05.25.20
Free, as in “App”
Article by Tom Grz
Summary: “As everyday users, we need to be able to configure our applications, and this process must/needs to be made as easy and understandable as possible.”
We had our computers which ran our programs -– and then after some years “programs” became “applications”. Now we have “Apps” which are ubiquitous, on our desktop computers, our tablets, and our phones. And the App is not at all what it seems to be.
“Now we have “Apps” which are ubiquitous, on our desktop computers, our tablets, and our phones. And the App is not at all what it seems to be.”Back in the days, programs were very much task-directed. Applications took a bigger bite, providing a working environment within a specific domain. “Apps”, on the other hand, are pretty much all about “minimizing cognitive load”. When in doubt about something, bring-up an app. If you don’t have it already installed, install it. This is the short history of the dumbing-down of software.
We should applaud, and say “job well done” – software is simple now, like it was intended to be all along. You know: “KISS”. Keep it Simple was a rallying design principle, and it made complete sense: if we overwhelm the user with unnecessary difficulty, it’ll spoil their day, and may even result in them abandoning the task.
The most commonly used platform for software today is the mobile phone. And the very last thing we want is for the user to leave our app. Almost everyone is familiar with the conventions and patterns of interaction that come with using their phone, and anything that differs from those expectations can create a sense of friction or even anxiety. To keep as close to expectations as possible for the user, the user “experience” is made consistent even across platforms, with familiar screens, icons, fonts, conventions, so that prior experience serves to flatten the learning curve. But the phone platform is severely limited: the small screen can only show a small amount of information, and typing on the screen is slow and fraught with mistakes. What we see then, moving to other platforms, is a strong tendency toward this lowest common denominator. Couple this curbing effect with range of abilities one finds across the vast masses of users from all possible walks of life who use phone apps, and the tendency to over-simplify things becomes strong.
“Keep it Simple was a rallying design principle, and it made complete sense: if we overwhelm the user with unnecessary difficulty, it’ll spoil their day, and may even result in them abandoning the task.”OK, let’s call it a “democratization of technology”. Except it isn’t. The very basis of the business model behind it is exploitative — to say the least. Data is collected from the user incessantly, with every on-line action. Aral Balkan calls this business model people farming, and the depth of the practice is even worse than it appears: “People farmers also buy data from data brokers, share data with other people farmers, and even know when you use your credit card in brick and mortar stores.” And they combine all of this information to create profiles of you which are constantly analyzed, updated, and improved.
Strangely, people are not alarmed that there are sets of data being constantly collected and compiled about them. They may not care that they have electronic shadows projected on electronic walls in electronic caves they know nothing of. But they should be very concerned that these are not mere profiles, they are active models – in nature being closer to ghosts. The data sets are combined, collated, analyzed, and extrapolated into predictions. The predictions are used mainly for selling, selling goods, and increasingly for selling ideas and political candidates. “Selling” may not be the best word here – “manipulating behavior” is more precise. Google, Facebook and Microsoft and others – they hold your ghost hostage. These corporations wring predictions and manipulations of your very person out of these ghost images. All of this lies behind “your” app.
“Google, Facebook and Microsoft and others – they hold your ghost hostage. These corporations wring predictions and manipulations of your very person out of these ghost images. All of this lies behind “your” app.”“Social networking” applications are the most insidious. As you communicate with friends and associates you inherently provide tremendous amounts of pertinent information: who, what, when and where, all including the contents of the messaging itself. Your very mood can be conveyed by the rhythms of your keystrokes and your word choices (along with the emoticons, of course!). One might not regard more professionally-oriented applications such as LinkedIn or GitHub to be in the same class of application as Facebook and Twitter, but they are in fact essentially the same, dedicated to the same business model.
So what should we be asking for instead? What we see of the app is only a surface, and a very shallow surface at that. As described above, there is a very strong drive to keep the app as simple as possible, yet engage the user in ways that prevent them from leaving – and interrupting the stream of data being collected. What we users must demand are applications with depth. Users must be allowed to configure their applications in such a way as to allow only that information which is needed to pass gets passed. All data streams must be documented, along with configuration instructions. Better yet, the data should never be collected! Users themselves must look for alternatives to the stalls where they are miked and the farms where they are corralled: Gnu Icecat can be a good replacement for Firefox and Chromium, while Diaspora* can be a good alternative to Facebook. These are only examples – much more has to be done in this field to free our data streams from streaming over to people whose interests are not in alignment with ours.
“One might not regard more professionally-oriented applications such as LinkedIn or GitHub to be in the same class of application as Facebook and Twitter, but they are in fact essentially the same, dedicated to the same business model.”And how can we be certain that our applications are only doing what they are supposed to do? First-off, all source code must be made available. This is a good first step, but as we have seen with the Google Chromium Web browser and the Mozilla Firefox Web browser this is not nearly enough. The source code must be practically accessible as well as physically accessible. It should be modular, documented, and as simple as possible to understand and easy to modify and recompile. It should be shared software, GPL-compatible, so that others cannot subvert the code but must instead provide the same license.
As everyday users, we need to be able to configure our applications, and this process must/needs to be made as easy and understandable as possible. This probably requires a different kind of interface than we have been led into, and different kinds of instructions. These things will not happen unless we demand it. But demand these changes, these advancements in software we must. The alternative is to submit to being corralled, kept, milked and herded about like cattle. █
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