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Thirty Years in Computing
Jacob writes "Jacob Nielsen, usability guru, writes about the last 30 years of computing and his predictions of the next 30 years of computing. An interesting read. quote: 'Computer games in 2034 are likely to offer simulated worlds and interactive storytelling that's more engaging than linear presentations such as those in most movies today.'"
Computer games in 2034 are likely to offer simulated worlds and interactive storytelling that's more engaging than linear presentations such as those in most movies today
Uh, don't computer games now have simulated worlds and interactive storytelling? Morrowind anyone?
I agree with someone else's post. A computer won't be a box with a monitor, etc..
It will prolly be like a PDA that has periphs you can plug in and just have everything virtual.
I mean, 30 YEARS! Considering the exponential advance in technology, all we'd have to do is find a new battery model (nanotech i'm sure) and voila.
I'm gonna be in my rocking chair playing final fantasy XX i'm sure.
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I think there will be a backlash against technology. We will hit a critical point in our social evolution where we say "enough!" How much of a backlash, I know not.
At least I hope there is a backlash. Too much, too invasive, too quick.
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I predict they will have a hat or helmet type of device that somehow can link up with your brain to transport you in to the game, giving you the ability to touch, smell, see, and BE inside the game as if it were an alternate reality. Games will no longer have 'controls,' as your mind will be the ultimate gaming device in the future.
I think we have a better shot of getting an "out of the box" original thought from an episode of Star Trek then some of these guys. Though in thirty years it will be cute to hear "My wristwatch has more computing power then the fastest computer in the year 2004." Considering I remember my teacher saying that in 1995; comparing his wrist watch to the ENIAC :)
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One thing the gameing industry needs is a shared content license similar to how open source is set up. If someone spends 6 months makeing a detailed land scape for level 14 of a game and it turns out the everyone blows through level 14 in just a couple of minutes is level 14 worth those 6 months?
Not really, but if that level was "Open Source" sort of speak, it would then be able to be modified, with modifications going back to the original, and used in the next game. With several improvments over time that section would eventually become a great peice of colabirated art.
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None of these predictions were wrong per say. Rather, the author failed to connect the dots and follow the the most likely path of games. Why have an arcade machine with 15 control sets when you can simply hook machines together over long distances? Why have a chess board with an antenna when you can play the same thing on your super-realistic, Hi-Res, 3D screen?
The future of computer technology has always been known. It's simply been a matter of developing the power to do it. The only failure of the visionaries was in their lack of understanding market conditions and forces. They thought of each technology in a vacuum and didn't put them together as actually happened.
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Certainly, our personal computer will remember anything we've ever seen or done online. A complete HDTV record of every waking hour of your life will consume 2 percent of your hard disk.
Doesn't it already do this, its called history. I see that he is saying it will screen capture all of it, but why? This article doesn't really predict anything but just states the obvious. Yes, we will have faster processors and more hard drive space, bigger screens, higher resolutions, amazing predictions! But I want to know when my computer will talk to my car and refrigerator and let me know when I'm driving to the grocery store that my son (future son) just drank the last of the milk.
We're already there. Cell phones, PDA's, and handheld game consoles (Nokia N-Gage, anyone?) are already blurring the line between what is and isn't a computer.
What I think will be interesting to watch is how software also starts evolving from apps with a narrow focus (think along the lines of early 90's WordPerfect) to apps which try to do pretty much everything - perhaps a bad example, but MS Word already allows table and cell editing similar to Excel, graphics manipulation, and desktop publishing.
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I started using computers about the same time Neilsen did (only 28 years ago for me :). One of the trends that keeps rearing its ugly head is the return to centralized computers. Nowadays they call them "Application Service Providers", or similar euphemisms, but every time I hear another story about how Oracle or IBM or some company like that is going to "simplify application management" by running some big application from a central server with remote PC clients, I cringe; I flash back to mainframes with green-screen CRT's and wonder why anybody would ever willingly go back to that sort of model. Individual PCs may be harder to deal with for non-technical users, but those with the skills to do their own software installation will always be better off when they don't have to rely on the Man Behind The Curtain to keep things working.
Have you read my blog lately?
What I'd like to know is when... computers will have the same level of consciousness as we do.
At that point, they will be empowered to invent and innovate creatively without the biological encumbrances we have. Imagine a human-like mind that can, while thinking, remember every fact with equal clarity. And imagine the scope of that knowledge base to include all discovered facts. Every theoretical mathematical conjecture could be instantly evaluated and computed (no more tedious sessions working with Mathematica). Sci-fi writer Vernor Vinge has stated that this point in history will be so revolutionary that we are entirely incapable of seeing what lies after it -- a horizon "singularity".
and where does bio-tech technology fall in all of this. Foret about only hardware driven machines. How will they interact with our bodies in 30 years. Just a thought. 30 years is a long time.
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I predict that in 30 years, what is and isn't a computer will be hard to distinguish.
Conversely, movies and other linear entertainment will be utterly recognizeable. There will always be a place for good stories, and it's very hard to 'write' a good story on the fly and interactively. It starts to look too much like the tangled yarn that is life.
