Book Reading #45 - Things That Make Us Smart

Chapter 3: The Power of Representation

Summary:
This chapter begins with the author discussing how important external aids are in human intelligence.  He pushes this point with the external aid of writing and reading. He then begins to discuss cognitive artifacts which is the ability to represent things. He then goes on to explain several examples of cognitive artifacts and good representation such as how color mappings in a chart can play an important role in how effective the chart is.

Discussion:
I enjoyed this chapter much more than the first two. It felt like he was giving more information and not just whining like he was in the first two chapters.

Chapter 4: Fitting the Artifact to the Person

Summary:
The author begins with a story of how a girl used paper and pencil to remember numbers in a psychology experiment.He then discusses two different views of artifacts, the personal view (the impact the artifact has on the person) and the system view (how the artifact and the person as a system are bigger than either alone). He also describes the difference between surface artifacts (ones in which we can see everything) and internal artifacts (ones in which some of the information is invisible to the user. He gives various examples of how artifacts can be fit to tasks or people and ends with Grudin's Law which states that when those who benefit are not those who do the work, then the technology is likely to fail.

Discussion:
I find myself surprised at how much I enjoyed these two chapters in comparison to the first two. The explanations of personal/system view and surface/internal artifacts were very interesting. The examples were very numerous (which got annoying after a while), but the ending with Grudin's Law was very intriguing and I agree with it fully.