Author: garrick

My Apologies, ‘Users’ is Accurate.

I was riding the LIRR the other day from Queens to Manhattan, and everyone around me was staring into the screen of their smartphone, tapping, typing, clicking. I watched the faces. They looked like the people sitting around in the system lab at the UW Comp Sci Dept in 1978. Same damn thing. Except now instead of a handful of misunderstood geeks, now it’s everyone. BTW, they didn’t look ‘engaged’ or entertained, or even aware of what they’re doing. Most of the time we spend pecking and nibbling at stuff on the net we sort of wish there was something more interesting to do. But there isn’t, so we keep nibbling and pecking. – Dave Winer

iChindogu

“So this expensive gadget doesn’t solve your real problems, but look how user-friendly it is” – bad_user

“Chindōgu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever”

Suddenly, I’m reminded of so many Kickstarter projects.