Re: Technologies and frameworks are killing creativity?

Francesco Vivoli skrev:

>
> Mmmhhh, maybe that's because the environment is getting more complex
> with time (i.e steeper learning curve) while the problem to solve
> remains the same on the average?! I have to say that it could be...
>
> Francesco

It's perhaps useful to ask, "Why is the environment getting more
complex?"

I think the answer must eventually be that annoying phrase-of-month:
user experience.

Certainly the user experience has changed over the years. Surfing the
web on my windows box offers me a better user experience than playing a
game on my ZX Spectrum 48K back in 1985.

(Of course, we have no definition of, "User experience," as it's pretty
qualitative; but I think few would argue that the trend of user
experience has been upwards since the dawn of the personal PC.)

To deliver greater user experience that you competitors, furthermore,
requires increasingly complex computing environments: you cannot suft
the web on a ZX Spectrum. (No doubt there'll be a post next pointing me
to a web-browser written for a Spectrum emulator ...)

The question is, as you hinted earlier: what are the limiting factors?

I think user experience is limited. There is only so much user
experience you can get from sitting in front of a screen with the
latest head-phones.

When you can chat with anyone in the world, there's just no one else to
chat to. When you can browse the entire human archive of your
particular hobby/fascination, then there's nothing more to browse about
your hobby (it's time to leave your computer and go DO your hobby).

Virtual reality has failed because of the head-spinning motion-sickness
it induces; and I don't see holographic screens, matter-transporters,
and direct-mind-interfaces on the market in the near future.

So, if increased user experience is the push for increasingly
sophisticated computing environments, and if user experience is
limited, then at some point there will be no push for increasingly
sophisticated computing environments.

Then the drive - if any - will be to do the same thing better, rather
than to do new things; and this just lacks the punch of innovative
drive; this is when user experience will finally be comoditised, its
value will plummet, and all the old players will step aside as
cheap-labour regions find themselves alone capable of turning a measly
profit from the venture.

That's when you'll find the next, "New," environment to be easier to
use than the one that's gone before. Or that the environment will
disappear from the programmer's/designer's/creator's view, and he'll
just, "Deliver user experience," in some way we can't quite fathom
right now.

Possibly.

..ed

--
www.EdmundKirwan.com - Home of The Fractal Class Composition.

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