마음은 얼마나 중요한가?
마음은 중요합니다. 그런데, 얼마나?
대부분의 자기계발서에서는 마음이 “모든 것”이라고 합니다. 모든게 마음먹기에 달렸다는거죠. 솔직히 별로 믿어지지는 않습니다. 앞사람을 뚫어지게 쳐다보면, 그 사람이 뒤를 돌아보죠. 여기에서 마음의 힘과 끌어당김의 법칙을 이야기하곤 하는데, 이건 비약이죠. 어떤 현상을 가지고 그 현상이 유용한 범위를 넘어서서까지 이야기하는거죠. 몇 가지 예를 들긴 하지만, 결정적으로 중요한 주장의 근거는 들지 않는거죠.
그렇다고 해서, 마음이 중요하지 않은 것은 아니죠. 얼마나 중요할까요? 팜 파일럿은 새로운 접근법, 새로운 태도, 문제에 대한 새로운 관점의 승리라고 워튼 교수님은 말합니다.
The Palm Pilot is a remarkable machine – not just because it is a wonder of technology and a phenomenal marketing success. It is most remarkable because its success represents the triumph of a new mental model.
When Apple CEO John Sculley first heralded the concept of the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with the introduction of the Newton in 1993, it was envisioned as the next generation of information technology—a tiny handheld computer that would serve as an assistant to keep calendars and contact information always at hand. But this captivating dream soon proved to be a technological nightmare. The technology was just not up to the hype.
The Newton handwriting recognition became such an object of ridicule that it was memorialized in a series of Gary Trudeau’s popular Doonesbury cartoons, where the machine responded with bizarre interpretations of handwritten input. This is not the ideal way to draw attention to a new product. After spending $500 million on the Newton, Apple pulled the plug, helping set the stage for the company’s subsequent near-death experience.
But Apple wasn’t alone. A promising startup, GO Corporation, spent $75 million on launching a handheld before it pulled the plug. In all, companies spent an estimated $1 billion trying to bring the handheld market into being. Palm Computing was lost among the general rout with its large and overpriced flop called “Zoomer PDA” that was launched in 1994.
Palm learned important lessons from the experience, however, that allowed it to create its Pilot PDA based on a very different model. First, instead of developing complex software that would be able to interpret all kinds of different handwriting styles, Palm took another approach. Company founder Jeff Hawkins, who had spent his career studying human cognition and learning, realized that it would be easier to train the human operators to communicate with the machine than to prepare the machine to understand all the different variations of handwriting by users.
“People are smarter than appliances. They can learn,” he said. “People like learning.”
He created Graffiti, a handwriting recognition program that requires operators to make modified characters with a single pen stroke. The alphabet can be learned quickly by humans and makes recognition much more efficient and accurate for the machines. Hawkins and his team also emphasized size and simplicity, rethinking every aspect of the device and shaving down the cost. (The Power of Impossible Thinking, pp. 26 – 27)
기계에게 무엇인가를 가르치기는 (기계가 사람에게 적응하기를 배우게 하기는) 무척 어렵지만, 사람에게 무엇을 가르치기는(사람이 기계에게 적응하게 하기는) 쉽다는거죠. 훨씬 더 싸기도 하구요. 이것이 새로운 관점의 승리라고 저자는 말합니다. 마음이 만병통치약인 것은 절대로 아니지만 … 관점만 바꾸어도 많은 것이 달라진다는거죠.
