A smart man sends us wise words:
The rise of gadgets such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Xbox threatens to unravel the decades of innovation which helped to build the Internet, a leading Oxford academic has warned in a new book.
Professor Jonathan Zittrain says the latest must-have devices are sealed, “sterile” boxes that stifle creativity and turn consumers into passive users of technology.
Unlike home computers, new Internet-enabled gadgets don’t lend themselves to the sort of tinkering and collaboration that leads to technological advances, he says. ^
He’s right. We’re simians and simians like play. We do best with imperfect tools that suggest to us possibility, so we start hacking on them, or pushing them to do unconventional but logical things. This gives us a sense of challenge, a sense of reward, and an activity that stimulates both our imagination and our analytical sense, which makes our brains feel very alive and happy.
When we make technology, whether a chair or a supercomputer, we should always remember the importance of play — and design it into the object.