Dear Gunnar and Terry,
Wow. I vote with Gunnar on this. Come on, Terry. There is no obvious PhD thesis in Jaime Henriquez's rant. A guy with technical skill and extensive experience observes the naive behaviors of those who lack his experience to find them ignorant, and he labels ignorant behavior as superstition. So?
In teaching, I've always distinguished between stupidity and ignorance. I welcome the questions and challenges of intelligent but ignorant students -- that's how people learn things and become wise. Stupidity, on the other hand, involves assumptions based on what we think others ought to know, even when we have not given them the opportunity to learn or to gain the experience we've had. The author of this rant is not wise: he is what people used to call a wise guy.
This article seemed silly to me, rather like an episode of Big Bang Theory where the brilliant but inept Sheldon repeatedly creates trouble by assuming that everyone thinks as he does while also assuming that the only issue that matters in the world is theoretical physics. If someone has a personality that lies somewhere on the autism spectrum and a single-focus mind-set, everyone looks ignorant, ill-educated, or superstitious.
Yours,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3 9214 6078 | Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design
Gunnar Swanson wrote:
There's also an opportunity for a psych PhD on the topic of the IT guy disdain that drips from every phrase of the article.
On May 31, 2012, at 5:48 AM, Terence Love wrote:
> There is an obvious opportunity for a PhD on this topic.
> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-habits-of-superstitious-users/962?tag=content;siu-container
Whether you call it superstition, ceremony, or something else, much of what we do to accomplish our goals may not be specifically utilitarian and you're right, that should be considered in interface (and pretty much any other) design.
The particular article isn't a good direction for starting to think about the subject, however. It's basically a list of common errors and random stuff he doesn't like with it all labeled "superstition" so that he can imply that he is rational/superior and the people he is supposed to be helping are painfully irrational/inferior. It's a really nasty piece of rhetoric.
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