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I knew that it could feel good to use computers, and I wanted to recapture that sense of empowerment and put humans back in control of the machines.
While I applaud anyone who is willing to attempt to predict "30 years in computing" and like everyone, can not say he or she is wrong (after all, it has not happened) I have to say that this is a useless article from Mr. Nielsen. In the same couple of paragraphs that he is talking about his dislike of the mainframe and his pleaant experience with the desktop machine, he tells us his *feelings* on why the computer has to feel "good" to use. Not only is this a non-empirical argument but it is Circular/pretzel logic as well.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Nielsen may be a fine usability expert but as a futurist and visionary he is lacking in the imagination department. I strongly recommend the Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson for an inspired read of what computing may be like many years from now.
I agree, I seriously doubt in 30 years my computer will be the desktop box on my desk it is today. Nielson comments on the physical change from 30 years ago to today in his article but says nothing about how he predicticts it might change 30 years from now. Who knows, perhaps our "displays" will be direct nueral implants into the optical nerve. WOuldnt that be cool :-).
-Aaron
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Of all the futurist sci-fi authors out there, the best and (in my opinion) most realistic rendition of future societies is given in Peter F. Hamilton's Reality Disfunction series.
Note: Think away the energy manipulating poltergeist possession thing to get my point.
Human society divides along two lines, Adamists and Edenists. Adamists embrace nanotechnology and information technology. Edenists embrace biotechnology. While the division isn't that plausable, most of the tech described from the Adamist side of things is a real possibilty in the distant future. We're allready seeing the beginings of it.
My predictions:
1.) Augmented Reality will be the killer app that moves the personal computer from your desktop into the category of wallet, watch, and keys that you need to leave the house.
2.) Increases in display technology and plumeting memory and processor costs continue to push more embded devices into the marketplace.
3.) Computer interaction will edge out human interaction as the primary means of doing buisness. How this happens will depend on the particular industry. It has allready happened to the banking industry. Some of this will be online interaction, an appreciable portion of it will be based on biometrics and customer tracking. The privacy people will object to this, but will be overcome by the allmighty dollar.
4.) The computer applications we use will continue to become more abstract and seperated from the data they handle. The reason this occurs is the cycle that drives hardware also drives sofware. Hardware sells because people want to run the latest software. Software sells because people who have the latest hardware want things to run that pushes their system to the limit. Programers thus write applications that allows a more sophisticated rendition of the same dataset. Not to use Microsoft as an example, but compare Excel 95 to Excel XP. What's the difference?
5.) Longhorn will begin a trend in operating systems that SGI first demonstrated with the Onyx. The OS is the redheaded stepchild of the mainstream software market right now. It is untilitarian, focusing more on getting its job done and less on looking slick. Apple has tried to change this, SGI has tried to change this, Enlightenment has tried to change this. Microsoft will succeed.
Most of these predictions are more like 10 years down the road instead of 30. What's really interesting are the social change that this kind of technological integration will bring about. What will happen as the governments of the world lag further and further behind the corporations as providers of the day to day services that people depend on?
The next 30 years of computing promises more than just faster system and bigger drives, it promises radical changes in where computers are found, what computers do, and how human beings interact.
Thirty years is a long time, and while I wouldn't put a bet in for me being able to get an 802.11 jack for my head in that time frame, it's only because I don't think the FDA would allow it by then.
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No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
People who started using computers after the PC revolution have no idea about the miserable user experience that centralised computers imposed.
Check out Plato. Pre-1975 bitmapped graphics, audio and photographic quality images, instant messaging, near zero latency multiplayer network gaming, distance learning, groupware, newsgroups, online newspapers, animated email, network delivery of music, client/server computing, touch screen interfaces, flat-panel displays, and multimedia that were delivered across a worldwide educational network with satellite and cable communications using CDC mainframes.
That's a good point. Because current WE need to GO TO the computer. Soon, the computer will just be where we need it.
Tablet computers are an example of this. A small tablet, that is hooked wirelessly to your network can be used for e-mail, etc. Of course the tablet will get smaller and smaller, and soon not recognizable as a 'computer'. It will be similar to a piece of paper.
Now, most people connect their MP3 type player to their computer, and download the music. Eventually, your MP3 player will once again, connect wirelessly, and just download everything- because storage won't be an issue. Of course it will be smaller, and barely noticable. But once again, you won't need to go to your computer.
Currently you can buy things on-line on your computer. But wouldn't that be better from your TV? Just yesterday there was an article the next Xbox having more computer functionality. With HDTV quality screens, I would rather make my purchases from my couch, not sitting at my desk. Why go to the computer, when the rest of my house is more comfortable?
Sitting in my 'office' at home isn't fun- it's not where I want to spend my time. I'd rather be out with everyone else. We've been tied to the keyboard long enough, and I think we'll start moving away.
Yes- I really would like a web-enabled refrigerator...It would be nice to walk into the kitchen, and get my news/e-mail while standing there drinking out of the orange juice container.
When display devices get advanced enough that they can simply be 'printed' then we can have them everywhere. This will be the biggest step forward.
