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Sometimes it's the technologists who are the most resistant to technological change. I sometimes get annoyed when Google displays results other than the 10 blue

by declan 13y ago

Sometimes it's the technologists who are the most resistant to technological change. I sometimes get annoyed when Google displays results other than the 10 blue links, and tries to correct my searches when I'm searching for info on APIs, but I recognize that I'm in a minority and most people would benefit from more hand-holding. Put another way, you may be comfortable enough with computers to remember what directory your files are in, and handling backups manually, and all that. But my mother, despite decades of my attempts to the contrary, is not and never will be. And far more people are like her than me (and, I suspect, you). I think this is what Larry Page is in part talking about when he invokes the idea of the 1-percent-of-what-we-could-be-doing. Take a look at my colleague Sharon Vaknin's test of Google Now vs. Siri. They're both remarkably capable by the standards of even three years ago, but unlike Siri, Google understands context. "How tall is President Obama?" <answer> "By what margin was he reelected?" <answer> http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57584898-285/google-now-vs-siri-virtual-assistants-duke-it-out-video/ http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57584898-285/google-now-... I'm echoing what ender7 wrote above, I think, but you can't have a useful conversation with 10 blue links.

enraged_camel 13y ago
>>Sometimes it's the technologists who are the most resistant to technological change. Because it's the technologists that truly understand the pros and cons of a proposed technological development. Everyone else tends to be starry-eyed daydreamers who are living in an alternate reality.
stevenbedrick 13y ago
Good point, and there are a lot of factors that go into it. r00fus made a similar point in a sibling reply, and I absolutely agree that users like us are quite different than 99.99999% of Google's other users- it definitely sounds like we have similar family members. And as I replied below, experts and novices have very different needs in terms of their information behavior. I still don't think that lets Google off the hook, though; it just makes it more important that their personalization strategy be backed by very flexible, granular, and technically meaningful privacy controls. It means that Google should be setting an even higher bar in terms of educating their users about precisely what data gets collected and exactly how it gets used- and they should empower their users to control how that personal data impacts their experience using Google's products. The number of their users who actually care about this stuff right now is basically a rounding error when compared to their total user numbers, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. And hopefully, as more and more of our life is conducted online, the number of people who care about this will increase.

by declan 13y ago

enraged_camel 13y ago

>>Sometimes it's the technologists who are the most resistant to technological change. Because it's the technologists that truly understand the pros and cons of a proposed technological development. Everyone else tends to be starry-eyed daydreamers who are living in an alternate reality.

stevenbedrick 13y ago

Good point, and there are a lot of factors that go into it. r00fus made a similar point in a sibling reply, and I absolutely agree that users like us are quite different than 99.99999% of Google's other users- it definitely sounds like we have similar family members. And as I replied below, experts and novices have very different needs in terms of their information behavior. I still don't think that lets Google off the hook, though; it just makes it more important that their personalization strategy be backed by very flexible, granular, and technically meaningful privacy controls. It means that Google should be setting an even higher bar in terms of educating their users about precisely what data gets collected and exactly how it gets used- and they should empower their users to control how that personal data impacts their experience using Google's products. The number of their users who actually care about this stuff right now is basically a rounding error when compared to their total user numbers, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. And hopefully, as more and more of our life is conducted online, the number of people who care about this will increase.