By Dan Klyn
From a cassette tape in a box in Richard Saul Wurman’s garage.
Side A is a talk by Donald Norman at TED5 in 1994. The transcript of which I’ve made and published below.
Side B is a now-legendary talk by Muriel Cooper that was published by MIT recently as part of a symposium in her honor.
Richard Saul Wurman: Is that enough of an introduction, or do you want some more shit?
Donald Norman: That'll quite do.
Richard Saul Wurman: Okay. That's Donald Norman, and I'm Richard Wurman.
We both look the same.
Donald Norman: I'm at Apple right now, so obviously it had to be a big multimedia extravaganza. And so I decided what I would do is show you some of our latest new things. And, of course, I would use a computer, like a PowerBook, to demonstrate everything.
But when I talked to Richard, he said why do you want to do that? Everybody else does that, and besides: mostly it goes wrong, right?
On top of that, when I use a computer when I give a talk, I kind of feel like it's technology that's governing me. And I'm always paying attention to what it's saying and it's pacing me and it just doesn't feel right. So I decided: no, I wasn't going to use the computer to give a talk. That wasn't the way to do it. Richard said why don't you just sit down on the stage and sort of talk to the people?
Well, I still have to have notes right? You can't give a talk without notes: who could remember it all? So what I would do obviously is use my Newton.
Except, well, you know, it's kind of a small screen.. and besides it's hard to see, so I'd have to carry a flashlight with me.
So maybe not the Newton.
Richard said why don't you use 3” x 5” cards?
Yeah, but you know, the screen size is too small. 3” by 5” cards are not a good technology. So here's what I've done. Pad of paper. 8.5” x 11.” Good screen size, easy to look at, and random access.
So the problem with technology.. I have this love-hate relationship with technology, because it really does change our lives for the better. But it also changes our lives for the worse. Stuff gets in the way is the problem.
When I first showed up at the conference, there was Bill Atkinson, and he was looking at this wonderful electronic address book that got handed out to all of us, and I noticed, though, that when somebody actually asked him a question and said “we have to meet later on today,” what he did, what Bill the high-tech guru did, was pull a small little paper calendar out of his pocket. Works very well. Paper is an extremely good technology: it can be carried around with you, you can read under low light, you can rapidly scan it.. very powerful technology.
My problems with technology is that for years I've been thwarted by it: by things as simple as doorknobs and light switches and the stove controls. I'm always turning on and off the wrong burners, and pushing on doors that should be pulled. It finally dawned on me after many years that it wasn't my fault.
It was the door’s fault. Or the stove’s fault: 4 rectangular burners in a rectangular pattern, and then the controls are in a straight line. So of course, how could you remember which control went with which?
I wrote a book about that: The Design Of Everyday Things. But you know, through life, it occurred to me that the solutions to these problems were pretty trivial. And if the problems were that simple, if the solutions were that simple, then how come it wasn't fixed? And so what I realized is that the problems are not technical. The problems are social and organizational.
In fact, I decided it was time for me as a professor to leave the professor activity and actually see if I could put my money where my mouth was and learn what real business was about. So I went off to Apple computer where I discovered indeed, the problems are not technical: the problems are social and organizational.
There's an old saying in this business that the products of a company reflect the organizational structure of that company. So let me tell you about my Toyota. You drive the Toyota, and you steer it, and control it, and there is a lever to control the automatic shift. And it has 1st, 2nd, and drive, and it's also got overdrive but you don't go 1st, 2nd, drive, overdrive. No no. There’s a separate control for the overdrive.
So, the separate stick for the overdrive has a little button on the end. If you push the button, it turns on the overdrive. And then in the dash, there's a light. If the overdrive is off, the light is on, and if the overdrive is on, the light goes off. And then there's the cruise control. It too is on a stick that comes out of the side of the steering wheel, and it has a light too, but with its light, when the cruise control is off, the light is off. And when the cruise control is on, the light is on, except what it says that it's on, it's not really on: its armed. So it's ready to be on if you only then flip the lever. And then of course, it doesn't bother to tell you that it's really working.
