Microblog #43, "Things that Make us Smart, Chapter 1&2"

1
Summary
This chapter opens Dr. Norman's book Things that Make Us Smart. The two principal themes are over-entertainment at the expense of education (for example, TV news vs. newspapers, more flash but generally less content) and machines working more for machines than for people (user unfriendly interfaces failings being entirely brushed off on people).

Discussion
If it sounds like you've heard this before, it's because you have. This chapter has a little bit more of a rambling quality than Norman's previous work, we'll see if that continues.

2
Summary
This chapter expands on the first, then describes the three kinds of learning (accretion, tuning, restructuring) and explains the phenomena of optimal flow.

Discussion
I must admit that I was not in "optimal flow" as I was reading this. I did, however, note that he's still trying to reverse engineer things from the playstation (pg. 22).