Manos, the hands of fate

I am your destiny!

Microsoft came up with a fun new video.  The sort of nerdly equivalent of prototype cars that never get made.  It's a prediction of sorts, and thankfully, it's also inspired some revolt.

Video and response

To sum it up, pictures under glass is a boring, limited future.  A transitional technology.  I couldn't agree more.

I've also written of buttons in the past, in reference to usability versus mastery.  I would like to add just a few comments further to Bret Victor's post.

I text.  Sometimes I don't want to be looking at the screen while I text.  This is why keyboards aren't touchscreen if at all possible (looking at you Apple).  This is why we are taught mastery of the keyboard, so we can focus on the screen and not our finger tips.  Let's say you have an iPod touch, and you want to go jog with it.  Without specially made headphones that have built in controls, how would you control it?  Can you feel the pause button?  The skip-track button?  Or just glass?  Must you look at an object to control it?  I used to dial numbers and send texts without needing to look down the whole time.  On any given Nokia I could pull up my contact list and be on the letter I needed before the phone made it from pocket to visual contact.  With buttons, mastery becomes a reality, and using our hands WITHOUT vision becomes possible again.  Don't forget all the amazing things you can do with your finger tips, like Victor says, pictures under glass cannot be the future.

Presentation complete

GeorgeP