Subject: Re: And you guys thought PalmPilots were useless ....
Sun May 03 21:14:32 1998



>CYBERHOME
>Forrester Research predicts that by 2002, 10% of U.S. households will
>contain networked electronic devices, such as refrigerators that alert
>homeowners it's time to buy milk, or intelligent sprinkler systems that
>kick on when the weather report calls for clear skies.  

*sigh*

this kind of thing is a perennial bugaboo for me.. it's a design
process driven by what's possible rather than what's desirable,
and it gets on my nerves.

my anti-favorite was an article on nanotechnology that raved
about the possibility of a heads-up reading lamp that would
automatically adjust its reflector to light the part of the page
user is reading *right now*.   in my experience, any time a
machine gets that sensitive, you run a serious risk of having it
go off and pout because you've hurt its feelings.

i'm perfectly happy reading by the light from my fireplace,
which goes wherever *it* wants, thank you.   when i run out of
milk, i don't need to put the empty container back in the
'fridge so it can tell me about it (hint: the milk runs out when
the container is *outside* the 'fridge).. i just flip the
mold-beast that lives inside a coupla bucks, and ask it to pick
up another gallon when it has the time.

my personal opinion is that machines which try to be helpful
need to be reprogrammed with a very large hammer.   humans have
the capacity for thought, and should be helpful whenever
possible.   machines are incapable of thought, so they should be
obedient and understandable.   confusing the one with the other
is almost always an invitation for disaster.


i do think it will be a good thing to have appliances which can
be controlled through well-designed GUI applications on a
central computer.. my mother would finally be able to set the
clock on her VCR.. but that's not making the machines any
smarter.   it's just moving the control interface off to another
machine that's much better at user interaction.