Chapter 2 of Andy Clark's book Natural Born Cyborgs was an interesting read. I never thought of technology in terms of transparent or opaque. Though a lot of the effort of making technology transparent has to be put into the technology itself, I think humans have to be willing to learn about some of the technology they are using, such as Clark's example of computers. Clark says in a sense PCs are opaque because often times before people can accomplish their primary task they must first figure out how to deal with their computer, but I say if you are going to want to use a computer you should understand that you are going to have to learn about it. Clark claims pens and pencils are transparent yet there are stil times when they run out of ink or the pencil breaks or doesn't have n eraser, thus making them opaque in that sense. Taking this approach on technology will also help people value it more which goes along with Clark's point that technology will be taken full advantage of when we truly value it. |
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