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Turing Complete User

Jan 10, 2024, 16 min read

Turing Complete User

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Highlights

  • The field is abbreviated as UXD, where X is for eXperience and U is still for the Users. Wikipedia says Don Norman coined the term UX in 1995. However, in 2012 UX designers avoid to use the U-word in papers and conference announcements, in order not to remind themselves about all those clumsy buttons and input devices of the past. Users were for the interfaces. Experiences, they are for the PEOPLE3 In 2008 Don Norman simply ceased to address Users as Users. At an event sponsored by Adaptive Path, a user interface design company, Norman stated “One of the horrible words we use is users. I am on a crusade to get rid of the word ‘users’. I would prefer to call them ‘people.’”4 After enjoying the effect of his words on the audience he added with a charming smile, “We design for people, we don’t design for users.” (View Highlight)
  • We know that it was not always like this. Before Real Users (those who pay money to use the system) became “users”, programmers and hackers proudly used this word to describe themselves. In their view, the user was the best role one could take in relation to their computer.7 Furthermore, it is wrong to think that first there were computers and developers and only later users entered the scene. In fact, it was the opposite. At the dawn of personal computer the user was the center of attention. The user did not develop in parallel with the computer, but prior to it. Think about Vanevar Bush’s “As we May Think” (1945), one of the most influential texts in computer culture. Bush spends more words describing the person who would use the Memex than the Memex itself. He described a scientists of the future, a superman. He, the user of the Memex, not the Memex, itself was heading the article.8 (View Highlight)
  • Let me refer to another guru of user centered design, Alan Cooper. In 2007, when the U word was still allowed in interaction design circles, he and his colleagues shared their secret in “About Face, The Essentials of Interaction Design”:

    “As an interaction designer, it’s best to imagine that users – especially — beginners — are simultaneously very intelligent and very busy.”13 (View Highlight)

  • Ted Nelson mentions so called “user level systems” and states that these “User-level systems, [are] systems set up for people who are not thinking about computers but about the subject or activity the computer is supposed to help them with.”14 Some pages before he claims: (View Highlight)
  • For instance, in 2007, when Adobe, the software company who’s products are dominating the so called “creative industries”, introduced version 3 of Creative Suite, they filmed graphic artists, video makers and others talking about the advantages of this new software package. In particular interesting was one video of a web designer (or an actress in the role of a web designer): she enthusiastically demonstrated what her new Dream Weaver could do, and that in the end “I have more time to do what I like most — being creative”. The message from Adobe is clear. The less you think about source code, scripts, links and the web itself, the more creative you are as a web designer. What a lie. I liked to show it to fresh design students as an example of misunderstanding the core of the profession. (View Highlight)
  • In the book “Program or be Programmed”, Douglas Rushkoff describes similar phenomena:

    […] We see actual coding as some boring chore, a working class skill like bricklaying, which may as well be outsourced to some poor nation while our kids play and even design video games. We look at developing the plots and characters for a game as the interesting part, and the programming as the rote task better offloaded to people somewhere else.17 Rushkoff states that code writing is not seen as a creative activity, but the same applies to engagement with the computer in general. It is not seen as a creative task or as “mature thought”. (View Highlight)