It simply says it’s on, whether it's working or not.
So we have the control for the shift of the car, right? Which is separate from the overdrive, and the cruise control. And one has a light that goes on when it's off, and the other one has a light goes on when it's on, and guess what? Those three separate things are done by three separate divisions of the company who don't necessarily like each other.
They certainly don't talk to each other.
It really is quite amazing how the social structure of the company gets reflected in its products.
We're now in this computer revolution. “Computer.” It’s a funny word, you know? Computer? It's the wrong name, because the least important thing about a computer is that it computes.
In the early days, that's what we thought we did, and what it was for. In fact the very first ENIAC, the first electronic stored program computer, was used to generate and print out great big lists of artillery tables. So that when you're aiming a big gun at the enemy (remember this was developed at the end of the 2nd world war) you could get the printout and see at what angle you should aim the gun.
Of course the whole point of today's computers, you don't need to do the printout right? The computer itself substitutes for that.
But in those days it was thought that the most important thing about the computer was that it computed. And indeed, Thomas Watson at one point was saying that “yeah about 4 or 5 computers, that will serve the whole United States.”
And Turing at one point said the real difficult part will be finding enough mathematicians that know how to program them.
That's the wrong name, because the most important thing about the computer is not that it computes. It's really a machine for two things, I think. For synthesis. It's had its biggest impact, I suspect, in music. The MIDI revolution has really changed music.
The electric guitar turns out to be the world's best input/output device. What the electric guitar is all about is that you have this wonderful, flexible input device and you can do weird and wonderful things with it, and the sounds that come out can be arbitrary - it’s up to the computer to generate the sounds.
And the computer is great for modeling. So you ask “what if” or “how” - the spreadsheet is actually a “what-if” thing. What the spreadsheet lets you do is model, and understand what's going on.
So the computer is really the most important for non mathematics, and for design, and for science. The word processor for example: what has it done? It certainly has not changed writing. It has not improved writing one bit. You're not a better writer because you use a word processor. You may think you can't do without the word processor. But if you look at what you've written, it isn't any better, is it?
We’ve had great books for years and years. In fact, you could argue the word processor makes your writing worse because you only get to see everything through this tiny little window. And what happens with my writing [on a word processor], I know, is it flows flawlessly and smoothly from paragraph to paragraph to paragraph… but the structure is all falling apart. And I say the same thing over and over again and because you just see through this little window, and the only way to understand it is to print it out and just spread it out on the floor, and look at it, and read it, and get a picture of it.
So what we really have to do with our new tools is figure out what they're good for and use them for what they're good at, and don't use them for what they're bad at. Modeling and synthesis. Visualization. That's the real power of these machines.
The new revolution, the one that we're really in now (and I really do think we're in a kind of revolution, but one we don't understand) is about society. And what it's going to change in society. It's not going to change the way you view movies, or the way that you read books. It's going to change the way you interact with other people. It's communication; and it's gonna do some weird things to us. It’s going to let us all work together while we're physically apart. And that's a real contradiction. New social conventions are going to be necessary.
The telephone did that - the telephone dramatically changed the scope of American.. dramatically changed the way that people interact with each other. When the first telephone came out it was known to be important, but nobody knew how. The telephone is so important, they said, that every city in the United States will have to have one.
And people will gather in the city square every evening listen to concerts and news.
And a hotel in the early days had their telephone removed by the phone company. The phone company said “you're letting the mere guests use your telephone? What would ever happen to us if anybody could just call up anybody?”
So the telephone has not been understood. And the telephone did another important thing: it changed our notion of politeness. You know, if I'm talking to you, and a third person comes up, the third person doesn't interrupt. The third person stands there, and gets your attention, and says, excuse me.
