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Technology Connects People!

By Gerd Waloszek, SAP User Experience, SAP AG – June 16, 2009

Gerd Waloszek Many people blame technology, and in particular information technologies, for alienating people. Think of the teenagers who sit in front of their computers playing games all day. Other people, however, hold exactly the opposite to be true: They believe technology connects people. There are also many examples of this, starting with the Internet, instant messaging, discussion boards, and cell phones. In this editorial, I want to tell a few loosely connected true stories that also prove that technology connects people, provided that a few preconditions are met – by both the technology and humans.

 

Unwanted Parcels (1)

A few weeks ago, we received a large and expensive parcel from an online electronics store. The parcel had originally been sent to my wife's father, but was redirected to us because he had since moved to a home for the elderly. My wife was puzzled by the unwanted parcel because her father is neither able to shop online nor by phone or fax. So she asked the postman to keep the parcel and store it at the local post office until the matter was settled. After a few phone calls, the issue was indeed settled: The supplies had been ordered using a lengthy fax, and the parcel had been sent to my wife's father because some customer number figures had been scrambled when the number had been transferred from the fax to the computer. Because the list of items was very long, the order had been split: A second parcel arrived a few days later, but this time my wife rejected it immediately. When I e-mailed the story to my friends and relatives, one of them replied: "All good things come in threes!" And sure enough, a few days later, we received a third "unwanted" parcel, which I will write about in the next section.

Interestingly, shortly after this, I had another "scrambled customer number" experience. I ordered some products on the phone and had to state my customer number to simplify the ordering process. At the end of the ordering process, the agent asked for my banking data. This puzzled me quite a bit because I firmly believed that the company would already have this data. I repeatedly told this to the agent, but he did not take any notice. Since I was still confused by this, I finally asked the agent which address he was sending the parcel to, and – alas – it was the wrong address. If I had not asked for the shipping address, the parcel would have arrived at a stranger's house and I would have waited and waited for the parcel to come, just like the person who ordered the electronic supplies.

Thus, one precondition for technology to connect unknown people is that there are some numbers, which someone has to enter manually into the computer so that they can be scrambled. The only drawback here is that the people who are connected in this way are not put in direct contact with one another...

 

Unwanted Parcel (2)

A few days later, a third "unwanted" parcel arrived at our home. This time, my wife was unsure about the parcel and its sender and accepted it. It came from the Netherlands, but also contained some left over packaging from Lithuania, which stated that the parcel would include a camera. I taxed my brain, but could not remember that I had ordered a camera or bought one at an auction. However, I thought I recognized the sender's name... So I decided to open the box, even though my wife was expecting an explosion. And indeed – out of the box came a camera! When I saw what type and brand it was, the scales fell from my eyes: Months ago, I registered to take part in a project (Ricoh Around the Globe by Pavel Kudrys) that would send a camera to people all over the world. Each person is expected to leave five photos on the memory card and send the camera on to the next person in the list. Now it was my turn!

The contents of the parcel and the five photos that I left on the memory card

Figure 1: The contents of the parcel and the five photos that I left on the memory card

Here we have a different precondition: The electronic gadget itself connects people by being sent around (some human memory leaks are also involved, but these are not essential). In general, gadgets connect people who share a common interest in them, as the many Websites and forums about cameras, computers, and other gadgets show. In the following section, I will show how an electronic gadget can connect people in a different and creative way.

 

Cell Phones and Faxes

I was riding my bicycle and just returning home from a supermarket when suddenly, I heard a faint noise – my cell phone seemed to be ringing. I stopped immediately and called my wife. I assumed that she had called me and wanted me to buy something that was not on my shopping list. But it wasn't my wife who had called me. So I looked a little bit closer and found out that I could call the person back who had just rang me. It was my old friend Fiete and I asked him why he had called me on my cell phone. To my surprise, he told me that he had called me because I had just called him. However, he had only heard a faint noise and not my voice. He had therefore tried to call my wife, but the line was busy (guess why? Because I was calling my wife). It was me who had caused this chain reaction of phone calls, and without even knowing it. Obviously, I had inadvertently pushed some buttons on my cell phone in my pocket in exactly the order required to call my friend – technology had once again connected people!

The creative connector device

Figure 2: The creative connector device

Here, a couple of preconditions are involved: The keys of the phone must not be locked, and some shortcut numbers have to have been stored. Otherwise, we might need the infamous 10,000 apes to get a successful connection... Humans and technology must, therefore, cooperate closely in this case.

A couple of weeks earlier, the three of us had already been connected through a similar sequence of phone calls, because my friend Fiete had called my wife on the fax machine... I learned about this call when my wife told me that we had once again received a fax that had run on an error. I called my friend because he is one of the few people who send us faxes. He said that he had not sent a fax, but that he had tried to call my wife from his cell phone, but to no avail – he had only heard a beeping fax sound. I asked him whether he had dialled our fax number. He said he hadn't and that he had used a shortcut number. However, after closer inspection, it turned out that the shortcut was out of date because it originated from a time where our fax and phone had the same number, which is now our fax number.

So, another precondition for technologically initiated connections between people are old shortcut numbers, which can lead to new kinds of communication loops. On the other hand, old numbers (be they shortcuts or written downs) may also disrupt communication between people, as the following example shows: My aunt once wrote the above-mentioned number down and since then, she has continued to try to call us on the phone using what is now our fax number. Each time we talk to her about the problem she has when she tries to call us, we tell her the correct number, but she always forgets to write it down and continues to use the fax number. I am at a loss at how to resolve this problem...

 

Conclusion

We often hear and read that technology is there to make our lives simpler. This does not always seem to be the case. At the very least, it makes our lives richer, because without all these technological gadgets and human confusions we would not be able to have such communicative experiences....

 

References

 

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