Slashdot Mirror
Human-Computer Interfaces From 2003 to 2012
Roland Piquepaille writes "My favorite forecaster, Gartner, is back with a new series of predictions about the way we'll interact with our computing devices. Here is the introduction. 'Human-computer interfaces will rapidly improve during the next decade. The wide availability of cheaper display technologies will be one of the most transformational events in the IT industry.' Not exactly a scoop, isn't? But wait, here is a real prediction. 'Computer screens will become ubiquitous in the everyday environment.' Ready for another prediction? 'Through 2012, more than 95 percent (by volume in gigabytes) of human-to-computer information input will remain keyboard- and mouse-based.' Check this column for a summary."
Is there a HID with a the robocop spike on the horizon?
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
So when can we get neurocannulae then? Would make a cool controller for MMORPGs :)
So he's predicting that things will pretty much stay the same, with just the usual slow progress.
Pretty wild ideas there, I hope he doesn't try to patent the keyboard and mouse or something.....
-Space for rent
It is estimated that this will not change by the year 2012.
Random is the New Order.
Through 2012, more than 95 percent (by volume in gigabytes) of human-to-computer information input will remain keyboard- and mouse-based (0.6 probability).
I guess robot love dolls won't be on the market until 2013. (99.4 probability)
by volume in Gigabytes
And what about in MB or KB?
The same??
Ok, that was just to use a buzzword, I understand better now!
...when you pry my qwerty keyboard from my cold, dead, carpal-tunneled hands.
Would the gyro mice that sense your hand motion be considered part of the traditional 'keyboard & mouse' setup? Seems to me that it offers a lot more potential for interactivity than the current standard.
Check out the University of Chicago's Computing Cluster & Cybercafe"> and MIT's Media Lab for more information about human user interfaces. This article is behind the times, in regards to stuff that's already been produced in the laboratories.
Some of the problems with push technology
- Piggy-back of spam, unwanted data, etc
- Security in general
- Cunsumers have already made it clear they don't want it
- Wasted bandwidth
- Wasted time filtering out the unwanted stuff in the feed
The rest of the story was also pretty ho-hum. Nothing to see thereThey're measuring human-computer input in gigabytes? Seems like the hardware would have a lot to do with that. A single user using a bit-intensive input device would be weighted disproportionately, wouldn't they? Couldn't they just count by input device? X keyboards, Y modems, Z neurocannular jacks?
It has the crappiest usability and the highest per-byte costs of any form of communication since Morse code telegraphy, but it's wildly popular. Amazing.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I think 94 percent will be mouse generated (e.g., the new "Hello, WordProcessor" document would have several KB of different font styles, markup, colors, and all that jazz (all mouse based), and only a couple of dozen bytes of text (via keyboard).
S
No sense looking beyond 2012. Everybody knows the world will end on 12/21/2012.
What percentage is that in megabytes? uhh...95% Doh!
A technology prediction that predicts that the radical changes in human interaction previously predicted won't happen overnight. Non-senationalist predictions of the future? Wow. Irony would be if there was suddenly a major breakthrough in speech recognition and he's wrong.
How about having a computer for a secretary? DARPA is funding a "enduring personalized cognitive assistant." The system will be able to "reason, use represented knowledge, learn from experience, accumulate knowledge, explain itself, accept direction, be aware of its own behavior and capabilities as well as respond in a robust manner to surprises."
Firstly, there is a certain tactile "feel" to writing on actual paper that would be very difficult to replicate - and if it feels too different, I suspect people won't adopt it.
Secondly, cost - could this be brought down to a price that would be economically feasible? If it's not as cheap as paper, it isn't gonna happen.
That's not to say that I wouldn't like to see it introduced; we could all have our workplace documents on those little pads, similar to theones in Star Trek, and I'm all for anything that will stop the slaughter of forests - I'm just highly pessmisitic. The author seems to be of a "more of the same" persuasion as well. Maybe someday, but I don't think we'll see it in the next ten years.
Illegitimi non Carborundum.
Consider plans for alot of gaming consoles (Sony is interested in Hive technology, for instance) to become integrated with your household. I can see your entire home being hardwired into a single pc, and you can just go room to room, turn on any tv/monitor, and play whatever games you own, watch any tv shows or movies, or surf the web. Can't see all this still operating with even advanced Mouse and Keyboard technology.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Well, I messed that post up. The computing cluster link may have been offtopic, anyhow, so I'll leave it out. But, you should visit MIT's media lab site, anyhow....
And, of course, there is the Washington States Human Interface Technology Laboratory. HIT Marks, heh...
The article (blurb) leads you to think everything will remain the same for input. But the thing is, input for desktops will remain the same (surprise, Inkwell or TabletPCs won't catch on) keyboard will not be the input method of choice for devices. These devices (PDA, refrigerators, iPods, etc.) will far, far outnumber the amount of desktop machines.
So, yes, old technology will stay the same. Shocker.
Let's break it down:
.. but will these new interfaces work with my flying car?
Trolling is a art,
By 2008, retinal imaging and augmented reality will become available in mobile devices (0.6 probability).
i've been on the mobile subway devices of NYC and D.C., and let me tell you... the reality there is extremely augmented. normally, i've found peak augmentation to occur around 4:20 in the afternoon for some reason.
I didn't see anything mentioning the bugeoning ubiquity of people reverting to the CLI. Somehow I'm not surprised.
'Human-computer interfaces will rapidly improve during the next decade. The wide availability of cheaper display technologies will be one of the most transformational events in the IT industry.' Not exactly a scoop, isn't?
More of one than you think.. I don't think he's talking about your monitor. In almost all consumer electronic devices, know what the most expensive component usually is? Yup, it's the display. Reduce the price of that, and all of a sudden, those consumer devices have a lot more to work with. More screens, better screens, enhanced power, cheaper price, etc... if we can reduce the cost of the display significantly, it can only mean good things for consumer electronics.
slashdot!=valid HTML
By 2012, the general mode of information supply of the 20th century--push--will be superseded by pull, where information is sent on demand or filtered by user profiles (0.6 probability).
could someone please translate this? i'm reading it to be email filters on steroids (or viagra perhaps?).
'Through 2012, more than 95 percent (by volume in gigabytes) of human-to-computer information input will remain keyboard- and mouse-based.'
By volume in gigabytes? Call me a contrarian, but I'll bet videocameras will exceed keyboard input by that standard. Wanna test that notion, Gartner? Point your text editor at a file, and I'll fire up my webcam recorder. Ready? GO!
...still no one is going to solve the carpal tunnel problem.
