| In hardly more than half a century, computers have become integral parts of everyday life, at home, work, and play. Today, computers affect almost every aspect of modern life, in areas as diverse as car design, filmmaking, disability services, and sex education.Human-computer interaction (HCI) is a vital new field that examines the ways in which people communicate with computers, robots, information systems, and the Internet. It draws upon several branches of social, behavioral, and information science, as well as on computer science and electrical engineering. The traditional heart of HCI has been user interface design, but in recent years the field has expanded to include any science and technology related to the ways that humans use or are affected by computing technology. HCI brings to the fore social and ethical issues that hitherto existed only in the pages of science fiction. For a sense of the wide reach of HCI, consider the following vignettes:
■ Gloria, who owns a small fitness training business, is currently trying out a new system in which she and a client dance on sensor pads on the floor, while the computer plays rhythms and scores how quickly they are placing their feet on the designated squares.
■ Elizabeth has made friends through chatrooms connected to French and British music groups that are not well known in the United States. She occasionally shares music files with these friends before buying CDs from foreign online distributors, and she has helped one of the French bands translate its website into English.
■ Carl’s work team develops drivers for new color printers far more quickly and effectively than before, because the team comprises expert designers and programmers who live in different time zones around the world, from India to California, collectively working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by means of an Internet-based collaboration system.
■ Bella is blind, but her wearable computer uses Internet and the Global Positioning System not only to find her way through the city safely but also to find any product or service she needs at the best price and to be constantly aware of her surroundings.
■ Anderson, whose Internet moniker is Neo, discovers that his entire life is an illusion, maintained by a vast computer plugged directly into his nervous system.
The first three stories are real, although the names are pseudonyms, and the scenarios are duplicated millions of times in the modern world of personal computers, office automation, and the World Wide Web. The fourth example could be realized with today’s technology, simply given a sufficient investment in infrastructure.Not only would it revolutionize the lives of blind people like Bella, it would benefit the sighted public too, so we can predict that it will in fact become true over the next decade or two. The story about Mr. Anderson is pure fiction, no doubt recognizable to many as the premise of the 1999 film The Matrix. It is doubtful that HCI ever could (or should) become indistinguishable from real life. |
