I'm sorry dave, I'm afraid I cannot let you have eggs today

I read the book The Design of Future Things by Don Norman. It is the same overall concepts from the last book The Design of Everyday Things but with more relevant examples. The last book was written 20 years ago, and many of the examples in that book have been resolved or are unfamiliar to us. He discusses how contemporary technology will be like in the future. However, he warns that we still make the same mistake in designing technology without the human factor. He mentions how automation may be good, but can be disastrous if it was not designed for humans to take control in time to correct a problem. Some examples in the book include cars that can drive itself amd a house with appliances that tries to get you to follow the doctor's orders. He also gives some rules for design on page 193, but I won't write it out here since it would take up too much space.

I think this is a decent book. However, some of the examples seem a bit too science fiction-like. The automated car that can drive by itself sounds good, but the public would never let that happen for the same reason why the autopilot on a plane will never handle takeoffs and landings for passenger jets. I think very few people would trust their lives to a computer and hope the programmers have thought of every possible situation (which they won't). Next, his talk of the super house seems creepy. Although it could be helpful, like the house playing loud, angry music as a wakeup alarm would be nice. But having the refrigerator and toilet to team up to pester you on your eating habits seems too much. Also, his talk of intelligent robots doing menial tasks to make human lives easier seem like the plot to every sci-fi movie/show where the robots decide to attack all humans.

example 1