Not to besmirch the Vermersch...

Beyond the interesting findings in Light and Wakeman's article (2001) and their implications for designing web interfaces, what intrigued me was the Vermersch interviewing technique. A Google search revealed an earlier paper that had been produced (Light, 1999) that discusses in greater depth their application of this technique for the same study on website user perceptions and text entry fields. Heretofore having only been used in France and applied to non-HCI activities from exploring the performance of professional sports players to helping to remove 'mental blocks' in remedial students, this 'explicitation interviewing' technique was determined to be the best approach for gathering data at the depth and granularity needed for this study.

To someone with a memory that is increasingly disappointing in both the long- and short-term arenas, it seems questionable that the interviewer would be able to gather any meaningful data by asking a user to detail the last time they visited a site where they were asked to enter personal information. Granted, this was back in 2001 when even a 9 to 11 split of female to male participants was considered too heavily weighted towards women and non-representative of general web users, so web usage was perhaps both limited to a more narrow segment of the population as well as not so frequent amongst those who were users. Certainly, I remember the splash page was only starting to wane around that time, with many sites' web presence being seen as an extension of their paper-based brochures. No input from users necessary. There were definitely a lot fewer forms--I think. Still, it seems akin to asking me to recall the last time I did the laundry, in painful detail. It wouldn't help that I am supposed to focus on one single instance of an activity I probably performed with little self-awareness. I wouldn't trust myself not to accidentally pull in recollections from previous times so that my account soon becomes a conglomeration of multiple experiences to better flesh out the narrative for my listener. This would surely distort the data.

So I wondered why the experiment wasn't more controlled, why the site visits didn't occur just before the interview, and videotaped to the benefit of both interviewer and interviewee. In their pilot studies they had adopted this approach, having the participant visit a designated site, then verbalize afterwards all their thoughts as they were reading and interacting with the pages. As it turned out, this led to a deluge of irrelevant thoughts about how the user felt about participating in the study, and how it contrasted against the manner in which they would normally choose to use a website. Since motivation underlies one's perception of an activity, and motivation was being toyed with for the sake of the experiment, this would have fundamentally undermined the aim of the study in determining nuances in user perceptions. Furthermore, if the interviewee had been shown a videotape of themselves as they were visiting a given site and told to verbalize their thoughts as they were doing this or that, instead of achieving the evocative gaze into space where they are able to re-live the activity in their minds and thereby focus more deeply on their thoughts rather than peripheral concerns, they would be examining themselves, using the video to post-process their thoughts and rationalize their actions. Not acceptable.

Besides relying on interviewer skill to avoid leading questions with more care than warranted by the usual user testing (rather than simply ‘what did you see?’ the properly posed question would be 'what did you see, or hear, or think, or whatever?’), the Vermersch technique also adopts some concepts from neuro-linguistic programming. Given three modalities--visual, audible, and kinesthetic--the interviewer would use the dominant modality as a basis for breaking down into sub-modalities and further exploration to help 'pin down' memories. Also, by making the use of the social tendency to echo body language, if the interviewee is making too much eye contact with the interviewer, the interviewer may staring off at a wall in a subtle effort to induce 'the gaze' in their interviewee. 

Also interesting and not discussed in the 2001 paper was the idea of the interviewer-subject 'contract.' The participant's agreement to this contract is essential to the success of the interview, and the significance of this seems not to be underestimated. Although the contents of this contract are not revealed in any detail, general remarks about it indicated that it would include a willingness to full cooperation in openly answering questions as they were asked. It was mentioned that there were times when it became necessary to remind the participant of their agreement to this contract in order to guide an interview along. I imagine this contract would include specific instructions against fabricating details. Again, though, there was no explicit mention of issues of deliberate dishonesty or inaccuracy on the part of the interviewee other than that a few of them admitted to having some mischievous thoughts and deliberately giving false information on the forms they had filled out during their website visit. This was apparently a good thing--evidence of both the interviewee's web savviness--they had wanted an intermediate user-base--as well as testimony to the effectiveness of the technique in revealing deep (and dark) thoughts. Still, the interviewer in the study seemed to take everything they were told at face value.

