, post blogs and but pre Facebook and YouTube. Obviously things have changed - I do feel like software development nowadays is in a better place as far as building a good user experience (when was the last time you even thought of buying a book for every day software?), but also, this has led to the post truth era of fake news and anti intellectualism.
For that reason, it's still valuable to consider the inevitability in so much language about tech and the future. "Artifacts increasingly used, by both children and adults, in rote, compulsive ways which are inherently antithetical to the possibilities of self-knowledge and responsible action." Remind you of anything? Again pre Facebook, pre iPhone.
I found the last two chapters most relevant to today, and it's the reason this went from three to four stars.
That said the examples here are fairly dated - it was written in 2003, in the hey day of enterprise software, Microsoft, Myspace, waterfall development, post cellphone but pre iPhone, post blogs and but pre Facebook and YouTube. Obviously things have changed - I do feel like software development nowadays is in a better place as far as building a good user experience (when was the last time you even thought of buying a book for every day software?), but also, this has led to the post truth era of fake news and anti intellectualism.
For that reason, it's still valuable to consider the inevitability in so much language about tech and the future. "Artifacts increasingly used, by both children and adults, in rote, compulsive ways which are inherently antithetical to the possibilities of self-knowledge and responsible action." Remind you of anything? Again pre Facebook, pre iPhone.
I found the last two chapters most relevant to today, and it's the reason this went from three to four stars.
Displaying 1 of 1 review