I’ve been meaning to recommend the BBC Digital Human radio show and podcast since my wife found it a few weeks ago and it’s one of those programs that I wish I’d found sooner. Thankfully the BBC have a full podcast archive and a tumblr blog so you don’t miss out.
The program looks at how at how the modern digital world affects our human nature, a recent episode “Broken” discusses how the human instinct to break things and understand their workings is hindered by the digial world where technology either works or doesn’t.
Third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Modern devices now resemble “magic” as defined by Clarke’s Third Law back in 1973, and this is having an impact on our intrigue into understanding and exploring the world around us.
Do we need to better consider the need to show our working and allow things to be broken and put back together when designing for the future?
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