Other than the questionable integrity of interviewee accounts, the explicitation interviewing technique seems to be a good one that can be called upon given the aims of a study, and more likely to be used in conjunction with other approaches. Thinking back to a project from last semester in which we followed test subjects around a grocery store then conducted post-observation interviews, this technique could have been employed to deal with an isolated few minutes of the observation period to reveal thoughts that could not have been anticipated. Instead of relying on my own generalized--and somewhat leading--questions, I may have gleaned some real insights. Analysis of these inner thoughts may have led to designing more helpful features in our application--or better yet, isolated the truly essential ones. 

~ Jenny Wang

It took me two hours to figure out how to post this...

Several months ago I was mournfully greeted with news of the passing of my favorite author, James Graham Ballard. Ballard, a brilliant explorer of the delicate human mind in the face of technology and change, impacts my life to this very day. Whether I am trying to emulate his graceful writing style or trying to fathom the complexities of the human condition, Ballard is, and shall always be, my launch pad for thought, creativity, and introspection.


When Ballard died, I was taken aback. Emotions I had yet to define consumed my thoughts. I was devastated that the world must forge forward without his prophetic visions, crafted images of the future that warn of darker days. I had to do something.


With my mind clouded by a strangely disconnected grief, I sought solace in the technological landscape that rested beyond the boundaries of cyberspace. Within this electronic realm my words might reach an audience of thousands of readers like myself.


The BBC, the website that first heralded the grim news, carried with it an option to write a short "guestbook-style" post regarding my reactions to Ballard's death. "My" reactions...


In the past, I would often read reactions to articles when the BBC offered guestbook-style postings, though there was always a sense of separation that permeated the writing. It may have simply followed that I am cocky or overwhelmingly fastidious when it comes down to the written word, but each circumstantial precis, each account from around the world, lacked a sense of integrity. It was as though the authors knew that they were writing within a bastardized medium, a place where information assumes a negative connotation because of the public understanding. However, this would soon change.


My eyes locked on the open text box as neither adversary nor challenge, but as an opportunity. Competition seared through my blood as my fingers deftly crafted words so fragile that a wisp of air would send them toward oblivion. In a few minutes, my eulogy for Ballard was complete. Proudly, I submitted my account. It was done. I had entered text into the cyber-realm and would await the accolades that follow.


Praise never came.


Every hour, I renewed the webpage, waiting to see if someone had "liked" my account. Nothing. The competition that once consumed my passion was replaced by frustration and anger. How dare the denizens of the web deny me glory! How dare my text fall upon uncaring eyes! A new devastation came upon me. It was not the unease of registering for an online service such as amazon.com or other shopping sites - that was business as usual, and the text was crafted without concern for an audience. No, this was a sensation of grave denial, but not internally. Rather, I was denied what I had anticipated. I was denied the satisfaction of knowing that someone out there cared in the least about what I had to say.


I was defiant for several hours, even after I left the computer. But after I calmed down, I realized that glory is fleeting when you traverse the internet. The web grows exponentially, and without that humility in mind, anyone will readily suffer the agonies of defeat. However, should we be made to suffer at the hands of an electronic construct?


My understanding of psychological interactions has always been tainted by "the chicken or the egg" metaphor - does cognitive science follow common sense or does the common sense itself derive from the century of research that has become implanted within our cultural understanding?


