How Should We Interact With Computers?

Have you ever noticed that after a long stretch of sitting at your home or office computer, you feel somehow less human? You stand up from your chair, muscles creaking and vertebrae popping, and you feel more like a machine yourself. When you consider increases in repetitive strain injuries and the amount of time the average person spends in front of a computer, we're long overdue for new kinds of interaction that reduce the time we have to spend on a traditional mouse, keyboard, and monitor. We should be making better use of microphones for voice recognition, multi-touch screens, and 3d holographic projectors. Does this sound too futuristic? Maybe it's not.

My inspiration for this post came from several sources, but chiefly a Microsoft video describing their vision of what the future of computing would look like.



In the video, there are lots of touch-screen interfaces and systems for recognizing hand gestures and that sort of thing. Speaking of gestures, have you seen the movie Minority Report? The gesture-driven computer that Tom Cruise's character uses in the beginning of the film was based on the work of an MIT student whose work is being devleoped by Oblong Industries (awesome!) It was also spoofed in a recent episode of The Simpsons.

At work, we have an interactive SMART Board--It's basically a very large touch screen with a projector. After using it for a while, I'm always frustrated going back to a regular computer screen, because I'll reach up to tap on a button or icon on the monitor, and nothing happens! Once you start using touchscreens, it's hard to go back to a keyboard and mouse, where you're one or two steps removed from the content you're working with. I recently watched a TED talk in which Jeff Han demonstrates a large, multi-touch surface, and he said there's really no reason not to interact with computers in this way from now on. Maybe that's optimistic, particularly since the capacitive touch screens are relatively new and expensive, but it's clear that technology (especially in cell phones) is heading this direction, which will drive down costs.

One of the more exciting visions of computer interaction I've seen was featured in a Discovery documentary called 2057. About 1 minute into the chapter titled "The City," a boy is navigating his way home by following a 3d hologram of a dolphin, which is coming from a GPS receiver and projector on his arm.



I was enthralled with this idea, not just because I'm a sucker for dolphins, but also because I hate getting lost. Later in the film, the boy's father introduces him to a newer model that combines the projector with voice recognition and speech synthesis. How cool is that!? The projection may look like science fiction, but it's been done, and it's only a matter of time before these things are small enough to carry around with us. I hope I live to see the day when we can interact with machines in ways that are less mechanical and more human.

If you could do away with the mouse, keyboard, and monitor, what would you substitute it with?

Update: Reader sent me a link to another cool TED talk with some other ideas about computer interfaces

How Will Computers Do Our Filing For Us?

Managing all of your photos, music, docs and video files is a real hassle, especially when you start adding computers, game systems, and other digital devices to your home network. When you're a content creator, it's much worse, because you often need immediate access to different kinds files spanning many different kinds of media (CD, DVD, hard drives, and video tapes). As people have increasing need for easy access to files across all of their devices (home or office), I believe the next stage of evolution in computing is an operating system that manages files and folder locations for you--it won't need to ask you where to put files because it just knows where to put them, and it won't require an expensive piece of third-party software to do this. This concept is not without precedent, and there are similar management systems already being used in consumer products by Apple and Google. More on this in a moment. But first, I have to address all the skeptics out there...

Why Not Just Use Search?

Why do we need a new organization system when operating systems already offer useful tracking features like OS X's Spotlight or Windows' file search utility? Both Macs and PCs offer polite suggestions about smart places to put your files (applications, my documents, my music, etc.) and there are dozens of third-party software solutions to help you track where files are located, even if you deviate from these suggested locations. But I've never been satisfied with these programs, because all they do is tell you what drive or folder a file is sitting in, and that's not enough.

What's Wrong With Folders?

I think we're fast approaching the time to do away with folders completely. Folders in computer systems represent an organization system that's been around much longer than computers--but folders have only been obsolete for the last few years or so. This might seem like a pretty bold claim, so let me dive in more thoroughly. Conceptually, folders in computers are actually a pretty good way to organize our files, because they equate to a system that's been around for a long time, and the system is one that we can easily wrap our brains around. I think this is why they've managed to stick around so long. For organization junkies, it can even be somewhat therapeutic to spend hours developing elaborate file systems consisting of meticulously-constructed levels of nesting, designed to route files into sacred locations where they cannot possibly be lost--that is, until they try to find these files a year or two later. As our homes grow to include multiple computers, backup drives, gaming platforms, and other digital devices (smart phones, home automation systems, etc.), folders are quickly becoming a method of increasing segregation, when what we really need is a more integrated solution, and better interoperability.

Okay, Mr. Smarty-Pants, What Comes Next?

Since there is always a lag time between the introduction of a new technology and humanity's ability to adopt it, I believe it is not so ironic that clues to the organization systems of the future come from the past. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just throw all of our files into a big bin and then pull out what we need, when we need it, based on one or more search parameters? This is essentially the concept of a database, which been around for years now. The concept has been stretched a little in Gmail, which offers something called Labels, which can be assigned to your conversations to help you sort through them. Similarly, iPhoto lets you sort your pictures by event or by someone's face, and geotagging is likely to become the next most useful piece of metadata when deciding how photos should be sorted--and here's the distinction: the computer should be smart enough to do this for you. iTunes currently comes the closest to describing the sort of organizational power that I would like to see applied--it actually has the ability to reconstruct your folder system for you, based on artist and album. This is a good step forward, but I would like to see this taken much further--why can't we rearrange our music collections by genre, or by file size? You can easily display the files in this way now, so why not go further and actually construct file systems this way? There would be no need to move the files to different folders, because there would be no folders--only metadata and filters. And why not apply this concept to all of our files, constructing file systems on the fly, arranging their contents according to these metadata and filters? Clearing this technological hurdle will pave the way for automated, intelligent networks that span multiple computers and put data where it needs to be so that you can find it quickly and eliminate redundancy, but still back it up so you don't have to worry about losing it. But this is just my idea--I'd love to hear your ideas about organizational systems that are smarter than folders.

