Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies

Citation

Warner, J. (2006), "Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 62 No. 5, pp. 635-640. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410610688778

This work is concerned with new computing, which will be “about what people can do” (p. x) and not with what computers can do, in contrast to inherited and current computing. The title, matched by recurrent, although not deep, allusions in the text refers to Leonardo da Vinci and his “integrative spirit, combining science with art and engineering with aesthetics … an innovator who was far ahead of the available technology” (pp. x and 8). Even these characterisations reproduce some of the characteristics of the parent fields reacted against: technology is regarded as objectively given and as a constraint rather than a human construction fashioned from originally natural materials. A restricted idea of beauty – “a cell phone that does not require a manual” (p. 21) – is introduced from Time Magazine, although the deeper level of understanding also hinted at by Time, “every one who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word‐processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine” (Quoted in Davis, 2000, p. 192), is not fully assimilated and would be regarded more as part of the old computing.

The dominant disciplinary perspective informing the work is from human computer interaction (HCI), embodied in a concentration on interface issues and revealed in a strong tendency to take the interface for the whole. No distinction is made between interface and deeper semantic issues and the shift from automated medial diagnosis to information and data retrieval is noted (p. 13), without attempting an explanation – which might have involved issues of semantic indeterminacy and multivalency. Skill in information retrieval is identified with expertise in advanced query formulation although the examples given raise issues of levels of understanding of specific topics (p. 44). Analogously, e‐mail is understood at the level of the interface (p. 47) rather than in terms of pragmatics, or the effect of messages on their recipients. Heidgger's remark that, “the essence of technology is nothing technological” (Heidegger, 1993, p. 340) could have been a valuable corrective here. The most clearly established contribution from HCI does occur at the level of the interface: “[i]slands of predictive theory exist for well‐studied problems such as keyboard data entry, pointing times for mice, and menu design” (p. 70). However, it is not recognised that these may be highly valuable facilitators or enablers which do not address deeper issues of semantics and pragmatics. Resolution of interface problems could even expose the significance of these aspects of computer use by making them more apparent as residual, possibly permanently intractable, difficulties.

The relation between technology and society is touched upon rather directly addressed. A positive note is struck when its is observed that, “human beings are enriched by their tools and social structures”, although a casual relation from technology to society reminiscent of the technological determinism associated with the old computing and difficult to accept, is also implied, “[t]hroughout history those who employed effective technologies and social structures flourished” (p. 243). The need for a modern online Robert's Rules of Order is indicated (p. 201), although the possible descent of such works from the law speaker of primitive democracies is not noted. The possibility of technology changing politics, understood as the art of the possible, is noted (p. 205), but a deeper theme, that man emerges simultaneously as political and technologically communicating animal, from brute existence, is not discovered.

Issues connected with creativity and intelligence are raised. The rarity of revolution creativity is noted and it is not suggested that it will cease being rare (p. 213). Attempts to mimic human behaviour have diminished while practical applications have flourished (p. l62), although no explanation of this transition is attempted. The automata made by Hephaestus are mentioned (p. 235), although their analogies with ghosts in Hades are not noticed. The human body emerges as an instrument of labour, when its serves as the starting point for the robotic machine, reflecting a mind: body divide. The diffusion of non‐anthropomorphic robotic technologies is noted but not the potential analogies with the escape from the restrictions imposed on other machines by their derivation from instruments of labour, revealed, for instance, in the transition from the horizontal mechanical hammer, liable to gagging, to a vertical fall, itself involving pre‐computer control mechanisms for the variation of force.

The understanding of the computational process reveals both inheritances and a departure from the old computing, although not a synthesis with the new. An inheritance is revealed in a reference to Moore's law, on the growth of computer power, as the “modern equivalent of Newton's law of motion” (p. 58), although an empirical observation which does have a material basis, is thereby treated as a fundamental law. A departure, which characterises the intention of the work itself, is made: the old computing is, reasonably fairly, characterized as dominated by “technology‐centred researchers who value mathematical formalism more than psychological experimentation” (p. 71). A slightly uncritical inheritance is revealed in a quoted, and partly qualified, assertion that, “[m]achines only manipulate numbers” (p. 233), corresponding to a frequent exposition, although not to the fundamental understandings, of computability. The limited understanding of computability may have helped prevent a synthesis, which could have insisted that such understandings are remerging in relevance, as teleological limits on computation are approached in practice. Analogously, Graffiti, a variant on the Roman alphabet where characters are reduced to a few strokes, is discussed without alluding to the concept of mosaic redundancy in information theory, a field associated with, but not always fully intersecting, with automata theory (p. 102).

In conclusion, the work reveals inheritances, as well as an explicit departure, from the old computing. Its value lies in its readability, accessibility, and the interest of its examples of computer applications. A deeper value, dialectically emerging from the work, would be synthesis of the fundamental understandings derivable from the old computing with the interest in human needs, extended to include semantic as well as interface considerations, of the new.