"Technology: Are we Human?"

A lot of todays gadgets are not designed according to human usage, they have just evolved according to technology constraints. Look at your Blackberry: you might think the keyboard was designed to help you type faster, but that is not so. The keyboard layout of the blackberry, iPhone and most other input devices was designed in 1875. 135 years ago. It was designed as a typewriter layout and its main purpose was to SLOW DOWN the speed of typing because at that time the typewriter keys kept getting stuck when peple typed too fast. By the time typewriter were invented that could go faster it was too late; the layout (commonly referred to as the 'QWERTY' layout) was in use by so many people that it could not be changed.

For hundreds of years it seems that a lot of the way we interact with technology is based on banging, hitting or yanking buttons and levers. The fundamental physical action of getting data into a PC today is not so different from how we got a steam engine to slow down or speed up. On/off, up/down binary slapping of keys or other mechanisms have in many ways defined out interactive experience with technology. Although we have absolutely advanced in terms of technology in the past 100 years (from the yarn-mill of the 1800's to advanced servers today) input methods (how we as human make our technological devices take action) have not changed so much.

The advent of GUI (Graphical User Interface); Windows, Mac, mouse point-and-click were seen as steps forward in terms of how we as humans interact with machines. The Apple Mac project came from a Xerox park experiment based on studies into how children learn. Although probably true (we are graphical in nature and children more than adults tend to point a lot to what they want!) the fundamental input method of a mouse and the windows operating system is not really a huge leap forward; if you consider there is a still a keyboard in front of you with a 135 year old layout design and the mouse itself is yet another on/off relay button in its most basic sense.  The only real change was that you could point within the screen to what you wanted and manipulate it accordingly. A key word here is within the screen. Although screens have gotten bigger, clearer and more colorful they are still a small and unnatural window into our world. Touch screen as an interface option has started to grow in daily use, however we should bear in mind it is yet another (albeit more advanced and definitely more natural) system to navigate within a pre-defined space. Even if you do this on a 'big' screen; it is still a pretty limited window into the world; and we have a lot more senses in action at any given moment than just touch.

Despite technologies best efforts we are still human, we still crave a human experience. We don't (literally anyway) touch each others buttons when we meet a new person.

We use our eyes, touch, smell and all other senses we possess to analyze over 10,000 pieces of data per second when we interact with another human being. We like to read newspapers, books and information in different positions as opposed to being stuck in front of a PC or laptop. We are complex, flexible, natural creatures that react with each other and the world around us in more sophisticated ways than technology so far can handle.

So is any of this going to change?  Actually I think it will. We are on the cusp of some significant changes in how we interact with technology; and given how many people now use social networking and other online platforms as their primary portal for interaction in general, some of the trends that are coming in digital interaction may have a profound impact on how we interact with each other, as human beings. We may finally be seeing technologies that are more adaptable to how we as human beings naturally act. New technologies, and the convergence across various gadgets and platforms, are starting to show possibilities that are a lot more natural in terms of how we interact.  Just as we used our fingertips to paint on cave walls long before we were sophisticated enough to pick up a painting brush; we have punched buttons, yanked levers and stamped cards to control much of what the IT industry has offered to us for the past 150 years. Now however it seems technology is starting to show signs of being ready to offer us more elegant, and more human, methods to interact with our digital and mechanical world.

The advent of advanced touch screens and mouse pads (such as Apples iPad and other devices), combined with cameras, sound, voice recognition and various other input/output devices are starting to show potential to truly offer a more enhanced (and human) experience. We are also seeing a generational shift as todays young children pick up any device and start jabbing at it without any worry to get it to do something. Touch screen technology is as normal to a child as pen today as paper is to adults. I struggle to read on a PC screen because it is not as comfortable as a newspaper; however e-readers have started to become available in the market that give the experience a much more 'natural' feeling (with the added benefit of having 1000's of books in one lightweight device). Even this may soon be overshadowed by even more advances of platforms such as the iPad that are trying to take the reading experience to ever more natural interactions with finger page turning, sharper resolutions and the 'book case' interface to store downloaded books.

Speech recognition is also making huge steps forwards; with emotional reasoning avatars being created that can change responses by analyzing the emotions within a callers voice to an automated call center as one example. It is however the potential of combining all of these various technologies, not unlike how we as humans combine all of our senses to interpret our world, that starts to open up more interesting possibilities for our partnership with technology in the digital age.

So we can point, touch, drag with our fingers, speak, shake, turn and interact effectively with our digital world in ever more increasing and natural ways. Indeed there are even end user EEG systems to allow people to control software and hardware using brainwaves only:

 

An amazing synthesis of the potential of various technologies and trends in augmented reality, projection, touch, vision, and mobility can be seen through the work of the inventor Pranav Mistry. His talk and demonstration on TED explains his 'sixth sense' company and the astounding possibilities they see for using technology in a more flexible way. What is especially breathtaking in Mistry's explanation is not just his visionary view of how the digital and physical worlds can better interact with each other; it is how he has created prototypes to demonstrate his vision using available (often low cost) technologies.

So what does all this mean? there are some amazing trends coming our way in terms of how we interact with technology. No question. What we should remember however is that we remain human. We interact. We touch, we smell, we see, we taste. Ultimately we are still the masters of this technology and it is how we use it that will ultimately determine its usefulness.  The advent of brushes and paint allowed man to create ever more detailed and stunning paintings as compared to early cave paintings.  Those early cave paintings are however still considered works of art....