ETech: Incantations For Muggles Transcript
Early this morning at ETech in a great talk entitled Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life. She proposed that geeks don't always get things right; that our products may have consequences that we don't anticipate. Ralph Koster has a transcript of her talk earlier today. danah ends with the following:
This is all about architecture. Tech is architecture, code is too as Lessig says. We thru tech are shifting architecture in society. People are figuring out how to work around it. Do we keep being ostriches, or do we try to understand what people are doing?
What does it mean to pay attention to the spells cast in both directions? The accidental spells? The Star Wars kid? The student who gets kicked out of college because of their Facebook? We think it’s all positive. Are we always happy with that? Do we even think about it, or do we forget that people’s lives are at stake.
I ask you to ask these questions when you build tech. What are the consequences and how do you prepare?
tags: web 2.0
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Thomas Lord [03.28.07 08:29 PM]
Nice to hear.
There isn't a question of "preparing," not in that sense. It's a question of priorities. Most of "web 2.0" are a small number of selections from a very, very large space of easy hacks, selected on the basis of easy marketability. That is, investment dollars are flowing towards things that are easily sold, at the moment -- in contrast to things that are obviously useful in pursuit of social and economic patterns that we hold dear. So don't act so surprised when the result is a lot of destruction without much creativity.
-t