Regardless, I know that each user will approach the machine, that engaging, yet ominous presence, within the confines of his or her own subjective view. This presents several problems, especially those that Light and Wakeman confronted in their research. Following the rigid confines of scientific method - confines that, for a change, reinforce repetition rather than disintegrating subjectivity - these researchers employed a method of studying text on the web as an element of interaction with the machine. Some were frustrated, some were confused, but most saw this interaction as a means toward a goal. Interestingly, as the researchers note, the machine ceases to partition itself from the human world. As it assumes the role of a companion rather than a tool, users shift their pronouns from "it" to the "they" and even "he." What does this mean? Certainly we cannot really believe that this device deserves the dignity of a human being! Isaac Asimov himself asserted that robots (machines) are subject to the whims of their human creators.


But step back for a moment...


Things are not desperately amiss. Rather, this interaction, guided by that same subjectivity that possesses us to qualify the machine as a fellow, bestows upon it the dignity that we feel it needs. If I spoke directly to television screen, or a radio, or an electric guitar, someone might have the presumptions to deign me mad. Maybe we grant the machine human like qualities because we understand that we need to relate our interaction toward something recognizable. Again, this is not to say that we must always follow this pattern of interaction because we recognize things as human-like, but rather it affords the machine an opportunity to become an extension of the human intellect. It affords us speed and adept processing that solidifies the thoughts faster than a human can consider. If I may quote my beloved hero of the ages, Soren Kierkegaard (whose epistemic principles go criminally unheeded):


"A man wishes to make an important confession, but the man he wises to unbosom himself to does not come at once, so he says something quite different..."


With the text that we enter to a machine, we record a snippet of life as it happens. Light and Wakeman knew this principle well when they designed their research, because the only system that worked eliminated direction, but preserved the subtle subjectivity of the user must bring to truly eliminate the partition.

When I wrote about Ballard, I knew that I was inscribing my words into cyberspace. I knew, that in all reality, only a handful of people would see them. But despite my agitation, I was still proud to instill my reflections within this realm. And I knew that even though it was "merely" words on a page, they could carry with them a message that unifies myself with the past, myself with the present, and myself with the machine.

PLATO: The Seed that Grew into Today’s Virtual Worlds

In the few weeks of the semester that have passed thus far, I’ve had the opportunity to begin researching a subject that has intrigued me in recent months. Virtual worlds were an entirely foreign concept to me until last year’s conference of the Society of Technical Communication, where I attended several presentations on the future possibilities of technical communication in these 3D immersive environments. The concept of a persistent (in existence 24 hours a day, year round) virtual environment, where people from all over the world interact in ways very similar to the ways people interact in the “real world” has incredible potential in the field of technical communication and beyond. I had my first virtual world experience last week, as I created an “avatar” in the popular virtual world, Second Life. I’ve probably spent a combined total of 15 minutes wandering this virtual world, and at this point everything is brand new to me. However, as I thought about a potential subject for a historical study, it occurred to me that the concept of virtual worlds cannot be a brand new one. I decided that it would be extremely interesting to determine when exactly people started to congregate online, for social purposes. At some point in time, people started to build relationships via computer (or some other electronic medium) with people who they had never met, and were not likely to ever meet in person. Communities of “friends” were established within the realm of some sort of network, and before long people were immersed in their interactions with these communities. But when did it all start? Who were the pioneers of virtual worlds?

I began my research by studying the history of virtual worlds. I read about the first web-based virtual worlds, and was disappointed to find that they have apparently only existed for a few short years. I decided to branch out in my research and see if I could find another area of research that my have indirectly led to the creation of virtual worlds. That path led me to virtual reality hardware, first created in the form of Morton Heilig’s “Sensorama.” However that wasn’t close enough. Virtual reality hardware is rarely used in combination with “virtual worlds” like Second Life, so I felt like I had reached a dead end. Apparently virtual worlds simply appeared a few years ago, with no clear pioneers or historic projects that laid the foundation for them. Then it occurred to me that virtual worlds are really an evolved version of online social networking communities. I determined that there are a few key modes of communication that make online socializing possible, and that was were I should focus my research. It wasn’t long before I found PLATO.