"As long as defiance continues, they can't claim victory." -Slashdot comment
Will be an antique, real humans will have passed the need/desire to interface with computers, the asteroid that smacks into Earth will kill off 95 percent of the population and the survivors will be brave enough to learn how to live with their environment, not run rough-shod over it. Sadly, no Slashdot readers will survive, being untra-dependant upon technology, they will fall by the wayside of human progress. Now if we could get a Beowolf cluster of asteroids...
Ahhh you gotta love those 16 page prophetic reports!
I was hoping that they would predict something useful like, "by 2012 you won't have to directly interact with that flippant paperclip in Word(tm) any longer!"
Cheers
Things will get more modular, kinda like the
handspring. People are slowly getting more tech
savvy. That will lend itself to people wanting
to upgrade their machines more easily. I can see
video cards, drives, memory, etc, all being in
cartridge format and snapped into your caselike
box thing from the outside with no need to open
anything up.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
And by the time the thread hits 300 responses, mods will be handing out "+1: Yeah, yeah, yeah" and "+1: All right, already"...
A probability of 1 means absolute certainty.
0.6 probability = 0.6 * 100 / 100 = 60 %
When I bought a Canon EOS-1 Camera and it could focus on different areas inside the viewing area, depending on where my eyes were trained.
The question is...how long before this technology makes its way into mainstream computers, or something like it.
Wouldn't it be nice to just look at the monitor, blink twice and have the folder open. Careful where you look though!
As scary and freaky a thought that this might be, I think microchip implants as a human/computer interface might have a promising future.
What are people's thoughts on this subject?
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
It won't be until 2013 that they go open source.
M$ Windows is perfect for toys that suck. For other things, however, you need an OS that will stay up no matter how much you f*ck with it.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
I predict that by 2012, most Computer-Human Interface research will be dedicated to answering one lingering question:
Abort, Retry, Ignore?
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
A doctor by the name of Noonian Soong with create an artifical life form.Complete with a positronic network, he will be virtually human....(except for the fact that he doesn't use contractions)
home of the original cupholder
Roland (the individual who submitted this story) summarizes the story in his own PERSONAL column, I mean 'weblog'.... Any takes on that? Perhaps somebody really really just wanted people to visit their site?
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
more than 95 percent (by volume in gigabytes) of human-to-computer information input will remain keyboard- and mouse-based
Is this even true today? I doubt it's true of my own work. I own a digital camera. I don't take many pictures; I'm not very photogenic. I figure I take about 50 pictures a month... let's call that one a day, to be conservative. 1600x1200x8, uncompressed (I use a raw format that sends 8-bit intensity data for each pixel, as each pixel in a digital camera is only one color), comes out to very close to 2MB per image. In a given day, I also spend about 8 hours sitting in front of my computer. I type at ~60 words per minute (never said I was fast), coming out to about 160kB/day. Now, I don't use my mouse too much, since it hurts my wrist. But even if it sends 4-byte updates 300 times a second when I'm not moving it at all, that comes out to 35MB a day... hardly a realistic number, but let's run with it. So my total keyboard/mouse input is 36MB a day, at an absurd maximum (I do stop for breath occasionally), while my non-keyboard/mouse input is 2MB/day, at a rather absurd minimum. And just with those numbers, I have (slightly) less than 95% of input being keyboard/mouse based.
I know a lot of people who take more pictures than me. One person taking 10 pictures a day is enough to offset 9 people who take none. A few people use speech recognition... that's relative high-bandwidth input. And I'm sure at least one person in ten thousand has a digital video camera...
So, does anyone think this 95% number is true even today?
--
I've had this sig for three days.
~Niels Bohr
Unfortunately, I can't vouchsafe the quote. John Perry Barlow circulated it a few years back and when I asked him where he found it, he couldn't remember. So perhaps if Bohr didn't say it, he should have.
Probability that the joke would have been funny if you told it: .001
Computers remain keyboard and mouse. No developments are made in neural mind-reading spoon interfaces. Could you imagine computing by voice to play Quake or work in the office? Neither can anyone else.
Chip makers will get a clue and start offering cooler chips. The refrigeration wars begin. By the end, all chips are cooled to below-freezing temperatures, and geeks are left stating, "It doesn't matter at all anymore."
The falling cost of immense broadband in Europe and Asia (but not the US) gives rise to a new spin on an old game - muds. Graphical muds (IE, EQ, DAoC) are able to be run by non-corps. The first few take immense skill and talent, causing people to say, "Woah." Soon, thanks to open source, it becomes impossible to find these original games among all the clones started by 14 year olds who thought the administrators of the originals were a bunch of nazis.
Speaking of graphics, NVidia is wiped off the face of the planet when their latest graphics card malfunctions and goes critical. Engineers fail to activate the safety coolant systems, and the card explodes in a glorious mushroom-shaped cloud of nuclear energy. And users of ATI will rejoice.
I have a slew of them better than these!!
"Computer screens will become ubiquitous"
Of course they will, we will be wearing them
on the bridge of our noses!
"Through 2012, more than 95 percent (by volume in gigabytes) of human-to-computer information input will remain keyboard- and mouse-based."
Duh! Mouse yes, keyboard NO NO NO!
Girl at bar:
"Why is you hand squirrling in your pocket so much?"
Geek:
"No, I am not playing pocket pool, I'm buying something from Amazon thank you very much!"
Girl:
Well if you can teach me to order that way
we could be friends for life:)
Geek
Time for school, nobody can finger a pad as well as I can!
Ok here is what it will be:
a) A brick on your belt the size of a pager with info that is required to be available at high speed. Basically the most important 10 gigs on your desktop.
b) Blue tooth to your monitor,i.e. eyeglasses which also house your ear phone and microphone.
c) Blue tooth to pointer, i.e. pocket touch pad in your pocket or a magic pen.
d) Wireless Internet connection for when it's avaialable. Same as, or in conjucntion with cell phone.
e)A fuel cell rechargable via a Blue Martini!
Geeze if it doesn't work at least you can drink it:)
Here is a new Law..."JPOG's LAW"!..."The number of keystrokes hammered onto a user's keyboard is inversely proportional to the clock cycles available and usable by the the user."
You got the touch!!
...and I'd like to die in a space bar.
As an esteemed predictionaire of sorts, with full
backing of the predictionationization society, here
are my predictions for the next decade:
#1 Algebra won't be hard someday
#2 Grass will mow itself
#3 The Aliens people have encountered will be
revealed to be the "geek" or "dork" aliens. The
Jock aliens stay back on marklar and get laid and
drink. They are much bigger and stronger.
#4 Trendy computer users will start doing
"case piercing" and the truly EXTREME will try
out hard drive piercings. They will be made of
steel at first, but aluminum will become the rage.
#5 Wireless wires will be invented to replace the
wired wires.
#6 The "tornado in a can" will become "the can"
in your bathroom. Flushing dead goldfish will
never be boring again.
