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the modern
computing world is
not just designed.
it emerges from
people working
with it.

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better understand the process of preparing the students who will one day create future computing.

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the message. The friend warned him that having your IP address recorded was dangerous. This participant also gave up.

Editing Wikipedia is a natural act in Licklider’s world. Should we expect people who edit Wikipedia to know what an IP address is? Is it a user interface mistake to expect Wikipedia contributors would understand the implications of publicly recording an IP address? While the Internet is in common use in the homes of all of Poole’s participant families, the families (and even some of their “computer savvy” friends) clearly did not understand some of the basic terms and concepts of the technology they use.

Poole’s study provides some concrete examples of what people understand, and misunderstand, about the computing in their lives. Certainly, she informs HCI designers, in thinking about expectations of user knowledge. On the other hand, an IP address is part of our modern world. Is it better to hide it, or explain it? Her study informs general education designers in thinking about what everyone needs to know about computing.

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What Should Laypeople
understand about Computing?

Even the HCC students who study HCI topics can inform us about computing education. Erika Poole (now an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University) is one of those. Poole studied how families attempting a variety of technology-related challenges, as a way of discovering how they sought out help.

The families in Poole’s study did much worse than I might have guessed. For example, only two of 15 families were able to configure their wireless router. Some of the reasons were because of awful user interfaces (for example, a virtual keyboard that was missing some keys). But other tasks were challenging for more subtle reasons.

One of the challenges in Poole’s
study involved editing a Wikipedia
page. When Poole’s participants ed-
ited a Wikipedia page for the first time,
without an account, they saw this warn-
ing message: “You are not currently
logged in. Editing this way will cause
your IP address to be recorded publicly
in this page’s edit history. If you create
an account, you can conceal your IP ad-
dress and be provided with many other
benefits. Messages sent to your IP can
be viewed on your talk page.”
Poole’s participants had to decide
if “recording publicly” their “IP ad-
dress” was a problem. One partici-
pant told Poole the process of editing
the encyclopedia and reading this
warning message made her “feel like
a criminal.” She canceled her changes.
Another participant contacted his “com-
puter savvy” friend to help interpret

understanding Licklider’s World J.C.R. Licklider was able to predict much of our modern computing world because he combined his understanding of computing with his understanding of people. To understand the world he predicted, we need researchers who understand computing and who can use the methods from Licklider’s psychology (and sociology and other social sciences, too). The modern computing world is not just designed. It emerges from people working with it, trying to understand and use it (typically, in ways different than originally designed), and interacting with millions of others doing the same things. We have to study it as it is, not just as how we meant it to be.