s easy to take input choice for granted.
We can instruct another human being by:
- You can talk to them
- Notes written by hand
- Text typing
- Flag waving
- Triggering an electronic traffic device
- Sounding the siren
- Sending a memo
- Selecting from a menu
- Facial expression
- There are dozens of other ways to do this.
The majority of people can develop facial expressions, limbs, and voiceboxes to make them useful. Over the years, computers have been engineered to include these features.
Dan Lovy created a parser in 1983 for the adventure game I was marketing while at Spinnaker. You could now type in instructions instead of using the crude joystick, which was more emotional. The game understood “pick up a dragon’s jewel”.
In a Bronx restaurant, the waiter will ask you “what do want? There is no menu.” They’ll create anything you can imagine within a certain range. It’s stressful because we are used to multiple-choice questions in this context.
Smart doctors don’t ask “what’s the problem?” They take a few moments to listen, talk and connect because we are afraid of death.
It’s important to think about how you can best interact with technology as the tech world and humanities merge. The car designer bets our lives when he invites us to speak with the car. A steering wheel may be a more effective user interface.
It’s not only a car. Sometimes we don’t communicate in a way that is useful and specific to the task at hand …)
