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Joel Clawson

1. what did you find

1.1. interesting about the article?

I found the idea of the hot office interesting. Even though the idea did not work in the Chiat/Day case, it is interesting to see the results of the hot office.

1.2. not interesting about the article?

I did not find the ideas about returning to the country very interesting, probably because I do not believe that it will occur. People are going to continue to move towards cities, because that is where people are, the stores, the restaurants, etc.

2. what do you consider the main message of the article?

The main message seems to be that working from home is not all that it appears. There are all sorts of hidden costs and loss in help that come from working in an office with other people.

3. what does the following quote mean to you: "design needs to attend not simply to the frailty of technological systems and the robustness of social systems, but to ways in which social systems often play a key part in making even frail technology robust"

3.1. why are social systems robust?

Social systems are robust because knowledge is distributed among the member of the system. Each member knows things that the others do not and when put together, the collective knowledge is so much greater than the individual that many of the problems will be able to be solved.

3.2. why are technological system frail?

Technological systems are frail because they are highly complicated and no one has all of the knowledge needed for that system. They are also changing rapidly causing older systems to be left behind when trying to find support for a failure.

3.3. or do you disagree with the authors about this?

I agree with the author's assessment.

4. think of a couple of persons (maybe family members or friends) who are in a position to use computer by being "home alone"! Characterize the major problems that these persons have!

There main problem is when something goes wrong that they have never seen, especially with Windows. They are not sure what the error message they received means. They also have problems when upgrading the system.

5. Describe briefly some new innovative technologies that you can think of which would address these problems!

I cannot think of any technologies that would improve these issues. What is needed, is better error reporting that is more explanatory to the problem at hand or better instruction/troubleshooting guides when upgrading the system.

6. in case of problems with computer systems ? how often to you look for help/advice

6.1. from humans?

I look for help from other people if I feel they have enough knowledge in the area I am seeking help in and if they are around to have the question asked to them.

6.2. from written documentation?

I only look at written documentation for information that is relatively standard, like programming information.

6.3. from online resources?

I often use online resources, especially things like usenets, where people ask questions and others provide answers because someone else probably had the same problem that I am having.

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