In the years following World War II, and more specifically the early years of the “space race” between the United States and the U.S.S.R., it became clear that the U.S. higher education system was insufficient. The U.S.S.R. had managed technological advancements that the United States could not, and had managed to launch the first Sputnik satellite into space, a feat which the United States had unsuccessfully attempted to accomplish on more than one occasion. The US government determined that improvements were needed in science and engineering education in America, and in 1958 a conference was held to determine how best to move forward with these improvements. The conference, led by the U.S. Air Force’s Office of Scientific Research, decided that computer-based learning had the potential to provide better education for a reduced cost.

By 1960 a group of scientists from the University of Illinois has launched the PLATO I system. PLATO was a computer-based curriculum delivery system, which allowed instructors to develop content using the system’s proprietary TUTOR programming language. Initially the system could only instruct one user at a time. In 1961 the system was expanded to instruct two users simultaneously, and by the late 70’s the system could handle nearly 1000 simultaneous users.

Initially, funding for the project was limited, but in 1967 the National Science Foundation determined that the project was sufficiently valuable to warrant constant funding. With this grant from the NSF, Donald Bitzer, one of the scientists from the University of Illinois, created the Computer-Based Education Research Laboratory (CERL). Research conducted at CERL allowed PLATO to be enhanced with innovative features, including “advanced” bitmap graphics, a speech synthesizer, and local terminal program execution (as opposed to all programs being executed on the mainframe). In 1972 the PLATO system was demonstrated to a group from Xerox PARC. The group was so impressed with some of the unique features that the PLATO system was capable of that they adopted many of them for their own systems. The PLATO system included a “Show Display” program for generating images. This was later adopted as the “Graphics-Draw” program on the Xerox Star system. The PLATO system had a “Charset Editor” for drawing new characters to be used by the system. This program was adopted and improved to create the “Doodle” program used by PARC. Other features were also adopted by the Xerox PARC team and many of them eventually found their way into Apple computers. Other PLATO innovations included the first plasma display, and the first touch screen.

While the PLATO system pioneered a great many innovative technologies, many of which are still in use today (in some form), the most interesting innovations (in my opinion), and the most pertinent to my research on the genesis of virtual worlds were largely unintentional innovations. PLATO included several communication tools, which were designed to allow students and instructors to communicate for collaborative learning. An application called PLATO Notes was similar to modern message boards, and was eventually developed into Lotus Notes. The tool was intended to carry education-related messages, but as the PLATO user-base expanded around the globe, students began using the message boards for other things. One particular student, known in the PLATO community as Dr. Graper began using the message boards to post short stories, which soon became exceedingly popular. Initially the stories were viewed as inappropriate for posting to an education tool, but interest in them was so great that a message board was eventually established exclusively for the posting of his stories, known as Grapenotes. In addition to the message board feature, PLATO had a chat feature called Talkomatic, which allowed up to five users to have a conversation together. Each user’s screen was split into five boxes (or up to five boxes). The text that the various chat participants typed appeared in real time (character by character) in the box assigned to them. That way multiple users could type at the same time, without creating a jumbled mess of text. Talkomatic even included a small set of emoticons, which are common in modern chat and instant messaging. Talkomatic was the first known instance of chat rooms, which I consider to be the driving force behind people socializing online and forms remote online communities. Talkomatic did not allow users to request chat sessions with particular people, so users would just hang out in the chat rooms to chat with whoever dropped by (much like today’s chat rooms and even virtual worlds). PLATO also had other communication features designed for educational use, which were “misused” for social purposes instead, such as Term-Talk (an instant messaging application that allowed users to send messages to a specific person), desktop sharing, and Personal Notes (an early form of email).

