Who was Herbert Simon? What Simon's book is all about?
Herbert Simon was an American psychologist who had a wide range of research fields. Exploring new ideas and topics, he is cited as on of the several founding fathers of AI, information processing and organization theory. He received various awards, including the Nobel Prize for his work economics and the decision making process.
His book "The Sciences of the Artificial" was a high level over view of how people work with each other to design various elements of our society. He wrote about how he thought individual people work towards a common goal and how they normally interact to design larger systems. He also talked about how various elements of society could be counter productive towards designing new systems that could help advance our society.
2. Most interesting idea/concept you learned from the article?
I thought it was interesting that SImon pointed out that engineers often lose sight of who they are designing their product for. Today, most computer systems are not as intuitive as they should be, because the programmers who designed the program's interface usually design it in the way that they would use it. But if they are designing an operating system for the average person in American, they might not have the same background knowledge that a software engineer with their MS in CS would. I found it interesting that Simon pointed out this problem way back when…
3. What did you not understand?
It seems like Simon believes that everyone is able to create and contribute to a system or program given the proper tools. While I agree with this to an extent, it seems unlikely that someone like a professional athlete would have an interest or motivation to contribute to something like a GUI interface to a website. While they might have a reason, I still believe that you need some background knowledge to interact with certain systems, and it seems like your personal interests would provide you with the motivations to do so.
- Who was Herbert Simon? What Simon's book is all about?
Herbert Simon was an American psychologist who had a wide range of research fields. Exploring new ideas and topics, he is cited as on of the several founding fathers of AI, information processing and organization theory. He received various awards, including the Nobel Prize for his work economics and the decision making process. His book "The Sciences of the Artificial" was a high level over view of how people work with each other to design various elements of our society. He wrote about how he thought individual people work towards a common goal and how they normally interact to design larger systems. He also talked about how various elements of society could be counter productive towards designing new systems that could help advance our society. 2. Most interesting idea/concept you learned from the article? I thought it was interesting that SImon pointed out that engineers often lose sight of who they are designing their product for. Today, most computer systems are not as intuitive as they should be, because the programmers who designed the program's interface usually design it in the way that they would use it. But if they are designing an operating system for the average person in American, they might not have the same background knowledge that a software engineer with their MS in CS would. I found it interesting that Simon pointed out this problem way back when… 3. What did you not understand? It seems like Simon believes that everyone is able to create and contribute to a system or program given the proper tools. While I agree with this to an extent, it seems unlikely that someone like a professional athlete would have an interest or motivation to contribute to something like a GUI interface to a website. While they might have a reason, I still believe that you need some background knowledge to interact with certain systems, and it seems like your personal interests would provide you with the motivations to do so.