But if I'm talking to you and the telephone rings, it used to be you had to rush and answer the phone. You never knew who it might be! And so the telephone always took precedence. The telephone was boorish. Impolite. Rude It wasn't anyone's fault, it’s what I call affordance. The affordance of the telephone.
Affordance is neat term invented by JJ Gibson (a psychologist). It sort of says “what operations does a thing afford?” Which is not really a property of a thing, it is the property of the thing and the things that are afforded. So that this table affords support: it affords support for the Newton, it could afford support for me (I can stand on it). This [Newton device] doesn’t afford visibility: so I can hide behind it. And I also can throw it at you.
So affordance is a function of you, plus the object itself. Telephones do not afford courtesy because the person making the phone call has no way of knowing whether the person at the other end is receptive, or busy, or occupied, or what: there's no way of knowing if they have no choice but to take the phone call, and the person on the other end has no way of knowing who's calling.
This-all could have happened differently. You could sort of imagine that if we didn't expect to talk to the person, but rather we sort of first made an appointment. So I’d call you up and I’d say “Richard when can we talk?” And you’d say “oh call me back in a half hour.” And then I hang up, and you're not really very much bothered by that.
It's a slight interruption. We never started that, somehow or another. We never adopted that kind of an attitude. But it could have happened. It may still happen.
The answering machine has become a real change in the relationship between the telephone and people. You used to have an answering machine because you're out of town, and you want to have your messages. But pretty soon, you learn that the answering machine could work even when you were there, and you could listen and see who it was, right? Is that person important enough for me to pick up the phone?
And then pretty soon, it got to the point where answering machines are actually convenient. It was far better to have a message left on my answering machine and often it was easier right? I just want to tell you what time we are going to meet this evening, I don't want to talk to you, right? And so I call you up, and hope I get your answering machine!
You ever had that, and been disappointed when you get the real person?
We’re gonna have to do more of that, because there's a revolution coming.
Yup - We're going to be all wired up! No matter where you are, there's gonna be a telephone on you, and you can no longer use the excuse that you weren't there. And you’ll have to answer the phone.
That's not going to work. It just isn't going to work.
You really want to live that way? No, we're really going to have to change the way that we interact.
Right now I can lie. It's very convenient, so that with electronic mail I can decide if I don't feel like answering this person. I don't know what to say: let me put it off, and I can answer a week later. I can say “I'm really sorry I didn't answer, you know, I was traveling.”
I don't know how long that lie is going to work, because it turns out when I'm traveling I actually answer more mail than when I'm at home.
The first thing you do when you travel (if you work for Apple), always you plug this thing into the hotel and you start collecting your mail and reading and answering. You actually have a bit more time to do your mail while traveling, and what's going to happen when we all have cellular telephones that are always available?
We’re not going to be able to lie anymore.
And what's going to happen when the video phone comes out? Now, you know, you get this person on the phone like my mother, and when she's talking I’m reading the newspaper, and I'm walking around… and we won’t be able to do that when we have a video phone. I’ll have to look at her, right?
Yes, Mother. Yes, ma'am.
Although you might also get the sense of community you get here at this conference, where we’re talking to people, you know, and what I notice is the downward glance of the eyes. You know, towards a name badge right? Are you important enough for me to be talking to? Is that person more important?
Mmmm.
It’s kind of interesting when you’re socially together, and we might miss that. We’ll have this electronic community, where we’re all working together, but working apart. It’s kind of funny.
Richard Saul Wurman I want to interrupt for one second because last time I didn't have name tags. I just had a TED3 thing. And so you weren't doing that [checking badges to see who was “worth” talking to], you just went right up and started talking to somebody. And they hated it.
Audience: Laughing
Donald Norman: How about if the name tag just had the first name?
Why do you have the last name? Hey Norman, how are you? No, you say “hey Don”. People would say "Don."
One reason we like a name tag is, we do like to know people's names, but you've got to call them something. My good friend Richard Saul Wurman. How come I always call my good friend by three full names? It's kind of weird.