Your TV is actually a great display device- because it streams in a lot of different information. But it is too big, bulky, expensive and ugly to have everywhere. But when I can place a display in the wall of my bathroom, I can use it while I take a crap. It won't be the luxury device of a Texas oilman anymore- it will show up in everyday life.
No reason to lie.
Actually, no. You can create stories in the process of telling them. Have you ever made up an erotic fantasy together with a partner? Do you, when you watch a mystery movie, think of the story as something that "has already happened"? No, you are waiting for the story to happen! The twists and turns that are unpredictable make the story. Why not "make them up" as you tell the story, create the movie as you show them? Technology might be able to one day. Re-read your narrative theory, please.
I wouldn't underestimate the engaging nature of the narrative. Storytelling is as old as mankind and it's not likely to disappear just because we can suddenly take control of the story. In fact I would argue that if you could control the story, what's the point of readin/watching/taking part in it? The point of storytelling is to engage the reader and make him feel an emotion. It's a lot easier to do that if the story throws him a curveball that he didn't see coming, or if the story has a load of story arcs that end up being resolved in the most unexpected of ways.
I remember reading a series of childrens' books called 'choose your own adventure.' I seem to remember feeling a bit short-changed with these books. Sure, the writing quality was pretty good, but the use of the second person narrative just felt downright wierd, a book telling me what was happening to me. Maybe if they were written in the third person it would have been better. I digress. What was missing was the plot resolution. I was left wondering, 'what is this story about?' Is it about me solving the mystery (as happened when I read it on one occasion) or is it about me dying a painful death along with all my friends (as happened when I read it a different time)?
There is just something about a third person narrative that no interactive game can beat.
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But of course, we know this isn't the case. Even school children are capable of inventing fanciful, novel stories. The path to interactive storytelling is collaboration between the player and the computer to produce a narrative which is both interesting to the player and dramatically compelling. The narrative is a product of this process, it is not the process itself.
The problem is that storytelling is hard. It's easy to create a story. It's tough to create a compelling and interesting story. And it seems to be damn near impossible to do it without knowing what the main character is actually going to do.
This is why we don't have any good examples of immersive fiction yet. Think about it, you're basically telling the creator of the game to create a compelling and interesting story without knowing exactly what the main character in the story (the player) is actually going to do. This seems pretty hard to me, and is likely why most attempts have ended up as just more complicated versions of choose your own adventure. They come up with perhaps a dozen ways the story could go, max, then program those in using branch points. At some point in the game, you can either go do this or go do that and thus the branch is chosen. But after replaying it several times, you run out of branches.
To create something truly compelling, you'd need a lot more freedom of action. However, the program is fixed. It can't change. So anything it does must be scripted in advance. This means that truly immersive storytelling is, in fact, impossible without some form of artifical intelligence, to let the story actually change according to an unlimited number of actions.
Now, that's obviously too far. So since we're not going to let the computer tell the story, we have to let the programmer of the computer do it. This means that the possible lines are fixed. Now, if someone were to spend a hell of a lot of time on it, they could possible come up with several dozen branches at each chosen branch point in the story, and thus give the illusion of truly immersive story by sheer number of possible things to do. After about 30 possible choices at a branch point, the human brain can't really tell the difference anyway, unless they're presented with options of things to say like console games do, and such. But if the choices were actual actions that the player carried out, 30 would be more than enough.
The problem with this is that it's such a big job. If you're going to provide that kind of freedom of action, you're looking at writing thousands of similar but separate stories. And no cheating like many games do, where no matter which branch you take, the impact is slight at best and the story remains mostly unchanged. We're hoping for replay factor here. We want total changes in the storyline. Some cheating this way is okay, because things happen that way sometimes through no act of your own, but still, too much of this and you lose the point of doing it on a large scale in the first place.
Immersive storytelling is simply a hard, hard thing to do. I don't think that technology will solve this problem either, because it's not a problem with the technology. We can do it now, for that matter. It's simply a matter of spending enough time actually writing the thing out on a grand enough scale to make it seem to be unlimited. But that's still big enough to prevent it from really happening so far.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I suspect that tablet computers will be the way of the future; at least, in the mid term. I'm writing this on a laptop, sat in my living room, while watching Futurama on the TV. (It's the Willy Wonka episode - don't ask about the secret ingredient!)
Anyway, the point is, I really don't want to write this post (or, in your example, buy things) on my TV screen. Even a HDTV would likely be too far away; the text would have to be so large so as to make reading anything other than tabloid headlines awkward. Even if the TV took up the whole wall, it wouldn't be natural.
No, a tablet with paper (or near-paper) quality, or some holographic projection thingy floating a foot or two from your eyes, that's what you need. And you can still keep Futurama in the background.
And this is why future predictions are nearly almost wrong. Think about it. What would someone from the 20s think life is like today only 65 years from then?
Instantaneous communication all over the world? Yes, that has happened (more or less) but not the way they predicted it. Its not through some star trek phone but rather using machines *completely* unthinkable in interface and design. General computation machines on our desktop? Nope. Flying cars? Nope but would they of predicted hybrid electrics? Nanotech wasnt even an idea yet but we're approaching slowly going that way. GPS system? Quantum physics? The list goes on and on...