INTERVIEW:
Question 1
Can you tell us something about the state of research on the interaction between man and
machine, including the friendly interface?
Answer
The main problem we have today with our technology is that it is just too complicated. One
of the main reasons is that it is built by engineers and by computer programmers who don't
understand people. So they do things that they like and they put in these weird and exotic
commands. You have to type keys on the keyboard, two keys, three keys, four keys all at
the same time, combinations that nobody could ever remember. It is really bizarre. The
reason we got this way is because we're in a new world, a world of information, and
information is invisible. In the old days we used to make mechanical devices and you could
see them, so you could understand how they worked. In a car you could turn the steering
wheel and see the wheels of the car move. That is not true with information devices,
electronic devices. There is nothing to see and so the way you work it is completely
arbitrary. It is up to the person who invented it. And they don't think about making it
easy or about ordinary people. It is impossible for ordinary people. My whole life, in
some sense, is dedicated to common sense, to try and design things ordinary people can
use. To do this you have to teach engineers and programmers that they are unqualified to
design for people. It has to be done by people who understand people. In my company, for
example, much of the design that people use is done by psychologists, anthropologists and
social scientists, not by technical people like engineers and programmers. I think that is
the secret. We have to design things for people, taking into account what we understand
about people. This is one of my favourite problems with Italian design in many ways.
Italian design is the most exquisite and elegant in the entire world. The Italians are
noted for this. They take pride in it for good reason. But much of the design cannot be
used; it's designed to look good and be elegant, not designed for use.
Question 2
What are cognitive artefacts?
Answer
The human mind is really overrated. We are really not so smart if we don't use other
devices, so it's very difficult to think without writing things down. It is difficult to
do arithmetic, difficult to do complex problem-solving in the head. People, though, are
very good at inventing things that make us smart. And it is really things that make us
smart. Perhaps the most important thing that makes us smart is this: writing. Writing
things on paper allows us to have an external memory and allows several people to work
together because we can all point at what we've written. It is things that make us smart,
the most important being writing, and then the invention of notation like mathematics, for
that matter the invention of the alphabet and numbers and mathematics and mathematical
notation and science and musical notation and dance notation, and art. All of these
require physical things that are just things that make us smart. Today, of course, we have
gone beyond those. We have electronic things that give us power at a distance like the
telephone. We can talk to people even if they are not in the same place. Or we can use
mail or the fax machine and of course the computer, that can do more complex computations
than we can in our head. So we provide the creativity, and it's these things that make us
smart. People plus things unparalleled in intelligence. I guess I could say I call them
cognitive artefacts, but that's not a big deal.
Question 3
Could you say something about the activity theory and the Soviet School?
Answer
Psychology began as an outgrowth of philosophy. And it was very intellectual. Basically,
we thought that all that was important occurred in the head and it was thinking and
thoughts, and problem-solving and language and reasoning had nothing to do with the real
world. So the whole history of philosophy and the history of psychology has been the study
of the information processing that goes on in the head and the logic and reasoning. You
know, that just leaves out a tremendous amount of life, it leaves out the body and it
leaves out our interaction with other people and interaction with things and leaves out
the activities we take part in. The first people to really note this and make a point of
it were the old Soviet Union, the old Soviet psychologists in what is today Russia. They
developed what is called activity theory, which was picked up in Scandinavia and now
across the world. This new approach to behaviour is saying that we are part of the world,
we do things with objects, we do things in an environment, in a context, with other
people, and these activities are what we should be studying. If you just study the mind,
you leave out a dramatic amount of what really goes on in life. So there is a new
revolution in the intellectual part of psychology, which is expanding beyond the intellect
to activities.
Question 4
Apple has been an example of a clever solution, an alliance between a scientific world and
a world that cares about people and something that gets closer to a humanistic culture.
This was a model that helped your company find a space in an industry that was dominated
by a very technical world where man was just a user. Do you see a much wider need for this
sort of alliance between the scientific world and the humanistic world?
Answer
The personal computer industry is at the end of its second generation. The first
generation personal computer was small, difficult to use, it was the Apple II and the IBM
PC, and Olivetti and Acorn. They were very difficult, complex machines. The most
impressive thing was that an individual could afford to buy them, but they were not easy
to use at all. The second generation computer was the graphical user interface, and the
first successful product was the Apple Macintosh. And that really revolutionised the way
that we use computers. It took a complex device and made it simpler, much easier to use.
