Vitorio, Your note reminds me of a recent Dilbert in which he asked someone "Are all your problems self-inflicted?" :-) I think a lot could be accomplished with pocketable keyboards while we're waiting for multi-modal nirvana. If I could clip the back of a small smart phone to the top of (a manufactured version of) the lashed-up prototype keyboard I'm using now, I'd be as happy as a clam. John ================== Vitorio Miliano wrote: > ... > > I see wearables and ubiquitous computing in general as a solution for > time management, information storage and a way to eliminate the modern > workplace need for continuous partial attention, and to be able to go > back to giving 100% of our attention to the task at hand by having the > computer dictate what that task needs to be. > > Mediated reality, digital autoassociative memories, it seems to me that > all of this is being toyed with for the sake of toying. There are no > serious efforts being made to produce something usable by the mass > market, nothing that will take all our inputs during the day, email, > news feeds, TV, IMs, schedules, appointments, interrupting coworkers, > family responsibilities, and filter out everything we either don't want > to deal with or shouldn't be dealing with or can better deal with at > another time. > > There's no Jeff Hawkins for wearable/ubiquitous computing. There's > no-one who is walking around with a block of wood strapped to their back > and face figuring out the best way a single mom middle manager with two > kids is going to most effectively use a device that can orchestrate her > entire day for her if she would only trust it. > > There's no-one taking those use cases and building a multimodal UI > that's consistent and efficient and effective and unobtrusive, because > having a high resolution HMD so you can run Microsoft Word isn't going > to be the way this sort of technology is going to take off. Input must > be passive and hands-free unless it's a pointed moment in time, such as > interrupting a conversation to say "computer" or pulling out a touchpad > so you can write in Graffiti or on a Blackberry-style chiclet keyboard. > > Ubiquitous computing needs wearable computing to happen because of the > bandwidth problem. The world will never be saturated with > multi-megabit wireless bandwidth, and once you come to trust your > computer, not having it available because you're in between cell > towers is not going to be pleasant: it's going to be disorienting. > Storage and processing capacity will always beat bandwidth in > availability. You'll store more information on you, not in the cloud, > as time moves forward, so you need ways to ubiquitously present your > information, from a behind-the-bathroom-mirror screen to the seatback > touchscreen on an airplane to the stereo in your car. Only the work > done with multimodal wearable UIs will support that. > > The PalmPilot wasn't created to replace the desktop, just to replace a > pad of paper. Modern handhelds and phones have forgotten that. > Wearables still haven't figured it out. Hardware is essentially a > solved problem, has been for years. Physical design and multimodal > UI design for mass market appeal and everyday use isn't. No-one's even > started on it, because those that could be are already sitting in > front of a high-resolution multi-processor desktop ten hours a day. > > I sold off my wearable prototyping hardware because messing with it > was a distraction from the real work in this that needs to be done: > the user interfaces. A multimodal UI obviously includes a desktop > component, because workstations will never go away, so nothing is > stopping me from getting started right now besides my own false > preconceptions. > > All the pieces to accomplish this are out there, right now, today. > They have been for years. Will the next Jeff Hawkins please stand up? > > Thanks, > Vitorio Miliano > > _______________________________________________ > Wear-Hard mailing list >> http://www.haven.org/mailman/listinfo/wear-hard > _______________________________________________ Wear-Hard mailing list
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