Dick Pountain/ Idealog308/ 6th March 2020 10:58:31
Online booking is one of the more noticeable ways computer technology has changed our lives for the better. See an advert for a concert, play or movie – maybe on paper, maybe on Facebook – and in a few keystrokes you can have e-tickets, removing even the terrible chore of having to collect them from the box-office (and, yes, I do know just barking at Alexa to do it is quicker still, but have decided not to go there). However online booking has also shown me some of the limitations of the virtual world. For example – admittedly ten years ago – EasyJet’s website was once so laggy that I thought I was clicking August 6th, but the drop-down hadn’t updated so the tickets were for the 5th. Ouch.
More recently I booked a ticket for a favourite concert this March, only to discover that it’s actually in March 2021, not 2020. OK, that’s my fault for misreading, but the ad was embedded among a bunch of other concerts that are in March 2020. Another example: last week I read a Facebook share from a close friend that appeared to be a foul-mouthed diatribe against atheism. I was somewhat surprised, even shocked by this, but fortunately I clicked it to reveal a longer meme that, further down, refuted the diatribe. Facebook wouldn’t scroll down because it was graphic, not a text post.
These are all symptoms of the wider cognitive weakness of two-dimensional online interfaces, that’s leading some people to call for a return to paper for certain activities, including education. The problem is all about attention. Visual UIs employ the metaphor of buttons you press to perform actions, directing your attention to their important areas. But this has a perverse side-effect: the more you use them and the more expert you become, the less you notice their less-important areas (like that year, which wasn’t on a button).
Virtualising actions devalues them. Pressing a physical button – whether to buy a bar of chocolate or to launch a nuclear missile – used to produce a bodily experience of pressure and resistance, which lead to an anticipation of the effect, which lead to motivation. Pressing on-screen buttons creates no such effect, so one may aimlessly press them in reflex fashion (hence the success of some kinds of phishing attack).
It’s more than coincidence that 'Cancel Culture' has arisen in the age of social media and smartphones. This refers to a new style of boycott where some celebrity who’s expressed an unpopular opinion on social media gets "cancelled", that is dropped by most of their followers, which can lead to a steep decline in their careers. But of course ‘Cancel’ is the name of that ubiquitous on-screen button you hit without thinking when something goes wrong, hence this extension to remove real people by merely saying the word.
Reading text on a screen versus paper also reveals weakness: that less goes in and less is remembered has been demonstrated by cognitive science experiments, and this is truer still when questions are asked or problems set in school or college. Receiving such requests from a human being produces a motivation to answer that’s quite absent in onscreen versions: according to cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham “It’s different when you’re learning from a person and you have a relationship with that person. That makes you care a little bit more about what they think, and it makes you a little bit more willing to put forth effort”.
Virtualisation also encourages excessive abstraction – trying to abstract 'skills' from particular content tends to make content seem arbitrary. Cognitive scientists have long known that what’s most important for reading comprehension isn’t some generally applicable skill but rather how much background knowledge and vocabulary the reader has relating to the topic. Content does matter and can’t be abstracted away, and ironically-enough computers are the perfect tools for locating relevant content quickly, rather than tools to train you in abstract comprehension skills. Whenever I read mention of some famous painting I go straight to Google Images to see it, ditto with Wikipedia for some historical event. We’re getting pretty close to Alan Kay's vision of the Dynabook.
It will be interesting to see what these cognitive researchers make of voice-operated interfaces like Alexa. Are they Artificially Intelligent enough to form believable relationships that inspire motivation? Sure, people who’re used to Alexa (or SatNav actors) do sort of relate to them, but it’s still mostly one-way, like “Show me the Eiffel Tower” – they’re no good at reasoning or deducing. And voice as a delivery mechanism would feel like a step backward into my own college days, trying frantically to scribble notes from a lecturer who gabbled…
[Dick Pountain always notices the ‘Remember Me’ box three milliseconds after he’s hit Return]
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