  • For Norman, further generations of hardware and software designers and their invisible users dealing with General Purpose technology is both accident and obstacle. For the rest of us the rise and use of General Purpose Technology is the core of New media, Digital Culture and Information Society (if you believe that something like this exists). General purpose computers and Stupid Networks are the core values of our computer-based time and the driving force behind all the wonderful and terrible things that happen to people who work and live with connected computers. These prescient design decisions have to be protected today, because technically it would be no big deal to make networks and computers “smart”, i.e. controlled. (View Highlight)
  • I would like to apply the concept of General Purpose Technology to users by flipping the discourse around and redirecting attention from technology to the user that was formed through three decades of adjusting general purpose technology to their needs: The General Purpose User. General Purpose Users can write an article in their e-mail client, layout their business card in Excel and shave in front of a web cam. They can also find a way to publish photos online without flickr, tweet without twitter, like without facebook, make a black frame around pictures without instagram, remove a black frame from an instagram picture and even wake up at 7:00 without a “wake up at 7:00” app. Maybe these Users could more accurately be called Universal Users or Turing Complete Users, as a reference to the Universal Machine, also known as Universal Turing Machine — Alan Turing’s conception of a computer that can solve any logical task given enough time and memory. (View Highlight)
  • But whatever name I chose, what I mean are users who have the ability to achieve their goals regardless of the primary purpose of an application or device. Such users will find a way to their aspiration without an app or utility programmed specifically for it. The Universal user is not a super user, not half a hacker. It is not an exotic type of user. There can be different examples and levels of autonomy that users can imagine for themselves, but the capacity to be universal is still in all of us. Sometimes it is a conscious choice not to delegate particular jobs to the computer, and sometimes it is just a habit. Most often it is not more than a click or two that uncover your general purpose architecture. (View Highlight)
  • You can have two Twitter accounts and log in to one in Firefox, and the other in Chrome. This is how I do it and it doesn’t matter why I prefer to manage it this way. Maybe I don’t know that an app for managing multiple accounts exists, maybe I knew but didn’t like it, or maybe I’m too lazy to install it. Whatever, I found a way. And you will do as well. (View Highlight)
  • In general the WWW, outside of Facebook, is an environment open for interpretation. Still, I have difficulties finding a site or an app, that actually addresses the users, and sees their presence as a part of the work flow. This maybe sounds strange, because all web 2.0 is about pushing people to contribute, and “emotional design” is supposed to be about establishing personal connections in between people who made the app and people who bought it, but I mean something different. I mean a situation when the work flow of an application has gaps that can be filled by users, where smoothness and seamlessness are broken and some of the final links in the chain are left for the users to complete. (View Highlight)
  • There is nothing one user can do, that another can’t given enough time and respect. Computer Users are Turing Complete. (View Highlight)
  • If the approach to computer education in schools was to switch from managing particular apps to writing apps it will be wonderful. But apart from the fact that it is not realistic, I would say it is also not enough. I would say it is wrong to say either you understand computers or u are the user.27 An effort must be made to educate the users about themselves. There should be understanding of what it means to be a user of an “all purpose automatic digital computing system”. General Purpose Users are not a historic accident or a temporary anomaly. We are the product of the “worse is better” philosophy of UNIX, the end-to end principle of the internet, the “under construction” and later “beta” spirit of the web. (View Highlight)
  • We, general purpose users — not hackers and not people — who are challenging, consciously or subconsciously, what we can do and what computers can do, are the ultimate participants of man-computer symbiosis. Not exactly the kind of symbiosis Licklider envisioned, but a true one. (View Highlight)

title: “Turing Complete User” author: “contemporary-home-computing.org” url: ”http://contemporary-home-computing.org/turing-complete-user/” date: 2023-12-19 source: reader tags: media/articles

Turing Complete User

rw-book-cover

Metadata

Highlights

  • The field is abbreviated as UXD, where X is for eXperience and U is still for the Users. Wikipedia says Don Norman coined the term UX in 1995. However, in 2012 UX designers avoid to use the U-word in papers and conference announcements, in order not to remind themselves about all those clumsy buttons and input devices of the past. Users were for the interfaces. Experiences, they are for the PEOPLE3 In 2008 Don Norman simply ceased to address Users as Users. At an event sponsored by Adaptive Path, a user interface design company, Norman stated “One of the horrible words we use is users. I am on a crusade to get rid of the word ‘users’. I would prefer to call them ‘people.’”4 After enjoying the effect of his words on the audience he added with a charming smile, “We design for people, we don’t design for users.” (View Highlight)
  • We know that it was not always like this. Before Real Users (those who pay money to use the system) became “users”, programmers and hackers proudly used this word to describe themselves. In their view, the user was the best role one could take in relation to their computer.7 Furthermore, it is wrong to think that first there were computers and developers and only later users entered the scene. In fact, it was the opposite. At the dawn of personal computer the user was the center of attention. The user did not develop in parallel with the computer, but prior to it. Think about Vanevar Bush’s “As we May Think” (1945), one of the most influential texts in computer culture. Bush spends more words describing the person who would use the Memex than the Memex itself. He described a scientists of the future, a superman. He, the user of the Memex, not the Memex, itself was heading the article.8 (View Highlight)
  • Let me refer to another guru of user centered design, Alan Cooper. In 2007, when the U word was still allowed in interaction design circles, he and his colleagues shared their secret in “About Face, The Essentials of Interaction Design”:

    “As an interaction designer, it’s best to imagine that users – especially — beginners — are simultaneously very intelligent and very busy.”13 (View Highlight)

