Friday, October 31, 2008

ev0lut1on

We had a course in the last year of faculty called "Evolved Interfaces".
It talked about cute stuff like how a menu should ideally hold no more than 7 items, a notion which I later heard, during another course, in the form of "humans have a 3-bit memory", to which I quickly crafted a reply I (very wisely) never uttered.
Besides the cute stuff, the main stuff was about Web thingies. Sitez, Blags, F0rumz, Chats and the likes. We actually had to make a team project which consisted of a website using modern xml-y and javascripty and CMSy stuff and an accompanying blog. The site had hit counters and points (which made up a percentage of the course's final grade) were awarded for hits and Google PageRank. This is why each year around this time, people start putting up weird Messenger statuses linking to their Evolved Interfaces projects. People click the links because they sound intriguing and students get hits. This pollutes Messenger contact lists.
Evolved Interfaces is the only course I've had which mentions "Web 2.0" as a valid concept. I find that revolting.
Semi-off-topic: stupid TV commercial for Orange: "...I'm Reeves, the first too point ooh poet and I'm inspired..." bla bla. No, you're just an idiot who "uploads downtown and downloads uptown" and thinks that's so fucking creative and poetic.
Back on topic, I'm not saying that webby stuff isn't evolved interfaces, but until I can tell my light bulb "dim please" or "turn off please", and my air conditioner "computer, 20 degrees please", I'm not buying it. I mean we're in the 21st fucking century and I still can't buy an affordable, widely-available product that takes voice commands and performs useful stuff such as opening my windows (the real ones not the broken ones), flushing my toilet or heating up my dinner. Or at least changing the TV channel. And intelligently replying to queries such as "computer, tell me how that vote in the Parliament on the teachers' salary raise went". That's what I'd call an evolved interface.

3 comments:

Michael said...

De ce ai vrea sa ai o toaleta care sa functioneze pe baza de comanda vocala cand exista toalete care trag apa singure in momentul in care iesi din cabina?

PS: nu stiam ca ti-ai tras blog :)

etor said...

I will agree to you. Ntl, web two zero is not about vocal communication with your computer, but more about a better organization of things, more about semantics not in the interface with the humans, but in the fundaments of itself as a system.

razvan784 said...

D'oh! Of course it's not about vocal communication. Web 2.0 does not exist. That's what I was saying.