#7 Top ten lists will transmogrifimorphicate into
top 7 lists.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
I really couldn't care less about those modes of input. Can you imagine everyone in the office talking to their computers at once? And it wouldn't really help that much for programming or data entry, the tasks that a lot of computers get used for. As for handwriting, my hand starts to hurt after about five minutes of writing stuff on paper, and i usually give up and open up Notepad. And that's not even considering that my handwriting sucks and would be about ten times as difficult to process as "normal" handwriting.
What this guy really isn't saying much about is direct optical feeds; ie, beaming visual information onto your retina, or inserting false visual signals higher upsteam in your nervous system, and direct mental input; either in the form of reading the synapses in your brain, or recording your motions as you type and guesture in the air.
That's the kind of technology that will cause a major shift in the way we use computers, and is so different from our current modes of interaction that you can't really extrapolate from here to there. I'm sure scientists during the 40s and 50s were predicting great advances in vacuum tubes (the science fiction authors certainly were at least) that never materialized, or at least that were never utilized, because of the development of the microchip.
I have no idea if those kinds of technologies will be fully developed in the next ten years or not, but i don't think this guy has any better of an idea than the rest of us.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
well, now i get to tap on my virtual keyboard with my beak, er pen!
By 2012 computer displays as we now know them (LCD, CRT) will have been relegated to inexpensive embedded systems. Bleeding edge office information devices will function by tracking the user's movements and speech, as well as manipulation of common objects in her work environment. They will serve the same purpose as graphical icons do today. The computer screen will have been subsumed into dynamic surface markings and other detectable changes in the objects in her environment. They will have reflective (as opposed to backlit) display surfaces where information can be encoded in textual, graphical, color, or texture attributes, and sometimes some degree of 3D physical configuration changes. These will range from writing surfaces that resemble paper, cards, packaging materials, and other document-like entities, to instrument or appliance control panels and communications devices. User interactions with these items can produce changes in both the displays and the underlying data repositories. Moving them, rearranging their relative locations, adjusting them, speaking into them, and other as yet unforeseeable user interactions will effect the state changes that embody the user's day to day tasks. Think of a cube with an environment of intelligent interactive devices that visibly and audibly change as work gets done. The devices themselves will also be communicating and interacting as needed.
I love it!
All prophets should use probabilities. That way, nobody can ever prove you wrong.
Say "The world will end on 1/11/2003 with probability 0.6" Suppose it doesn't end, so what? Someone's going to come back and say "Ha! It didn't end! The probability couldn't have ever been higher than 0.3!"
Suppose you say "Buy Acme Widget stock. It will go up 120% in the next 6 weeks, probability 0.8" People buy it. It goes up 120% in the next 6 weeks. They get rich. Are they going to come back and say, "Well, yeah, SURE, it did that, but you said the probability was 0.8 and it was really only 0.7"
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I liked this comment from the article:
"As for tablet PCs, Gartner believes individual consumers are more likely to adopt such technologies earlier, as fashion accessories. Enterprises as a whole will find that they are not yet robust enough for heavy daily usage in the corporate world"
Two thoughts sprang to my mind here,
1. yet windows is used in the corporate world
2. If these devices are consumer level they won't sell many at $1500 a pop.
I don't think Microsoft would agree with those statements! I have to disagree with their conclusions on these devices and I think that pen based input will be much more prevelant in the future as OCR improves.
*narf!*
One picture taken with a digital camera is the same amount of bytes as a year of typing.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I like looking forward to what will come in the future. This article was drab and boring. No Excitement. Too dry. YAWN
Everyone knows the future is more exciting then the presentSee the Pictures of the Flood of '08
After watching Minority Report, I liked the idea of using gestures to interface with your computer. However having to wave your hands around like that would get tiresome real quick. The most time consuming part of getting things done on a computer(aside from the software) is having to go back and forth between the mouse and keyboard. Even with keyboard shortcuts, it is unavoidable. I started thinking of other ways to use the same type of gesture interface but with your hands only. No keyboard, no mouse. Muscle movement memory is very efficient. It only takes a few repetative movements to get used to a static environment. Have you ever stuffed envelopes? You get pretty efficient in no time. The reason a keyboard and mouse is not like this(mostly the mouse) is because its position is always different. Your hand has to find it. A keyboard is much better because once you get used to the layout, your hands pretty much stay in the same place. So how does a gesture-based interface fit into this? What I envisioned was using only your fingers to do the gestures. To change tools, like from cursor movement to keyboard you could use finger movements or a combination of two fingers moving in a direction as a switch, or even lifting your hand higher. This interface would not require you to touch anything. Your hands could be anywhere and in any position. The hardware would monitor your finger and hand movements. You could be standing and resting your hands on your legs while doing it. Imagine your hands are resting on a hard surface and you are typing, there would have to be a tactile feedback like the little dots on f and j on most keyboards that tell you where you are at. Maybe a range of motion field gets established in relation to your hand positions at that time. Also the hardware would have to provide this tactile feedback like sleeves on your fingertips or gloves. Once the area is set it would be easy to get a feeling where the keys were. Tactile feedback to determine a key-click would be important. When you need to switch to a pointer, you make a gesture with your fingers or hand(s) and fingers. Or you determine a position above the set keyboard space that is the pointer. Like moving your index finger up 2 inches above the keyboard field and using it as a pointer. I know it wouldn't be as simple as that. It is just a starting point. I also can imagine if it were done correctly you could basically haul ass moving through windows, multi-tasking etc. The current issues are we have a set area for our keyboard and mouse. We leave that area, we lose our interface. People move around, we use laptops, we like to keep our interface setup consistent when we switch computers. The mouse is never exactly where we expect it to be and is too far away from the keyboard. The position of a keyboard and mouse on a table in front of us is not always the most ergonomic or comfortorable positions. Gesture interfaces are better because gestures are easier to remember. They can eliminate having a single area for an interface. They are more configurable. You can keep their configuration consistent for any computer you use. It is more comfortorable being able to put your hands anywhere and still be able to work. You could possibly customize the tactile feedback to suit your taste. Gestures can signify complicated tasks to be performed in an application.
Over the last several years, keyboard have taken many evolutionary steps. We've got ergo-keyboards, enhanced-keyboards, laser-projected-keyboards, etc.
We may very well still be using keyboard 10 years from now, but they'd probably differ at least a bit from the ones we use now.
We're not going to get rid of the old QWERTY (or for some odd few, the DVORAK) until perhaps we can plug into ourselves, or until that one-handed keyboard comes around.
Personally... I'd like to plug myself in, but viruses would really suck then.
I think they're a bit late with that one. For a while now I've been spending every day sitting in front of a computer display...
