
Just a few weeks ago I bought a nice bluetooth sports headset. With newly born illusion there was hope to use it at the gym, as they seemed to be durable and sweat-resistant… but before the good times came: My-Oh-My! I couldn’t imagine that it would be so difficult to make the headset speak the eLove dialect with my iPhone, iMac, other mobile phones like my old Nokia, even with Windows (of any breed) it was a no-no-nope-no-perhaps-beg-no-beg!-Ok relation.
Such an “un-pretty” experience.
Later came to my mind that so-asked question: why things, mostly tech-related ones are so difficult for the average non-techie person? facts, answers and theories… there are many; but anyway, I couldn’t help to fantasize how could it be, if all of it where more “natural”, as natural as loud-speaking, as showing, as seeing, as speaking without voice.
After all we, humans, we are a living UI. We have our own protocols for understanding each other, we also have less universal protocols extensions that vary from one place/culture to another, but the very basic ones (hard-wired) are shared by all of us.
Going back to the other topic: how do we communicate with other beings? e.g. our pets? And what about non-living interactive things? Come on, I don’t mean zombies: I mean machines… again the techie-stuff.
Talking to machines is, nowadays, painful. Being our minds so undoubtedly flexible, it leaves much responsibility of a machine’s malfunction to us: makes it easy for a designer to leave most of the job of operating a machine to its operator; even figuring out what do the machine’s designer meant to tell us by placing a cryptic icon in an odd place… is our job, too! (not theirs? come on….)
Is that Ok? or not? perhaps neither, the key thing is that it depends on the context; In times of deep-tech-frustration, it drives me to believe that using a computer should be as difficult as talking to someone in the street, getting rid of that special techno-way, the secret-protocol, forgetting the complex-network what should be first put up to work before interacting with a computer.
Like talking to someone in the street; even then, there are levels of difficulty…
Networks should not exist, in the best case: I shouldn’t know that they exist; all communication should be occur via quantum-brainwaves
We shouldn’t know there are networks, the same consideration is also applicable to other current complex-bizarre technological invents. Why handle concepts of motherboards, memory chips, CDs / DVDs, USB, Firewire, WiFi or Bluetooth and all the yada yada yada?
Cables, all of them, must vanish. Yes, even the one feeding the power juice.
You know? I’d really like it to be like this:
Mornin’ iHAL (iHal is my brand new iMac 9000) … it answers: “hello Dave, I mean, Frank; this is my first day as your computer, anything you want me to do or learn?”
… [uneasy silence] I go on: iHal, these are the speakers and sub-woofer, you’re gonna use them for music and games but not for video; this is my mobile phone and my “land phone”; you’re gonna get power from this room and in case of failure you can try other rooms around for power, to learn about rooms please speak to the Flat, it is the living-place where we are now… get comfy with each other; Flat, this is iHal, He’s our new computer.
“Ok Dav… Frank, it’ll be done, anything else?”
…
Well… yes, you’re also going to connect to the internet through AT&T, please identify yourself with Flat’s address; Flat please transfer to iHal all my personal info, also other details about talking to the provider.
Mmmmm…. (after a brief moment)
Flat, lets change that, from now on you’ll keep the Main Password for yourself, it won’t be transferred to anyone unless I decide to change that. Flat, tell everyone to forget the Main Password now, even iHal.
iHal, I’d also like to use my mobile phone to carry all my music, it must not be played except from my mobile, no shares, except with Claudia; Flat, tell iHal who’s Claudia.
Also, this is my photo camera, please get all pictures after each photoshoot, leaving it anew. Do that now.
“Done, do you want to see the pictures now?”
Nah, tonight, remind me that.
“Great, count on it!”
iHal, please restrict access to all Google services, I don’t want them to go harvesting my data again, share safe information only…
etc.
No, I ain’t on drugs/booze. Things are going to become like this. And even more in the future there will be no box over the table: it will be anywhere, everywhere, He will be omnipresent.
We’ll be able to handle anywhere and at any given time our information, play games, share everything we want and restrict at our will… without the imposed decision of a silly service like Google’s Buzz or Facebook. He will be at our service in every device and we’ll not need Him to have any “processing power”… He will be in other place… and in every place.
That thing, how was it called? mmm… ah! Hardware! It will be forgotten. Considered a useless knowledge in the mind of mere mortals.