Computers are stupid.

I’ve suspected that for a while now and have been saying it out loud only recently. I think much of their stupidity stems from the fact of my communication with them, or lack thereof. First of all, there’s this stupid keyboard on which my hands — evolved for different tools — have trobble typng *^&*#@^%. Granted, this inability of the technology to keep up with my brain, or my fingers’ inability to conform to the keyboard causes me to slow down, to be deliberate, “to think before I stink,” as my high school band director Mr. Terry used to say to the trumpet section. Yet, there’s got to be a better way for me to communicate with my machine that doesn’t make me feel stupid or convince me that the computer is.

The keyboard is only one of the stupid aspects of the computer that stem from interface design, or HCI (Human/Computer Interface). Surely, computers should be able to communicate with us in ways that we are used to communicating with each other, more “naturally” — I put this word in quotation marks because I’m not trying to suggest some biological imperative should be considered superior. However, my naturally evolved biological traits are what I have at the moment, and I want to use them more “naturally” to communicate with the piece of technology that I use increasingly everyday, for work and play. For one of the most sophisticated and pervasive technologies ever invented, the computer remains, basically stupid in its interaction with humans.

OK, here’s what I mean: why can’t I talk to my computer the same way I talk to a colleague or to a friend? Why can’t my computer wake me up in the morning by playing a tune from the new David Gray album cd collection that it downloaded directly from his web site computer while I slept? It should see me stir and greet me with a cooing Hal-like “Good morning, sir.” I would expect a certain degree of formality from my computer, like one might a butler or a friendly agent from American Express. Indeed, my computer should be a butler, an intelligent agent that already knows what I want and brings it to me, rather than the other way around. I’m tired of making concessions for my stupid computer. Google should come to me!

Take as a first step what Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google, have in mind:

“The ultimate search engine,” says Page, “would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.”

The critical path inside the Googleplex includes experimentation with artificial intelligence techniques and new methods of language translation. Brin and Page are hopeful that these efforts will eventually make it possible for people to have access to better information and knowledge without the limitations and barriers imposed by differences in language, location, Internet access, and the availability of electrical power.

My AI should communicate with the Google AI — let’s face it: computers can talk with each other much faster than we can talk with computers — without my having to intervene. The computer should read my genes and become a true extension of me so it knows what to ask Google for. OK, “read my genes” sounds like sf, or at least something out of chapter one of Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but this idea goes back to interface design.

I have eyes, but my computer doesn’t. Why? I have ears; why not my computer? And depending on the relationship you desire with your computer, shouldn’t they be able to feel, too? Stupid computers even get in the way of human communication. One of the reasons that sarcasm doesn’t work via email is because the reader cannot hear the snide inflection on my voice or see the ironic glint in my eye. This is why we invented the emoticon for sarcasm — yet, if computers could see and hear, we could talk and gesticulate in a manner that would allow for more effective communication — in human terms, not computer terms.

Are we lacking the technological sophistication to do this? Perhaps. Or is it that computer companies do not want to take the risk of coming out with a product before the public is ready for it? This move has been disastrous in the past. Take the Apple Newton, for example; the first PDA that I ever heard about. The Newton OS was cool for 1993, but its best feature was its incredible handwriting recognition. Granted, it had to be trained, a process that took me a couple of days, but once it learned my own cursive handwriting, it was 99% accurate. Handwriting is much more “natural” than a keyboard, but the Newton along with its exceptional HCI went the way of the Dodo. There are likely numerous causes for this, but one might very well be that the Newton was way ahead of its time. What do we have now for PDAs and handwriting recognition? Graffiti? Ew: we’re back to technology training me to use it rather than the other way around.

If N. Katherine Hayles is correct and computers are “fundamentally altering the ways in which humans conceive of themselves and their relation to others,” then this deserves some serious thought (“Networks” 291). I’m going to look at these issues in a series of blog entries about HCI that examines how to make computers more human, rather than making us more like computers.

I know that I don’t want to be any more stupid than I have to.