I searched ‘Technology Helping People’ on Google, Technorati, Del.icio.us and Yahoo. Apart from a couple of sites that I mention later, the content was about accessibility and helping people with disabilities. A topic I am very passionate about. However, what about helping the rest of the world have better lives with technology? I’d have to say it seems most technologists spend much of their time making things harder for us. Sometimes they are lucky and get it right, others have enough traffic, time and $$ to fix things up.
So many opportunities
Some people say that you have to try things out to move ahead. Sometimes you get things wrong, and you progress, I agree. However, it seems that IT can’t even learn from its mistakes, let alone try something new and get it right. You just need to look at Australian technologies like Foxtel’s EPG or Telstra’s poor attempt at 3G with i-mode. What about the Nokia N series phones? Why don’t they have the same interaction patterns as the old ones? These were not mistakes that needed to be made to progress, they were just shortsighted attempts at existing technology!
But then, look at the i-pod! A totally new interaction method and unusual interface, and people instantly ‘get it’. Simple, eh? Now I’m sure Apple spent plenty of time and $ thinking about how it would work before it was put into production.
In this series you’ll read about how technology that can improve your life. Why it pisses you off, and how you can help yourself - in fact, how technology can help everyone else all over the world too.
What you want
You want your life to be simple? If stuff is not usable then you get pissed off, it wastes your time and I’m sure you have better things to be doing. When it works how you expect it to, and is fast enough, you leverage the technology to do all sorts of things, including:
- Live an enhanced life (particularly if you are disabled)
- Meet people (I met my wife on RSVP!)
- Communicate globally (mostly for free)
- Look good amongst your friends
- Be entertained
- Compete
- Work
- Network
- Buy cool stuff
- Organize yourself (or your fridge)
- Make your everyday transactions
- Be marketed to
- Learn
- Take control
And hopefully you can do it from any device, anywhere, anytime and keep it all synchronized somewhere.
Of course the best type of technology is the stuff that the Putting People First Blog mentions, ubiquitous technology that is hidden and people don’t even know its there, like Google’s search engine I suppose. Although, most people don’t know that there is a limit to what it finds online.
So why can (or don’t) you do all of that already, all of the time?
In the next post I’ll talk about why things are irritating. Later we’ll work out together how you can help educate yourself and your community - whether that be at work, with friends or over the net, globally.