Читать книгу The Construction Technology Handbook - Hugh Seaton - Страница 14

No one needed to write a Construction Technology Handbook when the technologies being used were confined to the individual trades, and involved tools and machinery that exploited mostly physical effects. Learning to use a nailgun was not a huge leap from a hammer; learning to use increasingly powerful and sophisticated power tools was usually an evolutionary process where features kept getting better.

In these instances, workers can see how the technology works, can understand intuitively how to at least use the technology, even if it might take years to master the craft overall.

In contrast, digital technology does its work out of sight, in non‐physical ways that humans cannot immediately grasp, using controls that aren't “natural” in the way a hammer's handle is. Older technologies exploit physics, which humans naturally understand.

Digital technologies exploit electronic phenomena, which are so small that we cannot see them. Digital technologies also build layers of human‐designed interfaces that don't have to rely on intuition or natural movement at all, they are completely the invention of the product developer. And that means the intuition and experience that work so well with physics‐based technologies don't help us with digital technologies, and that can be alienating and annoying. These human‐designed interfaces do have logic, though, and are based on real engineering – so you can learn that logic and become just as comfortable with digital technologies as you are with anything else.

That logic, that “physics” of digital technology is what this book is about. We have already started from the beginning, defining what we mean, and will build up the rules and frameworks that give you a deep understanding of what makes digital technologies tick.