L2-HCC-aug30

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Human-Centered Computing
—
What is it all About?

Gerhard Fischer, Hal Eden, and Holger Dick

Fall Semester 2010

gerhard@colorado.edu; haleden@colorado.edu; holger.dick@gmail.com;  

August 30, 2010

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

or

Is Google actually making us smarter?

sources:

• Carr, N. (2008) Is Google Making Us Stupid?, available at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

• Cascio, J: Get Smarter at
  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/get-smarter/7548/

Ideas / Claims from “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

• the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many,

• The more people use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing ? continuous partial attention

• It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins.

• The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations.

Ideas / Claims from “Is Google actually making us smarter?

• the story of the human race is one of ever-increasing intellectual capability. Since our early cave-dwelling ancestors, our brains have gotten no bigger, but there has been a steady accretion of new tools for intellectual work

• examples:

• 
  
  • intelligence augmentation or You+
  • the hive mind of the Internet
  • the powerful tools for simulation and visualization
  • cognitive enhancement drugs

• a classic article:

• 
  
  • Bush, V. (1945) "As We May Think," Atlantic Monthly, 176(1), pp. 101-108.
  • http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/as-we-may-think/3881/

The Fundamental Transformation:

Old Computing ? New Computing

• Old Computing = What Computers Could Do

• New Computing = What Humans Can Do

• source: Shneiderman, B. (2002) Leonardo's Laptop — Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass

Who Should Serve whom?

• 1933 Chicago World’s Fair

Science Finds,

Industry Applies,

Man Conforms

• person-centered motto for the 21st century

People Propose,

Science Studies,

Technology Conforms

• source: Norman, D. A. (1993) Things That Make Us Smart, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA.

Hardware for Computing In “Ancient” Times

Hardware for Computing — In the “Very Old” Days

Hardware for Computing — In the “Old” Days

Hardware for Computing — Yesterday

Hardware for Computing — Today

Hardware for Computing — Tommorow

Infrastructure for Computing

• 1950-1960: Large Computers — used with punched cards

• 1970: Timesharing — many users use the same computer from a terminal

• 1980: personal computer — each computer has its own CPU

• 1990: Graphical User Interfaces — WIMP interfaces: window, icon, menu, pointing device

• 2000: Networks: Internet and World-Wide Web — communication and collaboration

• 2010: Cloud Computing — IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”, allowing users to access technology-enabled services "in the cloud” (Internet) without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them

The ‘Old’ Days — The Human-Computer Dyad

Knowledge-Based HCC:
Broader Explicit and Implicit Communication Channel

An Early Vision

source: Grudin, J. (1990) "The Computer Reaches Out: The Historical Continuity of Interface Design." Proceedings of CHI'90 Conference, pp. 261-268

Beyond HCI: A Layered Architecture Supporting
Human Problem Domain Interaction

Time Frames in HCI

source: Newell, A. & Card, S. K. (1985) "The Prospects for Psychological Science in Human-Computer Interaction," Human-Computer Interaction, 1(3), pp. 209-242

HCC: Automate ? Informate

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) ?  Intelligence Augmentation (IA)

• replacement (expert systems) ? empowerment (socio-technical environments)
• emulate (natural language) ? complement (exploit unique properties of new media)

• human-based computation

• a computer science technique in which a computational process performs its function by outsourcing certain steps to humans
• leverages differences in abilities and alternative costs between humans and computer agents to achieve symbiotic human-computer interaction
• in traditional computation: a human employs a computer to solve a problem by providing a formalized problem description to a computer, and receives a solution to interpret
• human-based computation frequently reverses the roles; the computer asks a person or a large group of people to solve a problem, then collects, interprets, and integrates their solutions

Human-based Computation

• reverses the common interaction between computers and humans ? the computer is no longer an agent of its user, but instead, a coordinator aggregating efforts of many human evaluators

• Internet impact: research on human-based computation has shifted towards asking large crowds of humans, instead of a single one or a small number of them, to perform the computational steps

• example: CAPTCHA (based upon the word capture) = a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart"

• question: incentives to participation?

• more info: Luis von Ahn, Google TechTalks (2006)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143#

Informate versus Automate
 (example: flying an airplane)

Some Characteristics of Human-Centered Computing

• computers will disappear in the background (they will become invisible)

• movement from independent work to collaboration with distant colleagues will be seamless — distant in: space, time, and conceptual world

• will develop more powerful tools to enable all humans to be more creative

• more information: Shneiderman, B., Fischer, G., Czerwinski, M., Resnick, M., & Myers, B. (2006) "Creativity Support Tools: Report From a U.S. National Science Foundation Sponsored Workshop," International Journal Of Human–Computer Interaction, 20(2), pp. 61–77.

HCC: A Unifying Framework for Many Disciplines
—
Related Research Disciplines (with Journals, Conferences)

HCC Themes for this Course

Human-Centered Computing — Is it all Good?

• Faustian Bargain: advanced technologies have the potential to promote positive contributions, but they also can support the dark side of human nature

• technology flaws have caused deadly errors ? Lee, L. (1992) The Day The Phones Stopped, Donald I. Fine, Inc., New York.

• barriers between disciplines and cultures ? Snow, C. P. (1993) The Two Cultures, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

• digital divide ? Schön, D. A., Sanyal, B., & Mitchell, W. J. (Eds.) (1999) High Technology and Low-Incoming Communities, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

The Skeptic’s Corner

• skeptics do not believe that the course of technology can be changed

• 
  
  • Machiavelli: “People who want to change institutions, have all those as their enemies who have done well under the old conditions”

• Gerhard’s challenge to all students in the course:

the future is not out there to be discovered

—

it has to be invented and designed

? and all of you should contribute to creating a desirable future!