Will Driverless Cars Be Safe?

photo from the DARPA Urban Challenge gallery

A car that drives itself. This technology sounds really scary, but ironically, that's what will ultimately make it safe. Consider elevators--the consequences of an elevator failure are so frightening that they tend to be over-engineered, with redundant safety systems that make them extremely reliable. Now, consider the complexity of navigating a moving vehicle among thousands of other moving vehicles. Also consider how paranoid engineers will be about integrating this technology with threats of liability lawsuits hanging over their heads. When the "blue screen of death" could literally mean death, it's easy to understand why the technology is being rolled out in stages. Many car models are already available with automatic, variable-speed cruise control and collision-avoidance systems. This interim stage of driving automation will allow developers adequate time to work out every last bug. During the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, a vehicle mistakenly parked itself in a carport where it didn't belong, and although this didn't result in catastrophic collision, it's easy to imagine how these bugs might play out in less tolerant environments, such as a busy freeway.

The real irony here is that we're criticizing the mistakes of machines, but with an estimated 93% error rate, humans aren't very good at driving, either: they're impatient and drive too fast, they're unpredictable, they text message on cell phones in traffic, and they let emotions influence their driving behavior. Computer-driven cars have the advantage in almost every category: instantaneous reaction time in emergencies, routine algorithms that determine when to brake or accelerate, sensors that are not limited by blind spots, and most importantly, the potential for networking. Your car will know before you will when the car ahead is about to make a right turn, or brake suddenly to avoid a collision. Features like these, once they've been thoroughly tested, may one day bring down the number of auto collisions, as well as significantly improve traffic flow, perhaps eliminating traffic jams. Maybe you'll even get an insurance discount when you switch on "auto-drive."

The only real questions remaining are these: how long is your commute, and what will you do with all of that extra time?

Will Digital Ink Destroy Print Media?

With the announcement of the Kindle 2, it seems like digital prognosticators everywhere are forecasting imminent death for magazines, newspapers, and printed books. Well, okay, maybe not everywhere. But one thing is clear: the cost of producing print media on paper is making digital ink more and more attractive to publishers who are not weathering the recession well. A recent post to The Business Insider calculates that printing the New York Times costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a Kindle.

I'm a technology enthusiast, and while I love the idea of a digital book reader, I get really concerned when I hear about transformations in the way we access media. It's not so much the device itself that I'm concerned about--I've seen the Kindle display, and it literally is just like reading a page of newsprint. What concerns me is that we may be reducing the number of options available for the casual reader who isn't interested in investing in an expensive piece of hardware. There's also a sense of grandeur and beauty embodied by a hundred books sitting on shelves, which is somehow lost when stuffed into digital files. Call me a romantic if you must.

How do you read books? Do you read online? Do you prefer old-fashioned newspapers, magazines, paperbacks, or hard-bound volumes? Do you think the Kindle (or other e-books), will one day lead to the death of printed media?

About The Author

Stevon Roberts is an award-winning videographer and Instructional Technologist at Oregon State University. He's a published writer, a blogger, and an enthusiast in technology and marine science. He earned his BS in Biology, with a writing minor, from Oregon State University. Since 2004, he's worked for Oregon Sea Grant as a documentary filmmaker, producing and editing programs to highlight research, outreach, and education that help people understand, rationally use, and conserve marine and coastal resources. In 2005, he began producing faculty development and training films at the Center for Teaching and Learning, as well as developing curriculum for the Living Course Institute.

Introduction to Techri-La: How Will Technology Transform the Human Landscape?

When I was younger, I used to love going to my grandparents' house and picking up their copies of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. My favorite parts of the magazines were the product pages that showed all the new technological gadgets being released that year. Now, I'm an avid follower of blogs like Slashdot, Engadget, Gizmodo, and Coolest Gadgets. Although I enjoy these blogs very much, I feel like gadget blogs are missing a critical component, which is the possibility that the diffusion of these technologies into our marketplace might significantly change our lives, in the same way that electricity or nuclear energy has significantly changed our lives. This gap has been somewhat bridged by what I would call lifestyle blogs, like Ecogeek and Inhabitat (which I also enjoy), but I hope to accomplish a slightly different goal, which is to invite conversation from you, the reader, about the ways that technology is changing your life. Techri-La is named for the mythical city of Shangri-La, because I think many of us hope that through our inventions, humanity may someday cross a technological threshold to achieve utopian society. The reality, for today at least, is that sometimes technologies improve our quality of life, and sometimes they are bent to make people more wealthy, or more powerful. We'll talk about all of that. Transportation, medicine, career, agriculture, social interaction, and leisure--these will be the topics of the conversation, with a focus on how the gadgets of the future (or the present) will influence day-to-day living for you, or for your friends and family. Welcome to Techri-La!