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Anatomy of a Scandal: AmazonFail 2009

Embedding is apparently beyond my capabilities: enjoy at the source!

4 Responses
  1. Laura Blankenship permalink*
    April 24, 2009

    I was able to get it to embed, but didn’t want to edit your post:

  2. Laura permalink
    April 25, 2009

    Roisin, I found this a very compelling presentation. I really like the way it moves from the discussion of the “scandal” to an examination of how the technology works normally. The error made visible the shortcomings of the technology and the trust that people place in the workings of the technology. When the error happened, people assumed that humans were to blame, but it seemed like you were saying it was a little of both, that the technology was programmed badly (by humans) to begin with. So there didn’t need to be a grand conspiracy, just a small error.

    I found the movement of the presentation a little fast in spots, where there was a lot of text to read. Perhaps that text could be spread out over a few more slides. I liked the combination of text and images and I thought the music added an interesting element to the presentation, almost circus-like in its cadence. Very nice.

  3. Aline permalink
    April 25, 2009

    I liked your presentation about Amazon and its censorship. It was interesting. I never even knew about any of this. I love the end when you say errors are human that their not from the technology. I loved the juxtaposition between humans and technology. You seem to be implicitly asking where the line is.

  4. Solomon Lutze permalink
    April 26, 2009

    Generally, I thought it was pretty nifty. I wasn’t wholly certain what to think about “programming errors are human errors,” though. While true, programming errors do come in a variety of flavors; if forgetting a semicolon somewhere was the cause of this mishap, then for me it’s a little tricky to say that that’s a statement on gender dynamics. Unless it’s a comment on how we think about these things subconsciously, which is interesting. if it WAS an error, it sure as hell was well-placed for a really crappy effect on PR.

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