Student users of PLATO quickly realized the social and entertainment value of the PLATO system and before long, these students also realized the system’s potential to host online, multiplayer games. During the 70’s and 80’s, games like Airfight (flight simulator), Empire (a 30-person online space simulation), Spasim (much like Empire), Pedit5 (the first dungeon-based graphical computer game), dnd (Dungeons and Dragons), Panther (3D tank simulation), Build-Up (maze game), Avatar (dungeon-based role playing game), Freecell, etc. had been developed by students. Students became immersed in these games (much like people become immersed in online multiplayer role playing games today), to the extent that instructors and administrators of the PLATO system has to put a background process in place, called “The Enforcer” which could block game play to prevent students from being distracted from their educational pursuits.

Driven by the widespread use of PLATO’s communication tools for social purposes, as well as the increasing participation in the many 3D immersive multiplayer online games available in the PLATO environment, online social communities quickly grew out of this tool designed exclusively to deliver educational curricula. Before the internet ever existed, people were using PLATO to immerse themselves in virtual environments (such as the games mentioned), which allowed them to develop relationships with users around the world who shared similar interests. If this all sounds strikingly similar to today’s social networking environments and virtual worlds, I believe it’s because PLATO was the birthplace of these computer-based communication/interaction tools, which even today seem new to novice users like myself. The last PLATO system was retired in 2006, but the PLATO community had disappeared long before that. In 1989 the PLATO name was sold and active development was stopped. Corporate infighting, as well as poor fiscal planning had prevented PLATO from being a real commercial success. Elements of the PLATO system were later developed into educational software produced by Pearson Digital Learning, and other educational software companies. However, PLATO’s real contributions were made use of in the internet, which was developing in parallel with PLATO, and which began taking shape as a social networking/interaction tool in the 1990’s. Even today, the social aspects of the internet and more specifically of virtual worlds are not that different (under the skin) than the world of PLATO.

A view of the road ahead through the rear view mirror

Looking back often reveals new perspectives and deeper levels of understanding of the present and can provide insights into the future. Why, when computer mediated collaborative communication (cmcc) technology such as the person-to-person (video and shared desktops) tools Douglas Engelbart prototyped in 1962, are we just starting to use the tools today? Has the downturn of the economy been the catalyst for this new paradigm of communication? It’s difficult to not find news of ways enterprises are cutting back on expenses to remain viable. One significant expense shared by many is employee travel. Costs are not limited to the obvious expenses of the hotel, food, transportation, etc. but extend to the opportunity costs of the employee’s lost productivity while traveling. Since the early 60’s is this the first time the economy as a sole factor could drive the wide spread use of cmcc or are there other factors contributing to the popularization of cmcc?

Has the technology been so cost prohibitive that only a few could afford to develop cmcc tools based on deep and developed communication models? Licklider and Taylor suggested that in 1968 most governments could not afford it and continued to argue that there would come a point in time when governments would not be able to NOT afford it. Has that time finally come, close to forty years later? Are there other factors contributing to this lag in the evolution of our communication?

Can the resistance to wide use and adoption of cmcc tools be attributed to other factors such as current communication models that can’t be aligned with the technology? If the notion that for communication to be effective it must be performed in person, face-to-face is released the experience has the potential to transcend beyond imaginable possibilities and to offer the development of synergies not yet conceived. If the “traditional” face-to-face model can be expanded to the use of multi-faceted computer aid, communication can become sigmergic in nature. With cmcc tools being available anytime, anywhere colleagues can collaborate based on their energy, interest and available time. The process to achieve goals is not stalled in waiting for leadership to make assignments and check work. Research can be performed to produce richer contributions translating into more meaningful communications. Models as suggested by Licklider and Taylor would need to be reassessed and redefined.

I am in agreement with Licklider and Taylor; no one knows all information pertaining to a particular subject. Humans for the most part want to communicate and be social. One could also argue that we are natural collaborators. Once experiencing the synergies of real collaboration that can be achieved so eloquently using cmcc tools it’s difficult to digress to more solitary models of working together such as collaboration by staple. We have all seen it, or perhaps even personally experienced it. A task is assigned. The work is then divided amongst the assignees. Each person does their assigned part, on their own in isolation of the others. In the best case, they will meet before completion to merge the individual sections together and discuss the pieces and how best to melt them together. Copy and paste is often the “glue” that pieces the document together.