Oh, wait...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Display technology has vastly improved. I'm now just waiting for the price to come down on IBM's T221 LCD so I can have one on my desktop. We purchased one at my workplace and it just blew me away. It is the first display I have ever seen that can be reasonably compared to quality laser printing on paper for its rendering of sharp, crisp, readable text. 9.2 million pixels in the thing and NOT ONE OF THEM IS DEAD. Yep, none, nada, zilch.
As far as interaction goes though, I doubt we're going to see much improvement. Programmers do a terrible job of UI design and a lot of companies are just too cheap or ignorant to hire professional user interface designers or else provide in-depth training for whoever is doing the UI design regarding usability issues. Most companies are also too cheap to do real usability testing. They might test out the new UI on the guy three cubicles away, but he's hardly representative of your customers. Until that changes, human-computer interaction is not going to improve.
- Legacy data, apps, source code
- The trend for english to become the "standard" language world-wide
- Inertia
Keeping the post on-topic: the article said, basically, that things aren't going to change much. Which is really a non-news item. ASCII will be around, we'll be typing on qwerty keyboards, and clicking with mice.Nice way to plug your own blog there, with no extra content on it at all. A "column", yeah, right. Stroke your own ego dude.
Gartner's words sound like PHB (Pointy Haired Boss) fodder to me.
Here's a real predition: Integration of devices will result in the replacment of single-use items such as PC's, TV's, cell phones, PDA's with portable and fixed units that have multiple functions. Consumers will buy "multi-media consoles" capable of several functions, that are more flexible and cheaper than indivdual components. Wireless networking will be the standard communication method between devices given the cost of adding wiring to a house, and the flexibility of putting your console anywhere. As a result, the lines between media types will blur, as 'television' as we think of it now will cease to exist with the advent of services that allow you to watch programming at a press of a button rather than on a schedule. You will read, listen to music, and shop, all from the same console. Integration will make the price of a large console about the same as a current mid-range PC, so consumers will buy several units in a family setting. Portable units will allow you to take your shows/music/information with you, and allow you to still use all the features your big console has while within network service range.
Barriers to adoption of such integrated devices will come mostly from the companies that control the current media types as they will be concerned about losing their current revenue streams. The companies that successfully come up with new payment schemes that are both profitable to the company and palatable to the consumer will end up breaking the barriers until eventually getting to the point where you can subscribe to any service from your integrated console.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
The lame "push tech" of the internet past was, and still is, a complete failure because no one wants to view a constant stream of ads over their limited bandwidth. Pull is much more efficient for sipping content over a straw.
:) I think that shows that the ultimate goal is PULL, even on a TV.
You're forgetting, however, that the distribution of video over cable (with immense analog bandwidth) to a TV would qualify as "push" as well. TV is so immensely popular that the average american watches it almost as much as he sleeps! If you throw a TiVo or other set-top box, you've got push-content through a computer. The odd thing about this is that TiVo is designed to make a strictly push technology more pull like
Push's place is where technology isn't good enough to allow for pulls. This is the reason push of video content via analog or digital means will outpace pull for some time. After that time, I'll start watching TV again.
just how the hell did you get excellent karma when you're trolling this guy and don't know of better sci-fi flicks that have human-computer interfaces, than the matrix, much less know what HID stands for.
mod parent down to -1 (troll)
If this is all they can come up with for advances in the next 10 years... The computer world has really slowed down. How sad.
Look back at the last 10 years and compare it to what they are predicting...
Is this just a lack of imagination and forsight by Gartner or is the "computer revolution" over?
You got the power!
It's popular since it has lower per-message costs than phone call.
Makes me think of this poster from despair.com
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
If you would have read the article, you would have seen that Gartner used "Push" to refer to intelligent User Interface Technologies that try to "intelligently" anticipate what a user wants, and supply that. It would actually address some of the concerns you mentioned.
Read about how these patriots armed Saddam here
Thanks and have a weekend.
Interesting to think of how email may or may not evolve by 2012. This is offtopic, but this article made me think of that line from "dead poet's society" where When you think of why written language was able to take off as a medium - "to woo [men/women]".
The keyboard holds no small part in this endeavor.
Had it not been for the alphabet, our society may be communicating through paintings(?), songs(?). Imagine the prediction of the parallel universe - karaoke machines will still be around in the year 2012.;).
Ubiquitous.
Ubiquitous to the point that your very idea of "consumer electronic devices" is obsolete.
The existence of light emiting and electrically conductive liquid polymers that air cure is going to be completely transformative. Both display and electronic circuits are going to be printable on anything you can feed through your inkjet printer.
Think about that for a minute. *ANYTHING* you can get to feed through a printer ( or anything you can adapt a printer to print on) can be both a display and electronic circuit to provide driver and logic functions.
Think of all the things that are printed right now. Now think of all of them having "embeded" display and logic functions.
Like your paper placemat at the diner. And yes, they are even working on being able to provide *power*, self contained, in that paper placemat.
Your computer monitor will be pretty cool too. It could be nothing more than a sheet of 1/8" Lexan with the pixels printed on it. In fact, that same sheet of 1/8" Lexan could be your entire PDA or tablet PC if your data storage requirements aren't too great. Or on a sheet of polyethylene film you can fold up and put in your pocket.
All that will be pretty cool.
But it's the paper placemat thing that will be transformative. *Anything* can be a simple logic and display device. *Anything* can be a consumer electronic device.
Like Junkmail. Ready to get your free AOL *device*?
KFG
I was hoping we'd have a "Minority Report" like HID in the near future....crap...back to the old keyboard :(
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
Cheaper display technologies will surely shake up how we interact with our information, but I think that everyone is missing something very important.
Prognosticators have been chasing this dream of a paperless office for decades now, with very little realization. Indeed, some researchers have indicated that we like paper because it lends itself to spatial organization of information -- you're likely to remember where you left a paper document even long after you've last used it.
With cheap displays, we can make small, portable displays -- sort of like Microsoft's failed eBooks, but you get to view whatever information you want, whether from your own library or on the net.
And get this -- these would be cheap enough that you could have a small collection and sit down at your desk and leverage your brain's built-in spatial organization strengths. And when you don't need that information anymore, just call something else up.
Many people use multiple monitors. This would be like multiple monitors that you can stack, reorganize or just toss into your outbox.
I don't know if the designers of Star Trek:TNG had this sort of thing in mind, but in that series and every one since then, you'll see characters sitting at a desk surrounded by a mess of these little things.
Interface design, speech and handwriting recognition, sure. But just being able to move data around in real space is going to be very comfortable for us.
Can you imagine coding with anything other than a keyboard? If anything this prediction assumes that you won't have to learn a completely different paradigm of input in the next 10 years.
I predict that from 2003 to 2012 computers will become faster and more powerful than our current ones....power consumption will be lowered....more people will be using pda's....
(0.8 Probability - based on 100% variable theories)
Ave Molech Setting
That's not push in any commonly-used sense of the word. If that's push, then Google is a push service.
