Harmful or Not: Human-Centered Design

I recently read a paper by Don Norman (oh my gosh! Another Norman writing!), called Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful.

Norman's main point of this paper is that design ought to be activity centered, and not human centered. The reason for this is that people do things on a computer for an activity or job. So the design of the program ought to be for what that activity or job is. One of his points is that people adapt to the tools.

I think he makes a good point in that activity centered design is important. I also think that the idea that people adapt to the tools is possibly true. However, people also adapt the environment to fit them. How else would the early humans have gotten tools in the first place? Maybe I'm hitting the wrong point, but that's what I think.