This might officially be one of the best blogs right now: You are not so smart.
Various topics are explored on the basis of a thesis that resembles the usual opinion on the matter with the “truth” being spelled out underneath it. The posts are based on scientific material and worth a read. Especially when difficult topics are handled (The Public Goods Game being one of them):
The Misconception: Memories are played back like recordings.
The Truth: Memories are constructed anew each time from whatever information is currently available, which makes things like eyewitness testimony unreliable.
The Misconception: People who are losing at the game of life must have done something to deserve it.
The Truth: The beneficiaries of good fortune often do nothing to earn it, and bad people often get away with their actions without consequences.
The Misconception: If everyone contributes to the good of society, everyone will benefit, and everyone will be happy.
The Truth: Without some form of regulation, slackers and cheaters will crash economic systems because people don’t want to feel like suckers.
The Misconception: Coffee stimulates you.
The Truth: You become addicted to caffeine quickly, and soon you are drinking coffee to cure withdrawal more than for stimulation.
The Misconception: The buttons placed around you do your bidding.
The Truth: Many public buttons are only there to comfort you.
Generations of Interaction:
1. Lever (ca. 1900)
2. Button (until now)
3. Surface (from now on)
4. Fluid (soon)
“We’re all a bunch of smart monkeys.”
A gun is like throwing a rock really really fast.
Piano keys are still buttons where we don’t understand the action that’s happening.
“Levers scale motion.”
Train = compressed time.
Telegraph = compressed distance.
“Buttons abstract motion.”
“The motion ‘Push’ does not scale to the result ‘Light’.”
The flashlight is the first button. (New York Police got them in 1890s)
Kodak’s slogan “You press the button, we do the rest” from 1890s are the first example of buttons being described as easy.
Observascope.
Radio presets in 1938 = first notion of ‘Save’.
1940 video about a robot. Press a button, robot makes dinner, repair furnace, gets hat.
For 20 years, buttons represented luxury and easiness. Ads stated that buttons made it so easy, even a woman could do it.
1956: The remote control is the first time you could control form a distance.
In the 1950s, buttons started representing fear. I.e. the a-bomb.
1977: Generational icon = Atari joystick. Games started shaping the future of the button – “flap”, “shoot” etc.
1984: Buttons became virtual in the mainstream, “normal people’s lives”. Example: Mac. Had to buy 34 pages of advertising in magazine to tell people how to use it.
Software evolved more for the 12-14 years and buttons started to lose shape. Physical buttons were specific shapes as they were easy to manufacture.
Buttons became words with the color blue and an underline.
Today, the amount of content you can interact with on e.g. Amazon’s homepage is approaching everything. The only content that you can’t interact with describes what you can interact with.
Currently, we’re moving towards touch. The whole screen of the iPhone is a button. “Can you imagine 40 years ago to pinch a piece of glass?”
“Steve Jobs hates buttons so much he’s wearing turtlenecks without buttons at all.”
“Buttons don’t need, form, borders, shape, contour, words, ornamentation. But we attribute to them ease, process, control, magic, play, simplicity, automation.”
“We now think about objects with depth and time, instead of just static things.”
“We are approaching a time when anything is interactive.”
Fluid = dynamic tactile surfaces will create disposable physical interfaces.
“The button is most influential yet least appreciated innovation of the 20th century”
Q: “What’s your favorite button in history?”
A: “The OK-button. It’s the happy moment of ‘Ok, I’ll just do that’.”
UPDATE, March 29:
The slides are up on Slideshare now. This is still the best session I saw at this year’s SXSW:
I’ve been trying for a few days to write the blog post that sums up both the praise and criticism of Apple’s iPad. It’s really hard, seeing that so many talented people have already written extensively about it, and continue to do so. Don’t forget to follow my collection of articles and Twitter-favorites as well.
So far, my only comment on the iPad is this:
The platform is closed – and it doesn’t matter. There’s no Flash – and it doesn’t matter. It may lack this or that feature – and it doesn’t fucking matter.
It’s not made for me, and it’s not made for you. It’s made for the kids, the grannies and the people who are scared by the way computers work today.
Today, people compute, and the fact that we haven’t moved beyond that yet is absolutely beyond me. However, I think the iPad might be the first step towards a world, where the ones who want to tinker and hack away, are free to do so.
Then everybody else can start actually working with computers, not on them.