  • Ted Nelson mentions so called “user level systems” and states that these “User-level systems, [are] systems set up for people who are not thinking about computers but about the subject or activity the computer is supposed to help them with.”14 Some pages before he claims: (View Highlight)
  • For instance, in 2007, when Adobe, the software company who’s products are dominating the so called “creative industries”, introduced version 3 of Creative Suite, they filmed graphic artists, video makers and others talking about the advantages of this new software package. In particular interesting was one video of a web designer (or an actress in the role of a web designer): she enthusiastically demonstrated what her new Dream Weaver could do, and that in the end “I have more time to do what I like most — being creative”. The message from Adobe is clear. The less you think about source code, scripts, links and the web itself, the more creative you are as a web designer. What a lie. I liked to show it to fresh design students as an example of misunderstanding the core of the profession. (View Highlight)
  • In the book “Program or be Programmed”, Douglas Rushkoff describes similar phenomena:

    […] We see actual coding as some boring chore, a working class skill like bricklaying, which may as well be outsourced to some poor nation while our kids play and even design video games. We look at developing the plots and characters for a game as the interesting part, and the programming as the rote task better offloaded to people somewhere else.17 Rushkoff states that code writing is not seen as a creative activity, but the same applies to engagement with the computer in general. It is not seen as a creative task or as “mature thought”. (View Highlight)

  • For Norman, further generations of hardware and software designers and their invisible users dealing with General Purpose technology is both accident and obstacle. For the rest of us the rise and use of General Purpose Technology is the core of New media, Digital Culture and Information Society (if you believe that something like this exists). General purpose computers and Stupid Networks are the core values of our computer-based time and the driving force behind all the wonderful and terrible things that happen to people who work and live with connected computers. These prescient design decisions have to be protected today, because technically it would be no big deal to make networks and computers “smart”, i.e. controlled. (View Highlight)
  • I would like to apply the concept of General Purpose Technology to users by flipping the discourse around and redirecting attention from technology to the user that was formed through three decades of adjusting general purpose technology to their needs: The General Purpose User. General Purpose Users can write an article in their e-mail client, layout their business card in Excel and shave in front of a web cam. They can also find a way to publish photos online without flickr, tweet without twitter, like without facebook, make a black frame around pictures without instagram, remove a black frame from an instagram picture and even wake up at 7:00 without a “wake up at 7:00” app. Maybe these Users could more accurately be called Universal Users or Turing Complete Users, as a reference to the Universal Machine, also known as Universal Turing Machine — Alan Turing’s conception of a computer that can solve any logical task given enough time and memory. (View Highlight)
  • But whatever name I chose, what I mean are users who have the ability to achieve their goals regardless of the primary purpose of an application or device. Such users will find a way to their aspiration without an app or utility programmed specifically for it. The Universal user is not a super user, not half a hacker. It is not an exotic type of user. There can be different examples and levels of autonomy that users can imagine for themselves, but the capacity to be universal is still in all of us. Sometimes it is a conscious choice not to delegate particular jobs to the computer, and sometimes it is just a habit. Most often it is not more than a click or two that uncover your general purpose architecture. (View Highlight)
  • You can have two Twitter accounts and log in to one in Firefox, and the other in Chrome. This is how I do it and it doesn’t matter why I prefer to manage it this way. Maybe I don’t know that an app for managing multiple accounts exists, maybe I knew but didn’t like it, or maybe I’m too lazy to install it. Whatever, I found a way. And you will do as well. (View Highlight)
  • In general the WWW, outside of Facebook, is an environment open for interpretation. Still, I have difficulties finding a site or an app, that actually addresses the users, and sees their presence as a part of the work flow. This maybe sounds strange, because all web 2.0 is about pushing people to contribute, and “emotional design” is supposed to be about establishing personal connections in between people who made the app and people who bought it, but I mean something different. I mean a situation when the work flow of an application has gaps that can be filled by users, where smoothness and seamlessness are broken and some of the final links in the chain are left for the users to complete. (View Highlight)
  • There is nothing one user can do, that another can’t given enough time and respect. Computer Users are Turing Complete. (View Highlight)
  • If the approach to computer education in schools was to switch from managing particular apps to writing apps it will be wonderful. But apart from the fact that it is not realistic, I would say it is also not enough. I would say it is wrong to say either you understand computers or u are the user.27 An effort must be made to educate the users about themselves. There should be understanding of what it means to be a user of an “all purpose automatic digital computing system”. General Purpose Users are not a historic accident or a temporary anomaly. We are the product of the “worse is better” philosophy of UNIX, the end-to end principle of the internet, the “under construction” and later “beta” spirit of the web. (View Highlight)
  • We, general purpose users — not hackers and not people — who are challenging, consciously or subconsciously, what we can do and what computers can do, are the ultimate participants of man-computer symbiosis. Not exactly the kind of symbiosis Licklider envisioned, but a true one. (View Highlight)

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