And "push" has already been tried in that sense, and people don't like it.
There was a thread here a few days ago about how PVRs were "anticipating people's choices", based on their previous viewing habits. The general consensus was that people don't like having their habits monitored, and other crap pushed on them.
Just like people don't like spyware, linkware, etc.
What most users want is freedom of choice, and to be secure. Their "intelligent" anticipation of what you watch/read/see/hear is too bib-brotherish.
The future of computer interfaces
provided by Gartner
Human computer interfaces will not get worse during the next decade. In fact, they will get better. This is really important, so listen up.
Development will be slow, so not much will happen at first, but later on something will come out and you'll be like "whoa!" Something cool might happen really soon with displays because I read in PC magazine something about Tablet PCs, which seem kinda new. And we saw an article in Popular Science about new OLED screens which seem pretty good, so we'll probably see those for sale some time far in the future. But you can already buy the Tablet PCs, so those will probably catch on sooner, we think.
Analysis
More and more people use computers, so we think that probably this will continue for a while. Because computers need displays, we feel that as we get more computers, we'll probably get more displays too. That means they'll become ubiquitous, like McDonalds.
Products will also not get worse, but better! That means they will be cheaper, easier to use and more powerful. This may come as a suprise, but it's true! In particular, we're pretty sure computers will advance on the following fronts:
Prediction
More computers! More screens! Crazy research like OLED and Speech Recognition may or may not be big time in 2020, but for now they are a niche.
Also, we noticed that most people still use CRTs, but more and more people use LCDs 'cause they're better. Probably this will be true when the OLEDs come out too, 'cause they're even better.
All that crap about digital ink and flexible paper? And those little eye screens like the borg have? Those will probably happen sometime by 2012, when no one will remember this article and we'll be off the hook.
Prediction
Remember that thing about advanced interface metaphors we talked about? Well we thought of some:
Thus endeth the suggestions and analysis of Gartner group. Printed versions of this document with pretty charts for power point presentations are available for $299.
Furthermore, I'm sure there will be plenty of Microsoft "Innovation" to improve the quality of our lives.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
The voice recognition software we have today, will never catch on in the workplace, unless everyone is given their own private office. Cubicles won't cut it.
/. if you are at work "working"?
How are you supposed to dictate a message to
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Input interfaces will enable computers to sense their environment and the identity of their users, and personalize interactions appropriately.
PC: Dave, I feel so cold. Did you let the windows open?
Dave: Ohhh... poor boy... here, I will get a blanket for you.
PC: Dave, no... do like you did last time, overclock my AMD...
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Unicode is backwards-compatible with ASCII, so the legacy/source code argument is irrelevant. There are already compilers available (such as Vector Pascal) that interpret Greek, Cyrillic, Katakana and Hiragana. Heck, by 2012 I want to be able to code in Klingon!
I hate Grammar Nazi's
Make that: Klingon!
Wow....
I hate Grammar Nazi's
Umm... MP3's? Video Recorders? Cameras? -C
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
So no direct interfaces with my brain for a while. That just sucks. I mean... I know I can type faster than I can talk, but think of how much I could do if I could move my mouse with but a thought! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Wait... on second thought, maybe the Internet doesn't need to be exposed to my every thought. ^_^
It would still be awesome, though.
..but my computer would still be slow.
~The Incredible Xan~
"Saying that men can't be lesbians is gender discrimination."
This is a little article I wrote a while ago called "Can We Improve Computer-to-Human Bandwidth?" which I haven't done anything with...so I might as well post it here:
--------------- begin article --------------
I bet I can guess something about you: right now you are reading something on your computer screen. The text is displayed on a display set near eye level, probably in black text on a white background, or white text on a black background. You read all the text that is visible on your screen, then you press a key or click a mouse button to scroll down to see more text.
Was I right?
Since the early days of computing, fifty years ago, that is the way data has been transmitted from computers to people. The improvements have been quite modest, involving sharper displays, more readable fonts, better choice of foreground and background colors, and so on.
In the same time period, there have been many attempts to improve how data flows the other way, from people to computers. Different keyboards layouts have been designed. Voice recognition may be just around the corner. The mouse has changed how data is input, possibly not speeding it up for power users, but enabling a whole new class of users to communicate with a computer at all.
Data flow in the other direction has remained the same, an exact simulation of reading text on a printed page. Yet computers are much more powerful than a printed page. Is it time to take advantage of this? How could this be done?
Certainly the real limit on how fast people can read is how fast they can process the underlying information. But some part of a reader's brain is occupied with deciphering the text on the screen. For some dense texts that percentage will be trivial, but for many others it won't be, so the question becomes how much of that can be removed, getting people closer to their theoretical limit.
One change that already exists is to have computers read the text out loud. Unfortunately, while most people can speak much faster than they can type (or write), it is doubtful that most people can listen faster than they can read. One reason is that spoken language, with its elided sounds and lack of spelling, is less informationally dense than written language. Thus it is faster for a person to speak than to spell, but slower for he or she to listen than to read. While computer reading is a boon for people with certain disabilities, it does not speed up how fast data flows from computer to person.
A more radical idea would be to reconsider why the text stays still and the user's eyes move. Why not scroll the text so the eyes can stay still? Of course the computer would have to adjust the scroll rate for different users. Since your hands aren't doing much of anything when you are reading, so I could imagine reading text that was scrolling by with one hand on the mouse, with the left button slowing down the scroll rate and the right button speeding it up.
What about changing how the text itself is displayed? It's risky to get too far away from this because everyone has a lifetime of training in reading printed text in books. Still you can speculate. What if different parts of speech were color-coded on the fly, or displayed in different fronts, or in a slightly different location on the line? What if the computer compressed certain words as they appeared (such as compressing George W Bush to GWB - the reverse of a trick that writers use: typing frequently-used phrases in shorthand, then going back and replace them later, or letting Word's auto-correct feature do it for them). This may be disconcerting at first, but it may turn out that with practice, this can improve the transmission speed for people who need to quickly digest a lot of information coming at them from their computer.
Moving beyond text, consider the fact that a sign language translator can keep up with spoken language, and is also limited in speed by the need to move hands and arms around. One of the advantages of sign language is that location within space can be used to convey information; for example a room can be laid out visually and then movement within that room conveyed by changing where the signs are shown. Could computers use a similar trick on the screen to speed up how fast information is displayed? It could be a lot of work to learn how to interpret this, just as learning sign language is a lot of work, but the payoff could be worth it.
The main thing is to get out of the mindset that static text on a screen is necessarily the best way to present information. Once that assumption is shattered, interesting ideas should follow.
