Doing some reading on animist approaches to technology and came across this quote from Mike Kuniavsky:
“Smart games and toys work by adding enough complexity to their behavior that their actions are no longer predictable, which users then accept as part of the fun. With AIBO, Furby, Musini, and video game AIs, we — the users — cede our desire to predict the actions of our technologies in exchange for more “entertaining” behavior.”
I know what he’s talking about is a bit different here, but the thing this immediately makes me think of is how annoying this sort of thing would be in real-life situations I find myself in. For example, what if I was using a screw-gun, a hammer, or a knife which was capable of acting in unpredictable ways? The outcome could be hazardous, to say the least.
Of course, he’s not talking about all devices working this way, just some and some only sometimes. He says, later in the article, “…user experience design will have to be more sensitive to respecting, creating, maintaining, and selectively breaking expectations.”
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One Comment
Unpredictability is usually only fun so long as it’s within a predictable framework. The key word in that last phrase is “selectively”. The mind balks at any unpredictability that we can’t at least envision gaining some level of predictability. We “cede our desire to predict the actions of our technologies” only to technologies we know (or at least think that we know) we can trust.
Of course, that only applies so long as the unpredictable is seen as hazardous. It could be possible to develop a state of mind where the unpredictable is understood as non-threatening. Most personal/spiritual growth seems to be ways of devising that kind of mind state.