And today, almost all operating systems use a graphical user interface. And they're all
very similar. Their attempt is to make the computer easier to use. But you know, it's not
easy to use. Today's computers are much too complicated, they're very big, they're very
powerful, they have hundreds or even thousands of commands. You have to go to school to
learn how to use them or you have to read a lot of books. If you go to a bookstore, you'll
see meters of books about how to use the personal computer. If you have to have that many
books, it can't be easy to use. So I think it's time for the third generation. The
difference between the second generation and the first was the use of psychologists and
humanists in the design. We used artists. We used social scientists. When we go to the
third generation, we'll have to do even more. In the second generation we take this
complex machine and we try to make it easy to use. That's the wrong approach. It says that
we have a complex machine. For the third generation we should build simple machines. The
way you have to do that is you have to look at the task the people are trying to do and
you simply support that task. The ideal third generation personal computer will not be a
computer. This is an Apple Newton; it's not a computer. I use it for taking notes. So
while I'm listening to things that I want to make a note of, I simply write it down. I
don't think of it as a computer, I think of it as a notepad. And that's the way all of our
future devices ought to be. In your house you have many electric motors. You probably
don't know it, because they are hidden inside of machinery. In the kitchen there are many
electric motors. An electric blender, say for beating eggs, is really an electric motor,
but you don't say, I'm going into the kitchen to use my electric motor. You say, I'm going
to make a cake and I'm going to beat some eggs and then when you do that, you're using a
motor. That's the way it ought to be with a computer. It's just silly to say, I have to
get to my office to use my computer. That's not why we go to our office or that's not why
we go home. We go to accomplish something. And so we should go back to saying: I'm going
to write a letter. Not: I'm going to use my computer. To do that we need a whole new
approach to the way we design these machines. And it's about time we started.
Question 5
Do you see a specific role of the tradition that we have in Italy for design and research
? Do you think that Italy can also be a leader in creating virtual objects as interfaces.
When you see a space there where the better interface is also an interface that can
communicate better with humans, the way the objects created by Italians in the past were
created to communicate with humans in a different way?
Answer
Italians are noted for fine design in fashion, in art, in automobiles, but they're not
noted for design that's usable, so even the clothes may be very pretty, but they're not
necessarily easy to use in everyday activities and a Lamborghini automobile is not easy to
drive, that's not what it's about. It's one that's fast and superior in handling perhaps.
What we need today is a combination of the aesthetic skills that are true in Italian
design today and the technical skills that are true in Italian design and merge that with
humanistic skills of understanding the people who are going to make use of it. So that is
a challenge for the entire world. Nobody has been completely successful at this. But I
believe that as we move into the 21st century, if we expect the complex technology of the
information age to be usable by everybody, we have to meet this challenge successfully. It
is not enough to make something that is easy to use or that fits your life, it has to be
aesthetically pleasing. It has to have a flair, and that's what Italians are so good at.
Combine that with fitting the task and you've won.
Question 6
Do you think interactive television will ever happen?
Answer
What people mean by interactive TV today is silly. What it really means is that I can sell
you things, so I will send you clothes and you will say: "Yes, show me that one or
show me that one. Yes, I'll buy this one. Here's my credit card number." That's
interactive television as it's talked about today. Or maybe I can choose between 500 shows
and I can decide which one I want. But that is not real interaction. In fact, it's not
obvious to me what I would do with interactive television. Now, I could imagine a video
telephone where I talk to other people. In some sense that's interactive television. But I
don't see any future for interactive television. I don't want to interact with my
television set. But on the Internet in this new information world, we do have a different
kind of interaction. What's nice about the Internet is that it's not that I can receive
information, it's that I can send information. Every single person can be an author. So I
can make a homepage on which I show my picture and my children's pictures. And I describe
something about myself. People around the world can come around and look at it and I can
see their homepages and learn who they are. This is true interaction. So, true interaction
is people being equals to one another. What is planned for interactive television is not
among equals, it is the television company sending us things and we are allowed to choose
which one we want. That's not interaction.
