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FUNCTION
AND FUNCTIONALITY There
is a history of differing views about the influence of technology on practice. In
many ways there has been no necessity to resolve the issues, the
discourses about quality and authorship have resided within art history,
design and cultural studies, the discourses which are technicist and
ergonomic belong to the developers of technology. If technology is
seen to function neutrally in practice it is because its role is not
understood, it has not been given a position of cultural effect.
With new technology this presents problems. Because new technology
is an order of complexity above old technology it presents the ergonomic
problem of its control. In turn this means that the phenomena
which are intrinsic to new technology are presented to the user via 'handles'
defined by the developers. The handles in this sense are not
merely aspects of user interface design, they comprise; the form and
indicated functions of the technology; the prior formulation and
presentation of knowledge and information; the revision, alteration and
development of practice. This is not a situation of
scientific and artistic communities at odds or of cultural imperialism
but it is very hard to see and know the way in which it works. It
is also very hard to see when and why we should have attitudes about it
but it seems such a break from what has gone before that we should
attempt to understand what we can. Part of that attempt requires
us to understand issues related to 'fit for purpose' and the difference
between what a technology is intended to be for and what it can actually
be for. Good technology In relation to technology if we want to ask about the good
and the bad we need to differentiate between technological capability, a
generic artefact, the function of that artefact and finally...social and
material structures and phenomena likely to arise from the interaction
of these three. It is the last item, social and material
structures and phenomena, which is the most intractable and relies on
our ability to predict future circumstances and habits within society,
it also comprises the category of events which allow us to state whether
a technology is good and how good. The other three, our
technological virtuosity; the machines we make; and what we make them
for; lend themselves to functional rather than ethical analyses.
If we say a computer system is good but it could be better we are
usually discussing its functionality. We should not forget however
that there are always two categories of assessment for computers and new
technology, one ethical or political the other functional. If there is a general rule which divides the ethical and
functional aspects of computing it is that the functional aspects are
always of direct significance to the user and the users role while the
ethical ones are not. That is, that the ethical consequences of
most technological use requires broad reflection, while functional
consequences are readily comprehended and characterised. This
focussing of the functional issues sometimes leads to the
misapprehension that they can be elicited and progressed by purely
objective or empirical methodology or that there is some material
inevitability, a determinism in the way they change. It can be
contended that this is not so and that the relationship between computer
and user is more complex, that the obvious aspects of functionality are
only evident through failure or inadequacy. To understand the
nature of technology development we must return to the three aspects of
computer functionality...technological capability; generic artefact; and
the function of the artefact. The user's
perception of technology will always generally be that it is getting
better and one suspects that the criteria used to make that judgment
could be viewed alternately as straightforward or unsophisticated.
There are a number of reasons why any particular technology appears to
get better, one (as stated) is the users close engagement with the
functionality of a technological artefact, where it is often possible to
see directly linear improvements in both qualitative and quantitative
issues like handling or speed. Such features tend to dominate the
discourse of professionals and enthusiasts. Another reason we
believe technology improves is that the function or role of a
technological artefact is governed by economic, social and industrial
patterns that enforce and select particular technological and
artefactual solutions to requirements e.g. the car versus the train,
petrol versus steam etc. Hence at any instant it is possible to
make comparative judgments (e.g. on the basis of functionality or cost
related to purpose) that a particular solution is bad and another is
good. Development is then funnelled into the good solution which
on its own terms is likely to improve. Thus we do not see,
experience or contemplate what the equal development of the bad solution
might have resulted in. This management of the resourcing of
technological development thus gives the impression that discrimination
is always on the basis of positives rather than alternatives, we are
always giving up 'bad' technology and selecting or improving 'good'
technology. It is not until the ethical consequences of a
technological artefact become significant that we undertake to review
our development strategy related to its purpose. Interestingly
then, society is more likely to intervene in technology development on
ethical grounds than develop ethically informed strategies relating to
or drawing on functional issues. These two perceptions (more properly assumptions) namely that what I have is better of its kind and what I have is better than the other kind, tend to be the standard shopping requirements for the user and at any given time the makers, vendors, buyers and users of technology need evaluative terms as to what constitutes 'better'. It is inevitable in a context where evaluative terms are required that those terms intrinsically have a high degree of conclusivity in order that we can take decisions and actions. Resultantly, the method of judgment will cause us to seek or construct, whenever possible, objective rather than subjective descriptions of technology and technological artefacts. This leads to major problems with new technology where subjective issues are likely to predominate. Artefact conception and development In terms of the development of an artefact its functionality
is only one dimension and has no greater significance than the artefact's
purpose or function except in the ease or conviviality of its
use. Functionality and function are also interdependent. We could
reasonably presume that when the evaluative criteria applied to both an
artefact's function and its functionality are objective that the
