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What's the future of human-computer relations? Voice activation, a la Star Trek? Or something more subtle? I've always claimed that if you have to use a computer, then it's not doing its job. Here's an idea about how we should properly be interacting with our machines. I've always been a fan of Brenda Laurel's ideas on interface design, as described in her seminal book, Computers as Theatre.  One result of thinking this way is what I've come to call the positional interface. This is something that's being built now, and it should start impacting consumers in a few years. Since increasingly our cell phones and PDAs come with devices, such as GPS, that can signal where they are. The positional interface is simple: just take some postage-stamp sized transponders (a new technology that's just coming on line) and stick 'em to everything you own. A set of triangulating antennae in your house, apartment, office or car continuously track the positions of all the objects you've tagged. When one or more objects move to a particular place or into a particular configuration, the computer kicks off some event. Simply put, if your stereo starts to walk out the door, alarms will go off. The positional interface eliminates the perception of the computer as a thing in a particular place; instead of sitting down at your desk to interact with the computer, your whole house is the computer. From a writer's point of view, this makes for interesting possibilities: let's say I've got a safe that's hooked into the house computer or a secret file I want to keep encrypted. It can only be opened if I take a set of ordinary objects, say a pot from the greenhouse, a decorative plate over the mantlepiece, and a pair of old running shoes on the front porch--and move each of them to another position, say two feet to the left. Or, imagine this interface in a house for developmentally challenged individuals. By making the environment itself smart and capable of keeping track of the household, this interface could allow greater autonomy for them. I don't know about you, but I'd love to have computers reach the point where I forget they're there--when they just act to make my environment smarter, I'll consider that they've finally started doing what they were invented to do. < | >
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