Electric Sheep

When I first learned how to read I had very little idea of how to write. I learned like many others in my generation: by having my parents read to me. They would read the same thing to me several times over. As I started to really pay attention, I would realize the correlation between what they were saying and the symbols and weird signs on the paper in front of us.

Later, I think, I would have supplemental experience in reading added to me by Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and other awesome educational shows made available by the Public Broadcast System. I also started school at age 4, which helped immensely with learning how to communicate not only via text, but also to other human beings in a live setting.

Learning to write is a funny thing. Handwriting is something so personalized and unique that sometimes it can be used as identification. However, it is also something that has to be universal enough so that other people can actually read what is written, to glean the things you have passed along in written form. Early on, writing is typically just clerical copy work, and depending on who teaches the writer, what is written could pass as chicken scratch, or it may be circa 1870 perfect print.

But I don't really want to write about writing. What I want to write about is how we need to get away from writing.

I don't mean to get away from authoring, or from sharing our ideas; what I mean is that we need a better way of passing information on. We need something better suited to where we are going as a culture other than a keyboard or a pencil.

Tablets are the latest craze, apparently. They let us drag along a clipboard sized computer with us wherever we go. Problem is, they're a consumption device, not really a creation device. Older tablets included a keyboard under the screen, or perhaps on the screen itself. This is stupid. It adds weight, adds mechanical parts that could break down, and just perpetuates the insanity of requiring a physical input medium to pass information on.

We are a lazy race.

Some people have likened tablets to the handheld computers in Star Trek:The Next Generation. Indeed, I can see similarities in many of our personal computer and accessories that we consider daily use items with what was shown in the series. However, the striking difference for me is how they put information in.

You didn't see any of the characters typing away on a keyboard, or swiping a single finger around a keyboard on a screen. You saw them talking to the computer. You saw them directly connecting to the computer (in the case of Data, the android). Hell, you even saw them physically interacting with the computer in the Holodeck at times. No keyboards, no weird archaic gestures. It was intuitive, it was rugged, and it was lightweight.

This last point is key. Business people now, as always, are very concerned with weight. They need to get on airplanes, they need to carry stuff around. The last thing they need is an additional few ounces made up by peripherals. They don't need extra cords (or god forbid batteries for wireless peripherals) bogging them down. What they need is a lightweight, small sized, familiar shaped product that will let them gaze into the crystal ball that is the internet and get shit done.

They need to be able to speak to the computer, and have the computer speak back to them. They need to be able to gesture to a whole wall and have the information they're after come to life and show them what is important. They need to be able to pinpoint where and when and all that in very little time, and with very little weight added to their carry-on.

Gamers need this too. Why compress all our being into thumbs and index fingers? Why not give us the awesomeness of the Kinect in every game? And extend that to every application? When it doesn't make sense to have a whole body be the controller, just code the thing to watch for my facial expressions, or hand gestures (like ASL).

I may be an old grey-beard in the corner. I may remember what it was to set up message netting between BBSs that would send emails out at scheduled times really late in the night. I may even scoff at things that sales and marketing dream up (you mean you can't get this done in an hour? I'm just asking for the whole world's data to be cross indexed with the whole galaxy's data). But I think that in order for things to really move to the next level, we need to drop some of this old-timey crap and move forward.

Either that, or destroy civilization as we know it so I can farm and live out my post-apocalyptic dreams for real real.