[Sigia-l] Technology is just a tool (was "NYT article" on sigia-l)

[Andrew Boyd]

Listera wrote:

>Otherwise, we're asking the very people who pay our salaries, who do pay
>attention to customer needs, who do employ people like us to think through
>overall design issues to subsidize the awakening of the clueless. That would
>be cruel.
>
>  
>
Hi Ziya,

for myself, I would swap every cent I have ever earnt and may ever earn 
through IA and design to live in a world where people gave a damn enough 
to care about the implications of their design decisions. I'd swap every 
cent etc. to live in a world where we didn't need squillion dollar 
Defence/Defense budgets, as profitable as these are for many of us 
(including myself). Some payment-for-cluelessness is inevitable (for 
example, when your toilet doesn't work, and you haven't been to trade 
school, you call a plumber), but I wonder how much of it we in the 
information support trade create for ourselves.

For example, were the same people that said "this Internet thing is so 
cool, you have to get your company involved" not also the people who 
profited by it? Has the resulting Internet presence substantially 
improved the quality of services provided by these companies? Has it 
improved the quality of life for their customers? I can now get shafted 
with high bank fees from the comfort of my own home office, instead of 
driving 20 minutes to the nearest branch - am I a better person for it?

To try and return this to topic... I've tried to educate people as much 
as possible where they have shown an interest, at every place I have 
ever worked. I firmly believe that each time a junior engineer or middle 
manager reads Rosenfeld and Morville or Steve Krug's 'Don't Make Me 
Think', they have raised the pool of human consciousness just a tiny 
step in the right direction. :)

Best regards, Andrew

-- 
_________________________________________
Andrew Boyd 
Business Development Manager
Daily Basis P/L
Phone 02 6282 9797 or 02 4885 1357
Mobile 0412 641 074
Email andrew at dailybasis.com.au
or andrew_db at bigpond.com
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