UX in the near and long-term future, 4 ideas to ponder
I’ve spent some time the last couple weeks trying to envision the near and long-term future of interfaces. I came away with the following useful nuggets.
1. Currently interfaces are moving out into the world where the people are
In my mind the biggest breakthrough with smart phones is that all that functionality that used to be on that computer in the corner is now traveling with me out in the world. I’m more compelled to use technology now because it’s with me as I live my life. Mark Weiser called it ubiquitous computing. My lifetime will most likely see ubiquitous computing reach an advanced level of maturation.
2. But the real event will be when we finally learn to reprogram our biology and the biology around us
Ubiquitous computing in its current state is about making smaller computers that can be a part of a variety of current and future devices. But I ask you, why waste time creating new devices when you can just reprogram the devices already out there, i.e. our bodies, minds and the nature all around us. The sad or happy truth is that this will happen some day whether we like it or not. The six million dollar question is who will do it first and how humanistic will they be? But it’s exciting to me to think about reprogramming the human brain to increase it’s memory speed and capacity, for example. Or better yet, being able to transfer our memories and our identity over time, defeating death.
3. The mash-up of artificial intelligence and applications
Back to the short-term, artificial intelligence is really the future of apps. I don’t know about you but I absolutely hate yet another app I have to learn and spend time using. All those casual consumers who love their Wii’s won’t waste time with Gowalla, only the tech nerds care. I personally don’t want more apps that require more of my time, I want less apps that do more. Artificial intelligence, or the creation of an algorithm that can resolve complex problems for me with little input from me is where the real money is.
4. Eventually all those independent AIs will become the singularity
Eventually all the artificial intelligences we invent will merge into a single superintelligence that governs our lives. This is what Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil called the singularity. The funny thing is after pondering this for some time I realized that as a species we’ve been designing and iterating on the design of the singularity since the beginning of known time, we’ve just called it God or Gods instead of a supercomputer. At some point when the pack of engineers sit down to invent a governing intelligence I imagine them referring to all the religious texts and history to devise the initial version.
There’s one other thing to keep in mind here though, and that has to do with reprogramming our biology. When we start reprogramming our biology and re-engineering our bodies and minds, we may not need a singularity as we conceive of it today simply because at that point we will have become a different kind of species with different needs.