There is a real revolution coming, by the way, and I'm not sure it's for the good. There are some good parts. Learning that could be one of them. Learning today is a weird business. You're born, and then you’re stuck in some school, and then you're stuck in another school for some 20 plus years, and then you’re taken out of school.
And that's the end, right?
Education should really be lifelong and continuous. We also have this weird notion of a teacher. The teacher stands up and lectures, and the teacher is supposed to be the world's authority on whatever topic. Now think of a teacher in the 8th grade. How could they ever be a world expert on the wide range of topics they have to cover?
There’s no way.
A teacher should be a guide, and a facilitator, and what the new technologies may let us do is… computers are really good at synthesis. And at modeling. And maybe for the first time, we can build models, and see changes, like the SimCity. SimCity lets you experiment with cities and understand what's going on and reflect.
The real way we learn is by doing. By probing, by comparing, and by reflection. Let me get to reflection. Reflection is where you compare this with that. And you can do that with Hamlet .. in the Voyager Hamlet, which lets you compare one performance with a different troupe’s performance. It’ll let you read while you listen, and let you stop. And you control the pace.
The greatest technological tool to reflection is writing. On a piece of paper. Writing is external memory, where you can put down your thoughts, and you can think a new thought while the old thought stays there, and then you compare your new thought with the old thought, and you can even show your thought to somebody else, or pass it along from generation to generation.
So that's the most powerful tool. Television is an anti-thought medium. It's not the television’s fault. It's the pace, because you can't stop. And the people who generate the television don't dare stop it. Because if they stop it, you might think, and if you think, you might do something else.
So even, in fact, look at public broadcasting when they broadcast a science show: there's no science in there. There's no depth. It's entertainment, because they don't dare let you lose your attention for a second. If you started to think about was being shown, you wouldn't be watching what was being shown.
The best medium for reflection is where you control the pace, and today that mass medium is done by a book. We can do better, though, for some sorts of things. If we have a simulation that you can control, where you have Hamlet where you can see it on the screen and there's a video, but you can stop it.
Wouldn’t it be neat if you could restart it, where it isn't karaoke Hamlet, but where you can replace the voice, or maybe you yourself could replace one of the actor’s parts, and you’ll be synthesized on the screen playing the part.
What we got instead is addiction to technology.
Because technology lets us do things. So we do it. It's like climbing a mountain because it is there. 3DO is a good example of doing technology because it's there.
So we have the basic shoot-'em-up games, except in 3D, and color, and virtual reality, and better sound.
The most depressing thing, actually, about the 3DO demonstration was how good Trip Hawkins was at that game. You know how long it takes to become good at those games? Hours and hours and hours of mindless practice.
It's really weird the way we do technology because it's there.
We were all given this wonderful book. A day timer book. It is a really neat book. And in fact, it's got lots of organizational structure to it and it's got.. Paper! I really like paper. You can thumb through it quickly, you find notes and put down addresses. But you know, it's got this weird marriage with this thing.
Have any of you tried… have any of you used this [electronic gizmo given to attendees]? If you try to look up an address, by the time you've looked up the address you’ve probably forgotten why you were looking it up. Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't supposed to make fun of it. You [RSW] probably told me not to.
If the addresses had all been printed here under “contacts,” you know, you look at it and say “oh yeah..” I was talking with somebody and said it was a shame you had to write it down here, and they said “yeah, that's a trouble with paper technology.” And I said, what do you mean? That's a virtue of paper technology!
Now it is true that some day we should merge, because the electronic books have some real advantages, and if it were done right, what's neat about electronics is you can search really fast, but in the early days of technology you get this funny kind of merger of the old and the new and it's best exemplified by this wonderful gadget I found in Japan.
You can't see it maybe.
[produces an abacus]
It takes a while to figure out what to do with a new technology, and you don't want to give up the old one. Just don't want to give it up. Even if it's better. Actually, you know, the abacus is still the best technology because you could add faster with an abacus than you can with anything else. That's because with anything else you have to first enter the numbers to be added, and then you have to add.