In contrast, the results of true collaboratively crafted work, it is difficult if not impossible to discern individual work as all participants have taken part in the work as a whole not just their part. This brings back the notion of breaking out of traditional communication models and moving towards models that are enhanced by the technology and promote new ways of working and thinking.

my apologies to everyone for posting this late. ~Jami

Augmenting Human Compassion

Augmenting Human Compassion
“Augmenting human intellect” represents one of the continual goals of any well-designed technology. In the course of our readings, three major influences have sprung up time and again as to how we, as a society, may go about using technology to evolve our cognitive capabilities. For Douglas Engelbart (1962), technology may do so by leveraging already existing perceptual mappings or by bringing the mental abilities of a person up to a level of more complex thought through various methods including “streamlined terminology” and “powerful concepts.” Licklider (1960) also defines a similar concept called “man-computer symbiosis”, a system whereby humans and computers work in conjunction to “think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.” William Ross Ashby (1956) also wrote of “amplifying intelligence” in his work on cybernetics. However, intelligence needs to be countered and balanced by basic moral and ethical considerations. I would argue that the foundation of these considerations lies squarely with an entity’s capability to feel compassion. Additionally, with a certain level of compassion (and intelligence), ethics, as in a listing of rules or system of conduct, becomes secondary. So, instead of concentrating on the aspect of human cognitive evolution defined as intellect, I would like to find methods for augmenting human compassion using digital media.
Compassion as a component of a healthy mental state and as a necessity for a large societal organization is a sometimes marginalized concept. That may be because it is seen as a responsibility of parents and families to develop compassion in their children. Certain concepts are only slowly adopted into the mainstream’s consideration. As it is, the research into human-computer interaction focuses mainly on functionality and usability. Even more human-centered designs are concerned with business considerations such as turnaround and click-through analytics.
For example, while reading Myers’ A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology, I found that the introduction clearly states that his history only covers the “computer side of HCI” and that “a companion article on the history of the ‘human side,’ discussing the contributions from psychology, design, human factors and ergonomics would also be appropriate.” This “human side” approach would form the basis of my research project for determining how one might augment human compassion.
Discovering what makes one more compassionate would be the first topic for research. Within the context of digital media and within the constraints of one semester, it seems daunting to hone compassion down to a measurable aspect, but I hope that by making an open call for ideas that some epiphany will come about.
From the historical perspective, we can see that in developing his conceptual framework for augmenting human intellect, Engelbart defines the objectives for his study and covers his basic perspective. He promotes leaving room for intuition or a human’s “feel for a situation”. For augmenting compassion, I would also say that one would have to leave room for epiphany as well.
My first avenue for exploration could include researching whether or not any current internet memes act to augment compassion. From cute LOLCATS with funny captions to YouTube videos like Christian the Lion, does sharing these with others help to augment our society’s overall level of compassion? And, conversely, is sharing morbid imagery damaging to compassion? One caveat comes with the level of interaction that might be necessary for long-term effects. If one sees something, is it enough to have a persisting effect? Or must one also be involved somehow to ensure a stable change in mentality?
Given these possibilities for investigation, another avenue for exploration that might prove to engender long-term increases in compassion levels would involve the integration of a participation component through interactive art or music. If a lack of compassion stems from a lack of empathy with others or with a disconnect from humanity or nature, then a key component to developing compassion in others would involve creating a palpable connection to others and, thereby, to humanity in general. With interactive art, the person becomes a component of the creation, a powerful metaphor that might prove helpful for compassion development. However, a connection beyond the computer might also be necessary for augmentation. An association from human to art piece to creator of art piece to humanity would be ideal.
Following Engelbart’s format, the objective of a study taking in the previous suppositions and conjectures would include the following goals: (1) to find the factors that determine a given individual’s level of compassion; and (2) to develop methods that would act to augment human compassion using digital media. Engelbart’s specifications for his framework still fit for this research direction.
Step one would be to find a test for compassion so that quantitative results can verify any changes over time, from before exposure to the stimulus to afterwards. Step two would involve testing non-participatory stimuli such as the YouTube videos for changes in levels of compassion. Step three could then cover participatory situations of varying complexity.
As this blog post/response essay is written in response to our second week’s readings on the subject of History in Perspective, any further reading suggestions along these lines of augmenting compassion, augmenting empathy, or developing emotional intelligence would be greatly appreciated. Any studies that have been performed on the effect of interactive art would also be of great interest to me. Usually I am not one for trying to pin down the exact meaning or relevance of a piece of art, but in the context of a compassionate evolution I would concede the necessity for some formal investigation into the matter.
I believe that the nexus of intelligence and compassion would negate the need for overly strict rules that may be based on a narrow or subjective morality. The ultimate goal for technological society must include room for this augmented compassion.