developmental issues and goals for that artefact
would become relatively clear cut and integrated even if those
issues and goals in turn cannot be resolved. This would
undoubtedly be the case for most pre-industrial and industrial
technology. Consequentially our past experience has led us to believe we
will know better technology when we see it, that we somehow know an
artefact will do what it is supposed to do (function) better
(functionality). Can we presume a similar faculty or grounds for judging
post-industrial / new technology? The answer is probably no, the
reason being that the complexity of new technology gives rise to far
more subjective interpretations of its functions than was possible of
previous technologies. Any doubt about an artefact's function is
also bound to inhibit or distort the development of functionality
criteria i.e. 'If I am not quite sure what I will use it for or how I
will use it (function) I can't consider what will make it better
(functionality), I just want to cover
a range of options'. This potential for ambiguity about the
purpose or application of new technology is also reinforced by our
understanding and definition of a general purpose computer. The
two together set the stage for a market of confusing diversity, the
dilemmas relate to choice and whether we can arrive at choice by
subjective or objective means or a combination of both. Users require an evaluative scheme to determine the
selection of an artefact over and above similar artefacts (which hammer
is best for the job), conventionally this relates to a particular
quality of functionality and psychologically, experientially or
culturally we are attuned to which qualities are significant. We
make an estimate as to how appropriate the artefact's functionality is
for a designated or signified function. We might call this an
artefact's signified function. But when an artefact's
signified function becomes or is naturally indeterminate, as is often
the case with new technology, we might expect a user's selection
criteria to be equally indeterminate. In terms of product
development (for the developers criteria are likely to be similar to the
users) this is likely to introduce general and arbitrary forms of
functionality as there are also non-specific development criteria. It is important here to draw a distinction between
development criteria, which in varying degrees relate to the imagination
and inventive capabilities of product developers and evaluative
techniques applied during product development. In an overview of
evaluative techniques used in human-computer interaction (HCI) Preece et
al. do not draw any
clear line between analytic and synthetic methodology (Preece et al, 1994).
Overall the plausible reading of their epistemic style of text is that
product development is based on analysis, products are not invented
they are identified as if latently present. Throughout their book
how you think up a computer 'product' seems left to mysterious natural
forces however if a product is known it gets the heavy scientific
workover. This reading is enabled by introducing two general
criteria (which seem to constitute the only account they provide for
product conception) that product development should be user-centred
"the more understanding designers have about users' needs, then the
better designed their products will be" (1994:603) or based on
market awareness "that. . . (the). . . product is at least as good
as that of a competitor. . . (or). . . a particular feature that was not
liked by the users of the previous version must be improved or replaced
in the upgraded version." (1994:605). Even when the
subjective problems of product innovation are recognised they are
quickly subsumed by scientism, they are to be resolved by the analytical
techniques of anthropology and sociology and called contextual inquiry
(1994:659-661). For Preece et al product
development is not seen to involve original product conception, only the
testing of extant conceptions, the gathering of data, the improvement of
the known. They vouchsafe scientists are neutral, the imagination
corrupting, a view quite in opposition to that of Mountford who lists a
variety of demanding exercises in imagination for the HCI designer
(1990:27-29) and concludes "The best contribution that we can make to the
understanding of the communication interface is to create and build
tools to be better able to do our own jobs. Right now we are just
beginning to discover what
these tools should be, creating specifications for their design, and
experimenting with new methodologies. In the future we will be
challenged to make the most of their power to pass on our understanding
both to other designers and to new users in the form of new, more
powerful, more easily learnable, and more engaging ways to use
computers." (1990:30) In the case of computing and digital technologies we see
the lack of development criteria as a cause of the development of
general systems that support an ever widening range of generic forms
of functionality e.g. scanning, remote control, image store,
communications, processing. While aspects of such generic forms
are analogous to existing industrial or material processes functionality
criteria have been available for their development, however when the
manner of their control and interaction are mediated in new ways, or
cause new generic forms, functionality criteria cannot be elicited in a
conventional way. The necessary mechanisms for evaluation are not
present if we are locked into a purely analytical mode. Failures in planning, behaviour or even satisfying what we
want, are not always readily evident. It may be with computer
technology that paths have already been chosen which will have less than
desirous effects or simply restrict what computer technology can be.
Certainly the idea that developments which have taken place so far are
likely to be suited equally to all areas of application would seem over
optimistic. To prove this is however a daunting task as failure on this
scale and at this level is difficult to explicate. There are
however phenomena to be considered that tend to arise without demur on
the part of technologists. For example, what has come to be seen
as a benefit of computers and a goal, technological convergence, may
well have arisen incidentally as a by-product of the lack of development
criteria. We may yet live to rue the day but significantly
subjects like technological convergence are mainly critiqued as a
secondary outcome of technological change and not as a telling symptom
of technological strategy. If there is a lesson in this it is that
the start of ethical and social commentaries on aspects of computer
technology do not mark the cut off point for scientific and
technological commentaries.
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