Why is it so boring to use the right tool for the job?
In thinking about both tablet PCs and Alone Together over the last month or so, I noted the paradigm of using the right tool for the job. To recommend using the right tool for the job seems fairly banal, but I wondered if my perceived need to recommend it reflects the apparent existence of a contrary view in which there exists, or will shortly exist, some universal tool appropriate to all uses.
Henry Jenkins refers to this contrary view as "the black box fallacy" in his book Convergence Culture. I find it hard to identify any particular person who propagated the black box fallacy -- or dream, if you disagree with Jenkins and I -- and I can't imagine anyone owning up to a statement as simplistic as "device X is all we will ever need". Yet, the black box idea seems implicit in utopian (and dystopian) narratives like that implied by questions like "Have digital tablets become essential?"
To be fair to anyone anticipating the arrival of a black box, there are presumably some limits in mind, albeit unstated and vague. Surely no one foresees a single black box performing all the functions of a computer, a vehicle, an oven, a refrigerator and a washing machine! But, even if we restrict the imagined functions of a black box to those currently performed by microelectronics, why expect a single box when there is plainly a whole host of different boxes on the market?
I suppose that the hype and excitement surrounding a new device tends to drown news of existing devices, giving a false and unintended impression that the new device is far more important and interesting than the old ones. Presumably not even the most enthusiastic supporters of smartphones or tablet PCs believe that such devices are about to replace server farms or home theatres, for example. But the features of server farms and home theatres are likely to be far from the mind of someone enthusing over the latest mobile device.
The gradations between phones, smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops and desktops are more subtle, though. If desktop computers were only introduced in 2012, after we had been accustomed to mobile telephony and portable computing, could we be so amazed by their computing power, large screens and keyboards as to forget that they aren't very mobile?
Tablets and the elusive black box of computing
The Conversation last week included Roland Sussex wondering if digital tablets have become essential. His answer seems to be "no", since he observes they aren't very good for textual input and aren't sufficiently robust for use by children. He eventually comes to the rather inane conclusion that "for what they do well they are fine." For things they do badly, we still need other devices.
For my part, the answer is obviously "no" since I don't have a tablet and have yet to drop out of society, or even be inconvenienced in any way. I have a netbook that I find quite useful for reviewing lecture material and drafts while I'm on the train. Perhaps a tablet would be better for reading books and magazines (which I also do), but I do enough typing to feel that a device with a keyboard is the most appropriate tool for the job. See my comments on the article for my full argument.
I sometimes wonder if all the fuss about tablets (and cloud computing and any number of other buzzwords that have appeared over the years) is driven by a self-fulfilling prophecy in which everyone buys tablets because everyone says tablets are the way of the future. Did Steve Jobs anticipate the market for tablets when he introduced the iPad, or did the market buy tablets because a charismatic and influential figure anticipated them? After all, tablets of various sorts existed a long time before the iPad: Apple itself released the Newton in 1992, while Microsoft introduced Windows for Pen Computing in 1991 and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition in 2002.
Now, it could well be that technology just wasn't up to the task of making tablets work in the days of the Newton and Windows for Pen Computing, and advances in technology have now made it the right time to try again. Sun Microsystems and others were eager promoters of "network computing" and "thin clients" in the 1990's, for example, but the networks of the time didn't have the capacity or connectivity to support what we now call "cloud computing". With increased network capacity and connectivity, the 2010's might be a more fertile ground for similar ideas.
Whatever the case, it's hard to see us escaping from the boring old paradigm of using the right tool for the job. Henry Jenkins refers to imaginations of a single, unified computing/communications device as "the black box fallacy" in Convergence Culture. As several of the comments on Sussex's article observe, it's not that tablets lack the technological sophistication of Jenkins' black box, it's that ergonomics dictates different tools for different tasks. And even if some future tablet -- or smartphone or wearable computer or microchip implant -- could somehow meet all of one's computing and communications needs, would it make a very good refrigerator?