--Christine Rosakranse, Master's Student: HCI - RPI

Consulting the Memex

A major refrain in Vannevar Bush's As We May Think article is the notion of consulting – how are we to wrangle, sift, or otherwise make sense of the growing the mountains of data humans are creating. Throughout his exploration of possibilities, Bush prophesies the advent of many current and emerging technologies: the digital camera – although he didn't have the terminology (page 4), the photocopier (page 4), the scientific calculator (page 7), the home computer (page 8), credit cards (page 9), the scanner (page 10), a Windows-like operating system (page 10), and arguably more – including the birth of the semantic web (page 11). Seeing how much of the world I know in 2009 was still a dream in the making in 1945, I took a brief survey of the advancements in various technologies as I have experienced them in my 38 years. Bear with me... this is illuminating considering how much of Bush's ideas have since come to exist:

The year before I was born, the 5¼ inch floppy disk was invented followed shortly by the dot-matrix printer and microprocessor. And although the existence of the VCR coincides with my birth, it wasn't until after the late 70's until it hit the commercial market.

1972 marked the appearance of the first word processor – and the first video game, Pong. The next year, Xerox announced the creation of the ethernet. In 1975, the laser printer was invented, followed by the ink-jet printer in 76.

The first spreadsheet was released in 1978, the year before cell phones and the Cray supercomputer were invented. It's no surprise that MS-DOS and the first IBM-PC share a birth year (1981). Three years later, Apple invented the Macintosh, and CD-ROMs hit the streets. Windows is released in 1985, during my last year in middle school. By the time I graduate, digital cellular phones and high-definition television have been invented.

My freshman year of high school, I owned a Kaypro 4-84 with two 5¼ inch floppies, monochrome monitor, internal modem operating at 96k baud rate, and a processor speed of 4mhz. It was a portable computer weighing in at 36 pounds.

The year after I graduated, Time Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web and Internet protocol (HTTP) and WWW language (HTML). Five years later, it is truly world wide. About that time, the DVD came into existence. In 2001, our relationship to information changes when Apple introduces the iPod. Half a decade later YouTube and Twitter both hit big around 2006.

After all that has come to pass – much of it predicted by Vannevar Bush, we are still precisely in the same situation as we were in 1945 in regards to consulting (or navigating) the great storehouse of human knowledge. We've moved past film and microfiche – both on the road to technological extinction. We're in digital land now, and we've got more information than be conceived. Part of our modern quandary is that it isn't just scientists creating and parsing the data. The digital realm is far more egalitarian – anyone with access can create content. More so than at any point in our history does the catastrophe of “truly significant attainments becom[ing] lost in the mass of the inconsequential” become a risk, especially as we move fully into the age of crowdsourcing.

