Rather, I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.Firstly, I should add that educators are a really important part of our society, and they are consistently undervalued. While one might argue that makers devote their life to profiting off the here and now, educators dedicate their life to investing in the future. And they’re underpaid for doing so.
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, said once in a TED talk he gave that it’s really easy for corporations to make more. But to add, edit, and improve is a more difficult task. This is precisely the message of this quote– that too often than not, we focus on creating anew when we already have so many technologies that could be improved upon. This emphasis on growing vertically rather than horizontally is something that I really resonate with. Nowadays, the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough resources in the technology space. It’s that those resources could often be improved upon. When I think of Amazon, I think of a company that has an amazing and powerful list of products and services. I also think of a company that does not care about UI or user experience at all. Personally, I would much rather Amazon improve its user experience by implementing a more intuitive UI and making better tutorials for their massive suite of AWS services than create more. I think that this is the missing ingredient, and without an appreciation for those who critique, educate, and analyze, these things will never be possible.
I also think this quote accurately reflects the materialistic mindset that many Americans have, often referred to as the “American excess”. Buying and selling are such an integral part of our culture. Just one look at a supermarket paints this picture– you could find everything you could ever want and more. While I think I am very fortunate to be able to even have supermarkets that contain such a wide variety of items at my fingertips, I often wonder: is this even necessary? When splendor is the culture of American consumption, doesn’t that make it hard to appreciate beautiful things that can’t be bought and sold? So if we value things more than we value the contributions of people, what does that say about us?
1 thought on “Week 1 Reflection”
Comments are closed.
You have an interesting take on improving/updating existing products instead of creating new ones. I like the example you gave about Amazon’s user interface. However, I feel it’s not always accurate, big companies are frequently improving their products, increasing their performance, and making them more intuitive. But change is done through small updates. Making a major update is not always a good idea, as it involves substantially changing a system that works, and that users know how to use. Do you think that if small updates happened more frequently, and were more substantial would be innovative enough?