Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!mailrus!cornell!rochester!rit!ultb!jdb9608
From: jdb9608@ultb.UUCP (J.D. Beutel )
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: desktop of the future
Message-ID: <285@ultb.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jan 89 10:38:27 GMT
References: <8901100246.AA14221@multimax.encore.com>
Reply-To: jdb9608@ultb.UUCP (J.D. Beutel (713ICS))
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology (Info Systems)
Lines: 35

(Barry Shein) writes:
>
>Dan Franklin raises a good point.
>
>The current wisdom seems to be the metaphor, specifically the desktop
>metaphor or office metaphor. There's a lot of common sense to this,
>obviously seeing familiar objects being used in familiar ways has its
>appeal.
>
[...]
>This is the thing that fascinates me far more than a better desktop
>metaphor, I want to know what we will be doing with these new tools
>which we never conceived of before. I don't want a better way to
>shuffle a zillion pieces of paper, I want to finally face the fact
>that all that paper-shuffling is wrong!


Interesting discussion.  Whatever the future brings, I'd bet it will 
involve some sort of non-linear representation (i.e., pictures instead
of words).  I do not take seriously the interfaces of today that use
pictures and metaphors to make computers friendlier, but I do recognize
that 'a picture's worth a thousand words.'

Ultimately, in the cyberpunk future, the interface wouldn't be just a 
picture, thought--it'd be sight and sound and smell and touch and,
hey, while we're at it, why not invent a few extra senses?  If the
bottleneck of our brains is I/O, maybe we can expand our interface?

In the near future, how about adding sound to sight?  Certain files
could make distinctive noises, like a low, background hum.
If it were done well, I'd find it more helpful than annoying.
Some terminal key-clicks, for example, I like.   (tvi925 is one)
Too bad that most are annoying.

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