"Embedded Bias" in Design

Newsweek's science editor Sharon Begley has a thought-provoking sentence in a recent article, Get Smarter: "The embedded bias of the keyboardless iPad is passive consumption rather than active creation." The notion of "embedded bias" comes from technology scholar Douglas Rushkoff, who believes that without consciously resisting these biases, technology will herd us in particular directions. I have to agree - though I'll substitue "design" for "technology" - and wonder, is this a good or bad thing? Have we been suffering from too much content creation (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc) because it's so easy, thanks to tools that bias toward it? Or will the advent of tablets suppress creativity because they're not built for building? I don't know the answer, but it's an intriguing thing to ponder!

2 comments:

Bob Ryskamp said...

not surprising that a professional editor would think creativity could only happen through a keyboard...

Dave Gustafson said...

Oh, that's a good point - professional writers almost certainly have their own biases towards keyboards!