Things That Make Us Smart

Summary:
Technology has not aided our ability to learn, but rather has been an obstacle to learning. Norman obviously does not like technology that hampers our ability to learn. He mentions all the good inventions of our time, such as writing, reading, and art, but doesn't praise engineering.

Norman states that there are two kinds of cognition, and three kinds of learning. The two types of cognition are experiential and reflective. Experiential is when one is so adept at a task, that it is done instantaneously, while reflective is one must contemplate before making an action. The three types of learning are accretion (accumulation of facts), tuning (from practicing/repetition), and restructuring (developing new conceptual models).


There are two types of "worlds:" the represented world- that which is being represented (aka the real world), and the representing world- symbols or models to represent the real, represented world. "It is things that make us smart," as Norman says, because writing and reading and "cognitive artifacts" are what make us smart. Socrates was against using books because he thought it would eliminate reflective thought, but this did not turn out to be the case until recently. Objects must be represented in appropriate ways. An example is how prescriptions for drugs are very difficult to read because they're not written in a matrix form. Another example Norman used was an addition game compared to tic tac toe. Even though they are essentially the same game, without proper representation, the addition game is difficult to comprehend. 

How we fit or represent an artifact is a key point as well. Digital and analog interfaces each have their own pros and cons, and neither is altogether better. The design of things also needs to lend itself to the use of artifacts. Norman uses three different versions of the "Tower of Hanoi" problem to show that the design can lend itself to make the problem easier: each version required a different number of rules. Graphs are also another source of misleading of information, or altogether incorrect, if the wrong type of graphs and/or labels are used. The two types of representation are surface and internal representation, and surface representation is the one that is concerning to the public because that is where they see the cognitive artifacts. 
Discussion:
I don't really enjoy reading Norman's books. He is incredibly long winded and repeats himself a lot. I find it hard to continue following along when he uses a couple of pages to describe something altogether simple or unimportant to the chapter/book as a whole. Also, his stance for writing this book is questionable in my opinion. In the book, especially the first chapter, he makes it sound as though all items should be informative to the user, and people should learn from every task they do. I strongly disagree with this viewpoint. Leisure, pleasure, and relaxation are also key to a human's life, in my opinion. I think making our lives more comfortable is the best part of technology. I don't think all technology should exist to make us smarter, and I don't think we should do every task just to further educate ourselves. Also, this book seems to be only a slight variation of the other works he has produced. Although this one does emphasize the cognitive realm more than the physical design, I find it very similar to the previous books because he actually talks about a lot of the same things. I like that he uses examples, but I don't like the examples he uses. In "Why We Make Mistakes," the author uses tons of real life examples of things that actually happened and it captures the readers. Norman uses a bunch of hypothetical or broad examples, rather than key historical events with people, such as saying "people struggle reading prescriptions" rather than describing a significant situation in which that happened. Overall, while I think Norman is very intelligent and proposes good points, I wouldn't read this again and won't be finishing the book.