Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!steelhead.cs.washington.edu!chou From: chou@steelhead.cs.washington.edu (Pai Hsiang Chou) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: the interface for the rest of us? Message-ID: <1991May7.204509.27452@beaver.cs.washington.edu> Date: 7 May 91 20:45:09 GMT References: <1991May4.224336.20614@beaver.cs.washington.edu> Sender: news@beaver.cs.washington.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle Lines: 84 In article mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: >chou@steelhead.cs.washington.edu (Pai Hsiang Chou) writes: >> A keyboard is something that really can't be miniaturized >> too much. A tiny, calculator-sized keyboard is simply unusable. >> A standard sized keyboard takes up a significant amount of space. > >Only if you assume one character per key. no, the keys on today's keyboards are already overloaded. Shift/Option/Command/Control/... If you want to go to the extreme, anything can be input 1 key -- using Morse code! My point is ergonomic key size. It has nothing to do with overloading the keys. Even a numeric keypad is too cumbersome in a portable environment. >> To input graphics, you need either a mouse or a pen. > >Or a finger or a trackball or a joystick. > >Why do people in this newsgroup make so many assumptions about what is and >what is not acceptable as an input device? OK, maybe I should have changed my line to "I would use". My fingertip isn't sharp enough to give me satisfactory precision I want. Besides, I wouldn't want to smear the display with my fingerprints or scratch it in case I forget to clip my fingernails. >What on earth do you want several notebook computers for? I want everything >in the *one* computer, so I can copy a dictionary definition into a piece of >mail, stick a diagram into a diary entry, and so on. The reasons people today don't want to carry several computers are 1) they are expensive, and not too many people can afford more than one. 2) PCs today don't talk to each other very well, 3) they need their own I/O devices (which make them cumbersome to carry around). But since this is a futures discussion group, I don't think we should be limited to what computers can do today. (10 years ago, some people were asking "Why would you ever need more than 64K in your personal computer?") The reason I think several notebooks will be more usable than one notebook with windows is simple: you can never have enough screen space (or I should say, "I can always use more screen space"). But there is a limit to how big a screen size can be before it gets too big to carry. So the solution is to carry several screens. Everything is getting more and more computing power. So a screen in the future is probably not just a screen any more, but it may have even more computing power than the most powerful personal computer we know today, but it may be very cheap. It will probably have handwriting recognition and application programs built in to it. There may or may not be a central processing unit. And we will probably not think of them as a "computer", but probably more like a smart display device. If you want to cut and paste from one computer to another with a pen, you might be able to do it with a smart pen which effectively sucks the data from one screen, stores it in its own memory buffer, and inject the data into the target screen. (Who says a pen can't be some sort of computer?) Why, it might even have a built-in voice recognition chip, and you can dictate into it, walk around, then click a button on the pen to paste your words into your document. (maybe you don't use voice recognition input, but who knows if your great great grandchildren would even consider using anything else?) At the same time, your notebooks may communicate with each other by wireless means, by fiberoptics, or whatever. I am definitely not thinking in terms of DOS or Macintosh with a much faster processor in a smaller box. Pai Chou chou@june.cs.washington.edu