---------------- end article ---------------
- adam
Through 2012, more than 95 percent (by volume in gigabytes) of human-to-computer information input will remain keyboard- and mouse-based. (0.6 probability)
60% probability? Are you nuts? How about 100%? I can consistently and constantly type at 100 words per minute, but I certainly wouldn't want to talk that fast. I doubt I could, and even if so, it would hurt my throat after a while.
Writing pads are nice, but again, I can -- and most other people -- can type alot faster than they can write.
Other forms of inputting data into computers will remain niche at best. Voice recognition will be used to quickly convert professor's lectures into documents, and hand-writing recognition will be used to convert hand-written notes into documents.
However, no one will be writing 10-page papers by hand or speaking them. Could you imagine it?
"While I was, umm, 6x backslash, going to the park and um, 8x backslash, I saw a..."
In short, its not going to happen. Outside of planned presentations, people speak in a manner which is specifically for dialogue and which does not make much sense on paper, except in a dialogue.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
By 2012, the proliferation of LCD screens and the introduction of alternatives, such as LEP technology, OLEDs, electronic ink, and many other novel approaches, will almost completely end CRT-based screen production (0.6 probability).
I find it interesting that he predicts the death of CRT screens so far away. I see that as happening right now.
A lot of what he said is farther down the road, unfortunately due to patents and companies fighting with each other over this and that many technologies will not come about and others will be far too expensive. As much as I'd like all this great new technology to get here in the next decade, it won't. Just look at all our currently promising technology. It is unbelievable how much the companies try and squeeze out of their "patented" products. Patents are the worst idea to progress ever. Do some research. I don't want to hear from you if haven't done atleast a few hours of reading on the subject of patents.
Question everything.
Of course, touchscreens by that time will be supplied with accurate handwriting recognition algorithms, which already exist, but still not that accurate and not so popular (touchscreens will help to popularize handwriting recognition).
Personally I'd like to have touchscreen at my home computers, but not for that price. Besides, I work in Linux and I did not find any working implementation of handwriting recognition for Linux. Any help with links?
Less is more !
Back in the '80s I wrote a program that changed the tokens for a BASIC compiler into french after the compiler was loaded into memory. You could code in french, and the compiler didn't know the difference. Bonus - when saved, the program reverted to english. So, what happend? The french chose to continue programming in english instead! :-)
From reading your post, it came to me that a good addition to scroll bars might be the ability to assign a constant "scrooling speed" that you could start off, and read as it went along, and pause or resume when you liked.
I know from watching computer logs and other text scroll past on a screen that you can make sense of a LOT of information scrolling past very quickly.
It would be interesting to see how annoying it would be to have a browser start scrolling automatically as soon as a page was loaded, or if it would be of use...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While I expect the direct use of the CLI to remain constant, with Linux and OS X on the rise I expect GUI/CLI hybrid applications to continue to grow. Combine the power of the CLI with the flexibility of the GUI and you get the best of both worlds. I would expect many, many OS X users to be using CLI tools without even realizing it. Have a look at VersionTracker and you'll see more and more recent OS X shareware releases have been like this.
When Barlow first sent the quote out, I googled and altavista'd the quote and came up empty-handed. I really wanted to use it as a sig. Now the quote is everywhere and yet nowhere. The best citation I've found is in a paper on variablity analysis. The author found attributions to Bohr via Barlow, Yogi Berra and Mark Twain. The author cites some suspect reference counts. I say suspect because when I attempted googling Mark Twain sans Bohr, I came up with much smaller counts. In fact, I even found a site that attributes the quote to a Chinese proverb.
What's even more interesting is that the quote morphs not only in who said it but what they said. For example, searching for "prediction is difficult" and "prediction is very difficult" pops different result sets.
Even odder thing about the quote is its impact varies with attribution. Tack on Niels Bohr as the source and it acquires an appeal accorded to quantum mechanics and those who suss it. Change the source to Yogi Berra and the quote feels very much as something he would have said. A sort of "man in the street" feel. Put Mark Twain on the quote and it's classic American humor. Make it a Chinese proverb and it feels ancient.
It's a great quote but I do wonder who said it first.
I think the mouse prediction is wrong. I really think everything will be a combination of touchscreen, voice, and gestures, much like we saw in "Minority Report." We will also begin to see sign-language interpreter software as realtime image recognition becomes mainstream, leading to better accessibility for the handicapped. Finally, we'll also begin to see voice recognition that works in other important business cultures such as Chinese and Japanese.
Oh, I also think there will be a move to 300-600dpi displays once inkjet polymer displays become manufacturable. Graphics controller technology will slow down eventually, but consider that a Radeon 9700 Pro could already drive a 20"x20"x300dpi @ 50Hz display given its 1.7GP single-texture fill rate...
Finally, look for better feedback from displays. For example, interactive items in a particular area of a display might highlight based on the general area you are staring at.
The Klingon alphabet was disapproved for inclusion in Unicode in may 2001.
Stumbling in the dark
I hear slavering of jaws
Eaten by a grue.
Will be a Dvorak once some older geeks begin to feel the woes of repetitive stress and post to advocacy list serves all over the world
Gartner, as usual, has no clue. 95% of input via keyboard? No way! Even today, I would guess that most human-to-computer input is done via camera and microphone, when you look just at the number of bytes. How many gigabytes can the average programmer input per year? And how many gigabytes can a webcam generate in a year?
This is especially true now that Hollywood is starting to switch over to digital filmmaking.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
What if I want to swap a symbolic link with the primary inode? What if I want to inherit many custom-defined attributes? What if I want a multiple inheritance - several equal parent folders, not just a parent with second-class s-links?
I agree with the prediction about taxonomies and knowledge maps.
Less is more !
well thanks for putting a damper on my weekend ;D
I hate Grammar Nazi's
The Klingon alphabet was disapproved [unicode.org] for inclusion in Unicode in may 2001.
[voice="Shanter"]
Why? Damn them! Why, Spock, whyyyy?
[/voice]
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
lol!
There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up. --Rex Stout It is utterly implausible that a mathematical formula should make the future known to us, and those who think it can would once have believed in witchcraft. --Betrand de Jouvenel, The Art of Conjectur Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. --Aaron Levenstein So, these probabilities that this guy is giving are complete bullshit. He is using statistics that he made up.
Is there any place (or places) anywhere on the web that can answer the following questions:
:})||
1. Is there study that can give us a sense of what percentage of computer programming/development/engineering is being done where? That would help answer a question like are there more web programmers than, say, telecomm. developers, or say, military avionics developers.
2. Expand or modify the above question to show what the #s are for languages, environments, IDES, and OSes, from a developer's point of view.
Just curious. There is so much propaganda that it is really hard to see the real picture. thanks,
"Someday, the words "Christian", "Moslem", "Jewish", "Hindu", and "Buddhist" will be used the same way that today's Christians use the word "pagan."
