I teach media technology and electronics at an Art University. The people I teach vary wildly in how interested they are in technology. Yet one truth that emer

I teach media technology and electronics at an Art University. The people I teach vary wildly in how interested they are in technology. Yet one truth that emerged over the years is: The more people understand the underlying principles the easier it is for them to make the technology do what they want. Good equipment empowers users to understand the underlying principles by using simple abstractions, bad technology tries to obscure underlying principle by using bad abstractions. If the abstraction made mistakenly tries to simplify a thing more than is reasonably possible, it not only takes agency away from people new to that technology — it can also make it hard or impossible to for people who know the technology on an expert level.