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April 26, 2004
The coming war between Jakob Nielsen (The Benefactor) and Donald Norman (The Engineer)
If Jakob ruled the world, is this how we would live? In an attempt to control and standardise society, the Benefactor comes up with the logical conclusion to Taylorism. If you cannot standardise the mechanisms and interactions in society, then why not just standardise all of the users instead?
Perhaps the comparison is a bit extreme, but I do believe that there is a battle taking place in the Usability and HCI world between the cold hard logic of Jakob with his millions of Usability Guardians supposedly making the world safe for all of us, and the softer gentler route promoted by Don Norman and the rest of the flower power engineers.
"We By Yevgeni Zamyatin" was propably the inspiration for "1984" and "Brave New World", and has as as much (if not more) resonance today.
BBC Radio 4 have just broadcast a two part adaptation of We By Yevgeni Zamyatin.
If you are reading this post before Sunday 2nd May then you can still listen to the two hour production.
If you have missed the BBC adaption then you will just have to buy the book instead.
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April 26, 2004 in Usability | Permalink
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Short Summary Of Plot: Famed Engineer turns traitor; Attempts to hijack Benefactor's Spaceship
Longer Summary: The first anti-utopian novel ever written, We is a satire on life in a collectivist state in the future. People in this new society called One State, have numbers rather than names, wear identical uniforms and live in buildings built of glass. The people are ruled by the Benefactor and policed by the Guardians. One State is surrounded by a wall of glass and outside is an untamed green jungle.
The hero of We is D-503, a mathematician who is busy building Integral, a gigantic spaceship which will eventually go to other planets to spread the joy of the One State. D-503 is happy with his life until he falls in love with I-330, a member of Mephi, a revolutionary organization living in the jungle.
D-503 now joins the plot to take over Integral and use it as a weapon to destroy One State. However, the conspirators are arrested by the Guardians and the Benefactor decides that action must be taken to prevent further revolts. D-503 like the rest of the people living in One State, is forced to undergo the Great Operation, which destroys the part of the brain which controls passion and imagination.
Posted by: Chris McEvoy | 29 Apr 2004 18:03:49
I am puzzled by your comparison between Jakob Nielsen and Mark Cuban. Do you love Jakob that much? And your referring to Don Norman as The Engineer makes no sense. When was The Engineer announced? I ain't seen it in the tabloids.
Posted by: Yankee | 29 Apr 2004 15:44:29