I was reading recently that in terms of cost per megabyte, SMS is charged at 700 UKP and 3G networks will charge only 3 UKP. The markup is incredible.
Gives a new definition to a non-tech downloading some brownware after seeing an estimate.
Go ahead, mod me down....it's been a long day.
In Soviet Russia, future predicts You!
I should've posted anonymously...
I guess we should be thankful he used punctuation.
I predict that 99% of predictions will be made by other organizations than Gartner by 2013. (0.7 probability.) Gartner's worth will have been reduced to 0.01% (by volume in $1000's of USD) because no one will be interested in their stupid attempts at reading the tea (maybe pot) leaves.
well-weighted, machined edge, free-spinning, finger-friendly, LED illuminated, multi-purpose jogwheels.
... I want something I can give a spin, have it keep going for a while, and have it stop (within reason) only when I drop my fingers again to arrest the spin.
:)
...
The Griffin powermate is a cool-looking device (I just ordered one, have not yet had a chance to play with it), and I hope will meet that description pretty well -- I am curious (and pessimistic, but willing to wait) about its free-spinny-ness
I'd prefer a spinning jog wheel to a mouse wheel for the same things that mouse wheels are used for right now.
More importantly, I'd like a jogwheel for both playing and editing sound and video. In Mplayer, for instance, rather than the arrow keys + space bar (though those are fine), I'd rather be able to tap a jogwheel for pause / play, roll it forward for fast motion, roll it backwards for backwards fast motion, etc.
I'd like the GIMP to be jog-wheel improved, too, so any operations which have a slider could be activated by the jogwheel instead.
Multiple reconfigurable jogwheels would make video editing more fun, too -- say, one for standard audio track volume, one for added voice over or music track, one for moving around in the video stream itself. (For which a real video mixing board would be nice too, but less useful for other things).
Another example of using several jogwheels might be this (and I'm thinking of the way the powermate works, as I understand it -- there's the wheel itself of course, and a single "button" which is to say that the whole assembly acts like a mouse button when pressed down):
In Mozilla, have a triplet set up for
1) scroll up / down current page; button might
2) sroll sideways through all open tabs
3) open and scroll down the bookmarks file
Idea: For all these things, a small and bright LCD display on the base of the wheel would be cool, so it's easy to keep track of its current function.
Also, playing breakout-style games with a mouse is just lame" Think jogwheel = atari paddle
Are there any truly suprelative jogwheels I should know about? A few old video games had good ones, but I don't remember their names
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Here in Denmark the quote is usually attributed to Robert Storm Petersen.
On the other hand this page (in danish) says that it originated in a danish parliamentary debate of the period 1935-39. This is according to the memoirs of the politician K.K. Steincke. He doesn't remember who said it though. (Basic political instinct, I suppose.) It has also been attributed to Markus M. Ronner (whoever that is)
Niels Bohr was apparently the first dane to bring the expression abroad, and hence he has recieved credit.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Some of the most exciting new interfaces come from music.
New interfaces in Musical Expression will be in Montreal this year.
Check it out at http://www.nime.org
Rob
So where are the Star Trek terminals? What's the instruction cycle length on those suckers? How come they don't have to reboot their computers every 10us? Damn TV technology: 99% bullshit, 1% interesting concepts.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Do they charge for using your computers new (because soon they will all have them ...) Infra Red port and and infra-red light emiting diode (maybe the one inside the port?) positioned near you eye so that they may watch your retina disappear and reapper because you are morse code blinking your computer.
Or will they also charge for data transfer (even of the AlternatingCurrent 60/Hz [usually] no data variety)?
I fear they will also want to charge me for me using my neural system (It's my body, why do I have to pay you to live in it?).
Mrawarrgh
I seem to remember reading predictions in PC Mag in 1995, that by 2005 we'd still have the mouse and keyboard, but would be mostly communicate by voice speaking in a natural voice, the computers would be smart, with "smart agents" doing a lot of the work for us, that we would all login with fingerprints or retinal scans... we're no where on our way to being there by 2005, computers are a lot faster, but finger print and retinal scans don't seem to be that popular, and "smart agents" turned out to be not so smart.. anyways, at least this article gets the "mostly by keyboard and mouse" part right.
Here's another interface idea: learn how to indent paragraphs. I mean, Jesus, it's easier to read something written by Taco.
You can't tell me that there is no originality and creativity forecast! Please... I can't see the mouse lasting another 15 years, with another technology emerging somewhere in between. There will be mice and keyboards, but they will NOT be the primary mode of entry. Anyone that thinks otherwise probably feels that 640K and a 8088 are kewl.
I can consistently and constantly type at 100 words per minute, but I certainly wouldn't want to talk that fast.
So there's your motivation to perfect a voice input system: it'll cut down on the sheer quantity of dh003i's ignorant ramblings. Christ, dh003i, if Slashdot kept track of the number of bytes posted by each user, you'd be at the top of the list for sure.
2003! GNU reverses 25yr. de-evolutionary GUI trend by re-examining 50yr. old computer interface concepts.
The 3D walking talking paperclip never manifests itself.
Humankind once again has a chance at evolution and preserving the planet.
I'd have to say that the current human-computer data interaction leaders "in volume by gigabytes" are video and audio based and I don't see that changing. This is because no matter how much I type and click over the week it can't touch a single 12 meg photo transferred from my camera.
It's just a stupid benchmark, is what i'm saying. If I invent a program which fills my hard drive with the letter Q when I hum softly, it wins over keyboard input.
Better might be an analysis by some scale which took into account the focus of the tool. If I spoke this to Dragon rather than typing, it would have taken me half the time for the same number of bytes. Which would let me have more time to surf porn with the left handed mouse. The dictator was much more useful than the mouse, but the latter is "doing more work."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
"Through 2012, more than 95 percent (by volume in gigabytes) of human-to-computer information input will remain keyboard- and mouse-based."
I wonder whether the author was aware that the usual keybord use is probably well below 120 words/minute. Let's say they type 4 char's a second. That's 4 bytes/s.
By just trying to speak to your computer your soundcard is probably sampling it at 44.1KHz, 16-bits mono, even that it might later downsample it to something like 8KHz to make it manageble and more in line with what the software think is needed to recognize what you say.
Still, one second of human speech would become ~88KB/s. That's roughly 22.000 times (!) as much data in a second than the average user can input while typing.
Am I the only one that see this "prediction" as either "one in 88.000 people will ever speak to their computers" (goddamit machine from hell may you and Micros~1 go the same way when I run you over!) or "Basically, any other input has been so flawed that it won't count"? But one single users voice input would be equal to the input amount of 88.000 ordinary users pounding their keyboards.
Just to toss som more fuel under the fire, how many times a second do you think your joystick is polled if you play a game supporting a joystick? How much data do you think that is giving your computer as input...
