May 28, 2002
Too soon to tell ... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes".
I was at a social gathering recently with a number of architects and designers, and there was no doubt their professional lives have changed since personal computers became rampant.
One commented that the computer needed absolute detail - the wall is exactly 16.013457 ft. long. Sure, it was a blessing when you're ordering materials or in the throws of actual construction. But it was a pain when you were in the midst of design.
Another person complained that she had spent her life drawing with pencil and paper, and what flowed through these hand-wrought renderings simply weren't possible with the computer. And it was through these drawings that she interacted with her clients.
As conversations like this tend to go, the underlying questions always arise: do computers interfere with the creative process? And in the end, will computers really deliver?
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While I was contemplating this, another person unfamiliar with computers asked, "Pretty soon, won't you be able to just scan in your pencil drawings, and the computer will take care of the rest?"
While there were hopeful nods all around, tempered with some doubts around the ability of software engineers to be cooperative and produce this result, I got that dreaded feeling that comes over me when people voice a confident expectation of imagined new technology.
As a former computer programmer, I freeze when someone tells me I ought to be able to program something easily that they've just dreamt up in the shower. My old routine was to ask them, "And just how do you expect to do that?" I would always know I was in trouble when they'd wave a hand dismissively, and say sarcastically, "It can't be that hard."
Of course, they had never written a line of code in their lives.
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At the same time, another part of me has to laugh. It's like going to a couples' counselor, and having the therapist look one of you straight in the eye with admonition: "Your partner is not going to know you like Twinkies unless you tell him."
That's right. What we're talking about here is magical thinking. That old bugaboo: "If my partner loved me, he (or she) would know exactly what to do or say or be."
Well, it's magical thinking to expect a computer, or any kind of technology, to do something for you if (number one) you yourself can't specifically express baby-step-by-baby-step what you want it to do, and then (number two) you actually express it.
And so for anyone who suggests such imaginings as a technology to miraculously convert a hand-drawn sketch on the back of a napkin to schematics, parts lists, contracts and a price tag, the answer is that you will no doubt be partially right.
But the more important point is while technology is mushrooming all around us, it is still in a very early, primitive stage.
Will computers be able to help the creative process, without interfering? Is there something inherent in the nature of technology that will limit its ability to replicate the human process?
Well, I say, it's just too early to tell.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
