Does Media = Real Life?

I have commented on the following blogs
Lei Gu
Eric Scott
Sarah Gray


The authors of the book argued that even though we know that media is not real and doesn't have feelings, we still treat it like it was a real person. They started their research by going through the social science section of the libraries and looked at different studies about human-human interaction in the areas of mannerisms, personality, emotions, social roles, and form. They looked at the result of the studies and replaced the second human with the word computer or media. Then they performed experiments to determine if the new hypothesis was valid for human-computer interaction. For the most part, their arguments were validated.

As I starting reading, I noticed that they did not do a real good job of justifying the results. The experiments seemed to confirm everything they said, and any criticisms of the methods were brushed aside with ease. I did not do further research into the details of the experiments and maybe doing so would clear up my concerns, but as it stands now, I am not completely convinced the results validated the hypothesis.

The main point of the book was that we would treat a computer like a human being, even though we know it isn't. I guess this could be true to an extent, since I think a running joke is that I treat my macbook like I would treat my child (which is a scary thought considering the condition of the laptop before I had it repaired... 4 times). They also said that computers should be nice to the users and respond positively to the user at certain times, like a complimenting spell check. That might be useful to certain people, but to me, if my macbook ever did that, I would feel like strangling it. I prefer usuability and efficiency, not niceness.

I personally think that this book is decent. It is not as good as the previous one, The Design of Everyday Things, but it does have valid points here and there, but, as I mentioned, the authors could've done a better job of justifying the results and why criticisms do not apply, and sometimes, the authors go too far when saying that computers should act like a nice human being.