Earlier this week I was listening to a podcast that I came across on Yahoo Podcasts of an interview with Avram Miller the co-founder of Intel Capital and now head of the Avram Miller Company whose mission is "Accelerating the deployment of the Internet worldwide." (The program was originally recorded for Robert Cringeley's PBS show, Nerd TV on Oct. 28, 2005.) Miller had many interesting things to recount about his career in software and hardware development and about his work at Intel steering Intel Capital's investments in venture technology projects.
The most provocative comment for me, however, came near the end of the interview when Miller was asked what he thought he might be doing with computers in the future. He remarked that he was frustrated with computers because they continue to be very hard to use. This is a telling comment from someone who emerged from years of doing hard wiring of early computers and machine language programming. Clearly Avram Miller knows how much easier to use and to program computers are now than they were in the 60s and 70s and 80s. Today's computers are smaller, much more powerful, and do all kinds of things that weren't even imagined decades ago and, of course, many more people use computers than ever before. So, why would Avram Miller make such a remark?
Miller suggested thinking about computers and computer applications along two dimensions: how hard is it to learn? and how easy is it to forget? Considered in terms of these two questions it's apparent that Miller may be right--computers and computer tools are still generally too hard to learn and too easy to forget. Compared to driving a car, using the telephone, watching TV, taking digital photos, or using most appliances, modern computers and computer applications are still far out along the hard-to-learn/easy-to-forget graph.
I'm speaking from the perspective of an academic who began using main frame computers and programming with puch cards at a time when computer-assisted-instruction meant getting students and instructors to view programmed instruction on terminals. I can remember in the 80s when it was still difficult to use email: teaching faculty members who were brave enough to try email involved showing them how to do bang addressing to negotiate nodes over the Internet.
Nowadays its no longer necessary to teach instructors and students how to do email, or use a web browser, or use a search engine--great progress has been made. Unfortunately, it is still necessary to provide workshops to teach course management software, presentation software, and web page construction software--these tools still fail the A-B-C/1-2-3 test. (The ABC/123 test is passed when you can tell a user to do A-B-C or 1-2-3 and they are then able to use a software package at a basic level; from the basic level they can then go on to explore other features (D thru Z) on their own. The test is failed whenever more than three to six steps are required or when branching is required (if A then 1 and 2; if B then 2 and 3; if C then 1 and 2 and 3)--at this crossover point software/hardware operations become too hard to learn and too easy to forget. (Look at Yahoo Podcasts to see an example of a tool that explicitly and successfully follows the 1-2-3 rule.)
I believe computer tools in general and education technology tools in particular seldom stay within the easy-access learning range, but they need to pass A-B-C tests so that educators and students can focus more on educational content and less on learning technology. As Miller suggests, much more progress needs to be made. Of course I'm agreeing with his observation while enjoying all the benefits of blogging, rss news reading, broadband connections, voice over Internet and video over Internet--it's a feast, but I'd like more people to be able to join the feast. ______JH
8:37:37 AM 
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