We are now living in the information age, and many great minds are now bent to the task of sorting out how best to deal with the volume of information our age is issuing. As with many of Bush's predicitons, I think he hit the nail on the head in regards to creating associative links between points of knowledge. We're already doing that with tags. Tagging may be the way information is cultivated in the future: “Selection by association, rather than by indexing, may yet be mechanized” (10).

Logging off the memex,
Mark Oppenneer

A brief history of Human Computer Interaction Technology

The article, “A Brief History of Human-Computer Interaction Technology” is a brief description of the history of HCI technology from 1950s to 1990s. In the article, Brad A. Myers talks about the importance of research at universities’ research labs or at corporate or government supporting research labs in the development of HCI technology. Especially, university research labs have led to many innovative HCI technologies. Figure 1 on p.46 shows that, for the major HCI technologies, university research was started earlier than the corporate research or commercial products development.

Recently, HCI technology has been rapidly developed and diversified, so it seems that we are trying to interact with almost every object around us in a way that wasn’t possible before. However, the basic concepts and ideas about the way to interact with computers or computer equipped objects originated from the research labs in the 1950s. These technologies include Hypertext and Multimedia; the ways to input information with machines, like mouse, tablet, and motion sensing device; and effective representations, like GUI and Three-Dimensionality. Also, these ways to interact with machines change the way we understand and interact with the world.

For some of the innovative foundation technologies, when they were born in a research lab, even developers didn’t know how they would be used in the future and how they would change the world. For example, the idea for hypertext which makes possible today’s internet was initially tried in universities’ research labs like Stanford University, Brown University and The University of Vermont. Then, the hypertext idea was developed into World Wide Web, which was created at the government-funded European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN) and developed at the University of Illinois’ National Center (NCSA) (p.49). This technology was not only a starting point of the internet but also changed people’s way of thinking from linear and directional to non linear and multidirectional. Also, all these fundamental changes were made possible by creative experiments at research labs, and today’s HCI technology is being developed according to the basic concepts of these changes.

Another important fact that Myers mentions is government funds that make a lot of HCI research possible. Even though there were a lot of technologies and interfaces that were funded by companies like IBM, Xerox, and Apple in the history of HCI, the more fundamental and conceptual changes and experimental trials were started by government funding. For example, The Mouse was developed with funding from ARPA and NASA (p.47). Virtual Reality technology, which is now being developed by many private companies like Microsoft and Nintendo, was also started by government funds from the Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency.

To illustrate the importance of research labs and government support for the research labs, Myers describes what kind of HCI technologies have been created and how the technologies were developed. This helps basic understanding about the field of HCI. Myers explains four different types of technologies: Basic Interactions, Applications, Up-and-coming Areas, and Software Tools and Architectures. For the Basic Interaction technology, he talks about early technologies of basic interface for interaction with computer, such as mouse, windows, and the way to operate objects on screen. For applications, he talks about drawing and text editing programs, hypertext, CAD, and graphical video games. For Up-and-Coming Areas, he talks about technologies for the near future, such as gesture recognition, three dimensionality, VR, AR, etc. For Software Tools and Architectures, he talks about technologies to create interfaces, like UI software tools and interface builders, and Component Architectures.

Reading this article, I thought that the importance and effect of research labs is not limited to the field of HCI. New concepts and technologies in HCI have been an important role in other fields. For instance, the development of electronic art and media art has been largely affected by HCI research. Myron Kruger’s early media art works, like “Videoplace”, would not be possible without his HCI research in the Computer Science lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His early works using interactive technology between art work and participants have become some of the most important and innovative works in Interactive Art. HCI technology brought conceptual changes as well as stylistic changes in art. Interaction and participation technologies like Computer-Supported Cooperative made people think of art itself more as a process by artists’ and audiences’ participation than an object completed by an artist.

Lastly, this article focuses on the importance of a research lab in development of new HCI technologies. However, I think, the role of research labs would be also very important for evaluation of existing technology.


Byul Shin