July 2nd, 2008

Co-evolving

I heard a term the other day that I really liked: co-evolve. It was said in the context of humans and technology…humans and technology co-evolve together.

In other words, we change technology by creating it, and then it changes us as we use it. And we both change in response to each other. Many times when we talk about technology we talk only as creators…should we create it…should it have been created? But by the time we have created technology it’s too late to ask that question…it’s already changed us in some way. We can’t go back, at least not this generation. Maybe the next generation will forget.

The gun-rights activists like to assume the first frame…that we are sovereign over the technology we create and it doesn’t change us. Guns don’t kill humans, humans kill humans. On CNN the other day was a photo of a protester holding up a sign: “if guns kill humans, do pencils write books?”.

But thoughtful people know it’s not that simple. Technology isn’t neutral…the mere presence of it changes our behavior. I’ve read about a study in which the mere presence of a gun in the room (a randomly placed gun…nobody mentions it during the study) made people uneasy and tense. The people in the study thought they were there for something else…but of course everyone notices the gun and it has a direct affect on their behavior. They act more hostile, more angry. When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. When you have a gun everything looks like a target.

Of course, if guns didn’t kill people our army wouldn’t need them to kill people.

Ahh!!!…there’s the key. Guns make it easier to kill people…they enable a behavior, and by enabling the behavior, by making it easier to do, it is done more often. And as guns get easier to use and more deadly, they make it even easier. This is the grey area…the area that people who see the world in black and white can’t see…

Anyway, this piece wasn’t supposed to be about guns. It was supposed to be about technology. Lately I’ve been using several tools that enable me to perform actions easier, and as those actions become easier it changes the way I work. So while they don’t do anything new, per se, the fact that they make an activity so easy and fast changes the way I do the activity. I think this is a sign of me co-evolving with the technology I use.

Here are a few:

Wordpress when I installed Wordpress many years ago the ease of publishing allowed me to publish more. Tumblr is another recent tool that makes it even easier to post.
Skitch Skitch is a screen-capture program that makes it incredibly easy to grab screenshots, annotate them, and throw them up on the web. Because it allows uploading in one-click, I’m now using my Flickr account to store screen grabs that I think are interesting.
LaterLoop I’ve just begun using LaterLoop, but it’s a great way to save things you want to read later…to “loop back on”. This happens to me a lot, when I have 80 tabs open and simply want to remember them, but don’t necessarily want to bookmark them permanently (although it does that too)
Time Machine Time Machine is the backup program in Apple’s latest OS Leopard. It makes backups super easy to do, which results in the happy outcome that you backup more often. The addition of a wireless base station (which I don’t have) will make this even easier.

It’s interesting to note that these technologies are late-comers by a long-shot. Many, many solutions had already existed in the marketplace supporting the exact same activities for a long time before they showed up. But this software is designed so smoothly that it actually pushes the state-of-the-art forward…changing the way we do those activities.

That seems to me to be the hallmark of good design…when the person and the technology co-evolve…changing each other as time goes on.

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Comments ( 19 Responses so far )

1. Peter R. Wood on July 2nd, 2008 (Comment) #

Thanks for posting about LaterLoop. That definitely fills a need I have. Lighter weight than del.icio.us, more convenient than emailing myself links to read later.

Regarding your statement, “When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. When you have a gun everything looks like a target.” Would there be a similar analogy for computers or computer software? I tend to think not, because computer technology allows you a wider variety of creative uses than other, more fixed kinds of technology.

2. Anittah Patrick on July 2nd, 2008 (Comment) #

To paraphrase Frank Lloyd Wright:

We shape our technology, and thereafter it shapes us.

Good questions that you raise. Nothing — including technology — is neutral.

3. Stephen on July 2nd, 2008 (Comment) #

Wordpress writes blogs.

4. Bobby on July 2nd, 2008 (Comment) #

I watched a woman give a speach at Ted about memes and what she called temes that dealt with this same topic. She made a few interesting points. Worth Checking out. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html

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5. Graham Strong on July 2nd, 2008 (Comment) #

As you point out, guns make it easier to kill people just as pencils make it easier to write books. The flaw in the protester’s logic is that killing people is generally a bad thing, whereas writing books is generally good.

In other words, he just proved the anti-gun lobby’s point.

~Graham

6. Joshua Kaufman on July 2nd, 2008 (Comment) #

Curious if you’ve tried ReadBag or compared it to LaterLoop? I’ve been using ReadBag and really enjoy it. How does LaterLoop differ?

7. Benjamin Good on July 2nd, 2008 (Comment) #

Hi Joshua, In case you haven’t come across it before, there is a lot of work in cognitive science about how our environment, particularly the new technologies we surround ourselves with, fundamentally changes not only what we think about but how we think. My favorite prof from undergrad wrote a great (if a bit academicy) book on the topic called “Cognition in the Wild” in which he explores how the use (and design) of different technologies affects how people navigate the oceans and the skies.

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8. Petra Liverani on July 3rd, 2008 (Comment) #

Another argument against the guns-people / pencils-books analogy is that people can write books using a variety of tools whereas although there are probably even more methods to kill people, a gun is a tool that makes it much, much easier. I’m sure a lot of people who’ve killed people with guns wouldn’t have used the other methods available if they hadn’t had a gun.

9. Sam Lawrence on July 3rd, 2008 (Comment) #

I love this post for a variety of reasons but one is that it’s a great illustration of just how connected change is to the tools you use. Oftentimes, people will say “it’s not about the tool, it’s about change” but these two things are very intertwined.

As well, your “co-evolve” idea fits well into the COLORS framework I posted about recently.

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10. Niels on July 5th, 2008 (Comment) #

I think the point you are making here that if the threshold for ease of use is low people will use it more. Add ‘availability’ and ‘price’ to that spectrum and you know why certain products are sold well or not.

I don’t believe technology itself is changing us but that those companies who succeed in using the technology in such a way that it is beneficial for customers; (easy to use, available and affordable) gradually do change our lives.

11. Suzi on July 7th, 2008 (Comment) #

In a broad sense, biological co-evolution is “the change of a biological object triggered by the change of a related object”.

12. Jonathan on July 7th, 2008 (Comment) #

@#7: For that matter, you might also cite Berger & Luckmann’s “The Social Construction of Reality.” Basically, when it come to the interplay between technology, society and cognition, it’s probably too hard to tell what is influencing what.

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13. Rui Alao on July 19th, 2008 (Comment) #

Hey! Very nice article! There’s a paper by Humberto Maturana called Metadesign that deals with this very issue: co-evolution between user and technology. If you search on Google by Maturana and Metadesign you’ll find it right away. But just try it if you REALLy like some philosophical texts because it’s heavy stuff.

Cheers!

14. Dlittle on July 21st, 2008 (Comment) #

“The gun-rights activists like to assume the first frame…that we are sovereign over the technology we create and it doesn’t change us. Guns don’t kill humans, humans kill humans. On CNN the other day was a photo of a protester holding up a sign: “if guns kill humans, do pencils write books?”.”

That works both ways, and the framers of the Constitution knew it. When a nations people is unable to resist the will of it’s government, the government will behave most differently. They didn’t trust government, zealots or those in power very much. I think they got it right.

Co-evolving

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