Hi Andres -
Dan, how would you reconcile the need for immediate usefulness and the assumption that "we are busy, and we don't have time to download a new environment, figure out a new browser, learn a new graphics system", with Alan's assertion that technology these days is flawed because it requires little effort?
To me it's a question of curriculum. You start with a few interesting things on the table and go from there. I don't think Alan has any problem with this. You need to engage your audience one way or another. Hopefully the initial set is somehow provocative.
================ A twentieth century problem is that technology has become too "easy". When it was hard to do anything whether good or bad, enough time was taken so that the result was usually good. Now we can make things almost trivially, especially in software, but most of the designs are trivial as well. This is inverse vandalism: the making of things because you can. Couple this to even less sophisticated buyers and you have generated an exploitation marketplace similar to that set up for teenagers. A counter to this is to generate enormous dissatisfaction with one's designs using the entire history of human art as a standard and goal. Then the trick is to decouple the dissatisfaction from self worth--otherwise it is either too depressing or one stops too soon with trivial results. ================
In this context, what does it mean to be useful if it requires no effort?
I'm not saying no effort to build significant stuff. But no effort to engage -- that's good curriculum / good marketing.
Is this an issue of being able to quickly differentiate ourselves from others because, absent a flashy presentation, we feel we (and our work) are indistinguishable from others (and their work)? Not that we have control over that issue, but I think it would be important to acknowledge that motivation explicitly if it is really there.
No, it's more about not differentiating ourselves negatively -- not adding barriers. Show what you are at first click, and what you can do at second click. I'm not saying I've succeeded here, but I know it matters. - D