Doing it in your head or even with a calculator, you have to enter the numbers and then you have to say, you know, add it! Give me the answer! But not with an abacus. With an abacus if I want to add 23 and 17, you just enter two, three. I move two beads up, and three beads up. And then to add, say, 11 to it (to make it easy) all you do is you move one bead up, and move one bead up. And the very act of entering a number also gives you the answer. So I used to have two beads there for 20. Now we add one and it’s obviously 30. And I move 23 beads up for 23, and I add one more and it’s 24. The very act of entering the number is giving you the answer.
So, a skilled Abacus person can always beat anybody else. Except the point of doing arithmetic is not to beat the other person - it's not a contest of speed. So why do we do arithmetic? That's a weird technology that we invented ourselves and hoisted upon ourselves and then scientists said “to number and count is good.”
To number and count is good, and what you can't number and count must be irrelevant. Like love and truth and beauty.
So, basically, I think that technology really does make us smart. But it makes us smart because it lets us reflect. It lets us reflect because it gives us external representations of thoughts. And what's powerful is those external representations that we can pass on to other people, and you can manipulate, and we can share.
Speech and language are very powerful, and they’re enablers, but what's really powerful is written language. And what’s really powerful with our new technologies is where they give us new representations and visualizations. The ability to experience art and music, and the ability to experience things that we couldn't otherwise experience and see and reflect upon them.
But what I'm afraid of is the experiential nature of these new technologies, which captivate us. Which keep our attention, and are really fun. But by driving the pace relentlessly, don't let us stop and think and reflect.
That's neat. It's good to do that. It's fun to do that. And that's what art is about. But we put this into the school system, and a lot of the multimedia that we're now putting into the school system is driven by the entertainment industry, who know how to tell stories. And know how to keep your attention.
And of course the kids love it. They come back from school and we ask if they enjoyed it and they say “yeah, we enjoyed it.” But did you learn anything? What's that got to do with school, right? The problem with the new technologies is they may seduce us into enjoyment instead of reflection. And that worries me. We're at the start of a dramatic revolution, and in a hundred years from now we'll probably understand it.
Except we won't be here.
And it's going to be a revolution about new ways of visualizing, and new ways of thinking, but the most important part of this revolution is going to be social. It's going to change the way that we interact, and I want to close with a piece about that.
We have artificial communities now that are really held together by common interest. People say the internet is so wonderful because you can find other people who share your interests, and you can find a community of people who finally care about what you care about.
Well, that's not what community is about.
There's this lovely quotation by John Perry Barlow. John Barlow is [aside to RSW] you should have him come to one of your conferences..
Richard Saul Wurman He’s been here. He was at 4 and at 3
Barlow is a songwriter for the Grateful Dead, a cowboy who lives in Wyoming. Iconoclast. And what he says is the following about “shared” community. He says no, no, you got it all wrong. He says in the physical world, community usually arises as a result of shared adversity.
One of the things that makes a real community is you’ve got 160 different kinds of people who have absolutely nothing in common. Who would rather not hang out with one another if they had the choice, but they don't have the choice. So he talks about his little town in Wyoming, where they all hate each other, but because they're stuck with each other, when one of them has trouble the others come to help. And that's a real shared community.
Whereas the cyberspace community will segment people according to their interests. And that makes the overall web a lot less durable: all they have is a shared interest, not a shared necessity.
I've been part of many different discussion groups on the net and I found it very easy to leave them. Once the signal to noise ratio deteriorated.
I had a choice.
I had too much choice.
It's not that easy for me to leave my little town in Wyoming.
We have to learn to stick it out, and make it work. Well, I hope we learn to stick together and make it work.
I hope we all learn that there's more to the social community than just the fact that I can easily communicate with you, or that we share an interest.
The whole point about society is that we all get together and work together, even if we don't like each other.