Question 7
Do you see that the big change in the evolution of media will come more from new ways of
interacting with people like different forms of user interface, vocal user interface or
some sort of other user interface? Or do you see more in the fact that two-way
communication, multimedia that will bring most of the applications in the future? Where
will the new media come from, from the new way of interfacing or from new structural ways
of communicating people?
Answer
We are in the midst of a very interesting technical revolution. It's the combination of
telephone, television, the computer. It's really not about any of these, it's about access
to knowledge, it's about social interaction. It's a new medium. And with all new
technologies it's almost impossible to predict exactly what will happen because there are
so many different forces coming together pushing it in many different directions. It is
almost accidental the way it develops. I think television will develop in a way where I
have more control over what I want to see and when. I should be able to come home any time
and see whatever the latest news is. I should be able to read a newspaper with the latest
stories as opposed to the newspaper delivered once a day and there are deadlines in
writing stories. Those stories should be written whenever they are written and I can get
access to it whenever I want to. That will happen. In addition, we will have individuals
who will be able to write their own materials or maybe even make simple little television
stories and make them available for everybody else to look at and to watch. We'll have
some true interactive innovation. But you know, it's not easy to write and it's even more
difficult to do a good TV script and even more difficult to do what is called multimedia,
a combination of writing and video and sound. Very few people in the world can do that
well. So I think that we will only have a very few good things as the world progresses.
Everybody can try, but only the very best people will do the things that everybody wants
to watch. But we are in a revolution and new things will happen. The most exciting part is
that things will happen that we cannot think of today.
Question 8
Can you tell us something about the FCC and how the FCC is looking at the new media and
interactive television?
Answer
The Americans are trying to go to the next stage in television. The Federal Communications
Commissio, is trying to establish new standards for television. Well, it has been a mess.
It has taken a long time and it is not over yet. There is only a proposal that has not yet
been agreed upon. And it is not one proposal, it is 14 proposals, so that a television
station can chose which of 14 formats to send a signal in. And on top of this, we have the
old-fashioned way of doing television. We have three major television systems in the
world. In the United States there is NTSC, which stands for "never the same
colour"! In Europe we have PAL and SECAM. In the United States we send 30 pictures a
second, in Europe we send 25 pictures a second. These are incompatible systems. We also
have some technical details, which are unimportant and uninteresting but make a big
difference. These television systems were developed in the 1930s, almost 60 years ago. It
is amazing they have lasted until now. As a result, we have had to do what is called
interlacing. We take half the picture and transmit it and then we show the other picture.
A television picture is made up of many different lines and we show the odd number of
lines first, and then the even number of lines and then the odd number of lines. It is a
weird way to send a picture. As we move into the future, we want to have digital signals,
which are much more resistant to noise and much easier for computers to process. And we
would like what is called square or pixels. The little elements that make up a picture
should be just as distinct vertically as they are horizontally. That's not true today. And
we should no longer have interlacing. We should have what is called progressive scan. We
do the picture once. Finally, it be nice if the entire world agreed upon the same
standards so we could movies or watch television across the world. Well, the Americans got
all involved in the political scramble, especially since the television sets themselves
are made in Europe and in Japan; there are no more television sets being made in the
United States. And so, setting the United States standard has become an international
agenda, with so many different forces that it's almost impossible to agree, and the
result, therefore, is 14 different standards, some of which are quite crazy, some of which
still allow the old interlacing which makes it almost impossible to use in a computer,
some of which have square pixels, some of which don't, some of which make sense, some of
which don't. It's a mess.
Question 9
Would you like to say something about what you're working on?
Answer
Today's computers are just too complicated. Even the Apple Macintosh, which I think is
perhaps the easiest to use, is too complicated. They require big manuals, too many menus,
too many selections, too many complicated applications. It is time to go to the third
generation of computers that are invisible, you don't even see them, they just fit the way
you work. That is what I'm working on. I am the Vice President in charge of the advanced
technology group, which is the group that does research for Apple Computer, and our main
mission is to move us to this next generation, the third generation of computers.
Computers you will not even see. They'll just fit naturally into your everyday life. That
is the dream.
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