In an article about the differences between desktop and server based RSS aggregators, William Grosso coins the phrase
UI is Better than AI.
which is a pleasingly catchy encapsulation of an idea which I was thinking about during my first weblogging experiment, and fits with a theme which I have returned to recently. The first of the above linked articles includes two quotes from a paper in the Journal of Hydraulic Research (the IAHR web site is a royal PITA, with Frames-and-Flash based navigation which doesn't work in Konqueror, and doesn't allow deep linking without picking frames out of context). Since that post is on a weblog which in theory could disappear at any time, I repeat them here.
Knowledge based systems may support certain tasks, but if the task is restructured, the need of much of the knowledge about the complexity might become obsolete. Much of the knowledge which is still needed now is simply an artefact of certain solution methods or of the use of certain computer programs. Modification of the solution process and improvement of the tools tend to make the task less knowledge-intensive. [p. 91, van Zuylen, Dee, Mynett, Rodenhuis, Moll, Ogink Most, Gerritsen, Verboom (1994) "Hydroinformatics at Delft Hydraulics", J. Hydraulic Research, Extra Issue: Hydroinformatics]
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Tools were proposed to provide knowledge in a suitable form ... Once it became clear what kind of tools could be implemented, the developer and the expert/user restructured the task in such a way that it became easier, less complex and less knowledge-intensive. A user interface was then developed for this task. Clearly, a straightforward development of a user interface containing a knowledge base would have resulted in a sub-optimal product, since the product would have supported an obsolete task. [p. 93, van Zuylen, Dee, Mynett, Rodenhuis, Moll, Ogink Most, Gerritsen, Verboom (1994) "Hydroinformatics at Delft Hydraulics", J. Hydraulic Research, Extra Issue: Hydroinformatics]
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