You will note that the article said 'methods of information suppy.' Last time I checked, information is supplied in many more ways than through a computer. If you stop and think, you will realize that, through the course of the 20th century, the amount of info delivered through a computer, whether push, pull, or other, is trivial compared to the mainstream push methods; newspapers, magazines, billboards, sports announcers, etc.
Joe
Computer screens will become ubiquitous in the everyday environment
Telescreens anyone?
-- Wibble
"hearing the text of his or her e-mail read aloud while riding in a car"
This is just what I need, as if road rage isn't already a problem...
[sys] enlarge you penis now! this new medicine will..
[me] DELETE!
[sys] lose 100 lbs in 5 days!
[me] DELETE!!!
[sys] hot and sexy webcam sluts want your..
[me] DELETE!
[sys] mr. obertoneryan wants you to help him get his money out of africa...
[me] OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
Of course it is popular... per-byte cost doesn't figure into this; no consumer will give a crap about an outrageous per-byte cost. What the consumer buys with his money is convenience.
Think of it: SMS offers a few key advantages:
- Send and receive anywhere: What other form of simple technology allows messaging from almost anywhere? (And in this case: simple means just that, my great-grandmother should be able to use it. She can use SMS and cellphones, she cannot use a laptop and 802.11 and read war chalk or whatever)
- A low to zero initial cost to use this service. Most people already have cell phones, SMS comes as an extra service that you can use straight away without any extra charges (besides the cost of the messages themselves)
- Can be used unobtrusively: Very few other forms of messaging can be used without disturbing others, including voice calls on cell phones or usig a laptop with wireless data. Think about it: what other form of communication would you use comfortably in a theatre or classroom?
- Low cost. Oh yes, the cost of an SMS is often less than a phone call, especially fwhen you want to convey simple message's like "Honey I'll be home by 6"
When you think of it, the popularity of SMS messages despite the crappy interface, isn't all that surprising.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/ Be very afraid.
Your joke would be called nekulturni. This is tasteless.
...and IN SOVIET RUSSIA, beowulf clusters imagine 1, 2, 3 profit!!!! jokes made out of YOU!!!
The third page of the article mentions several new areas of human-computer interaction that are likely to become very important drivers of business success for software companies in the coming decade, such as taxonomies, knowledge maps, and active alerts based on pulling information related to user preferences.
Right now there is no standard for any of these areas. There are no expectations on the marketplace for the look & feel. There is nothing to copy from the world of Unix or from the Mac or from Parc or from Windows. This new field is totally wide open.
Will the free software community step up and demonstrate creative leadership in humane, truly empowering, open approaches to these new UI opportunities? Or, since it's not a chance to either bash Microsoft or promote Linux, will the free software world sigh, yawn, scratch its collective butt and then complain ten years later that corporations are controlling the world's access to these crucial software technologies?
If I had any mod points, I'd give'em to you.
Companies not caring about the usability of their products is a problem that will not be solved no matter how many new technological advances are thrown at it. While open source/free software allows people who give a damn to make changes, the people who are currently doing open source/free software are just as apathetic towards usability as most companies.
It's not a tech problem; it's a people problem, and those are always a lot harder to solve.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I was quite disappointed by this article -- I don't know if ZDNet is providing the whole thing, but overall it was very short. It also missed one of the main development areas that I think is important, which is a whole lot more ubiquitous computing.
The article doesn't really predict anything except the continuation of the same old stuff that's already happening. "Computer screens will become more convenient." This is hardly a big surprise. Neither is the amazing prediction that speech synthesis will be used more as it gets better. These things are boring -- they're essentially saying that what we already have will get better. Well duh!
On the other hand, there aren't any interesting predictions because they're all already obvious. What about clothes that sense how dirty they are and indicate to a washing device how [much] to wash them? For that matter, what about clothes that adapt to downloaded designs and properties so a user doesn't have to buy new ones to look different? What about intelligent feedback audio systems that aren't speech related? What about intelligently using vibrations and other kinetic methods to indicate information so people's eyes aren't distracted?
These are just off the top of my head, and they're the sorts of things that everyone can't come up with easily. For one thing, they actually require some genuine investigation and research to predict, if they can be predicted at all. A few decades ago, a computer was a building sized juggernaut -- almost nobody predicted that they would be on desktops and in everyday devices. That would have been an interesting prediction.
I think e-ink and flexible displays could take off if the readibility improves to that of paper. The sharpness and contrast of ink-on-paper is extremely difficult to beat. Look at a LCD or monitor close enough, and you can distinguish the individual pixels (the limit on font resolution). The pixelization of a curve comprising a parenthesis can easily be seen.
Now try looking at a printed page: you can't see the dots comprising the individual letters. S's curve smoothly, etc.
Now, hold up a white piece of paper and compare it to the white slashdot background. Quite a difference, eh? Even the black from computer displays seems more "shiny" than the black ink on paper (maybe just the glare =) ).
>> or until that one-handed keyboard comes around.
One handed keyboards (both left and right handed) were developed by Dvorak and some other guy a while ago. They are also *the* standard for disabled one-handed typists. In fact, if your a windows user, you can change your keyboard layout to the left or right handed layout without adding additional software.
See This website for more info
you could also try google for more links and, perhaps, a better typing tutor
good stuff
Here is a prediction of a real change, with serious money making opportunities for businesses that get the timing right.
Various technologies are evolving that will significantly improve interaction between humans and computers
I'm more interested in improving human-human interaction. That "unused social capital" bit really peaked my interest.
I see it as sort of a counter-balance for the big city life.
One of the many things I don't get is why everyone wants to ditch CRT in favour of LCD.
Sure, the footprint is smaller (I guess my 19" CRT would look a bit odd attached to a laptop by a hinge). But, in terms of viewing experience, no LCD screen I have used gets close to a halfway decent CRT. The pixels are too discrete, the viewing angle is too narrow and they aren't as bright.
Admittedly the ones I have seen are mainly entry level (ie only twice as expensive as my CRT) so maybe the ones that cost more than my house are better.
Does anyone out there like looking at LCD displays, as opposed to the trendy box they come in?
Virtually serving coffee
I know there were others, but that's definitely the game I had in mind.
... those controls are better than the controls on the terrible remote control for my television (and most consumer electronics' remotes), but that's not high praise.
Had no idea there was so much info regarding jogwheels / spinners out there.
And I think I may be misusing terminology anyhow; some people have insisted to me that the silly controls which snap back to a given center point also jogwheels, which seems wrong to me
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
If you're crossing the nation in a covered wagon, it's better to have four
strong oxen than 100 chickens. Chickens are OK but we can't make them work
together yet.
-- Ross Bott, Pyramid U.S., on multiprocessors at AUUGM '89.
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