Guess what the future is

There are so many ways to get data into a computer and they are so fascinating that sometimes we tend to become hypnotised by them. But does it matter? I suspect that machine control is slipping out of our hands and into 'the system'.
    After years of false dawns, I'm getting to the stage where I don't believe some of the weirder methods will ever be useful. I've tried talking to computers, and I don't think it will ever really be useful as, even when I talk to humans, they don't seem to understand me half the time. The problem isn't the man-machine interface, but the tool; speech isn't precise.
    Similarly, I'm underwhelmed by gesture-based systems. I reviewed one system, Gyration's Optical Professional Wireless Suite, for my website. It calls for you to wave the mouse around in the air and it produces results; but I don't feel that this is the way to go either. Much the same applies to handwriting. I can't read my handwriting, so why should I expect a machine to be able to?
    But there are stranger ideas around. Andy Hopper, now heading the Engineering Laboratory in Cambridge, was obsessed with 'active badges'. When he ran the AT&T research centre there he filled it with ultrasonic sensors. Everybody wore a little black bug about the size of a keyring, which beeped inaudibly; these sounds were picked up by ceiling sensors. This allowed you to walk up to any machine in the building, and watch as it switched to your own desktop. The nearest phone would ring for you. When you printed, the system picked the nearest printer. A company called Ubiquitous Systems, set up by some of Hopper's old proteges, is planning the same kind of thing using wireless.
    This is a trend that will matter. Increasingly, the network of the world will respond, not to your overt intended actions, but to its perception of what you want. Look at personal video recorders on the Tivo model, for instance. They're basically big disks controlled not with a mouse or a keyboard, but with a TV remote control. They soak up 'data' in the form of compressed video signals, and offer it back to you as 'time-shifted' programmes and listings. But the PVR does more: after a while, it builds a picture of where you go and what you do; which channels, which directors, (potentially) which actors, which subjects. So what's the 'user interface' now... your intentions or your habits?
    Logitech sells a wrap-round fabric keyboard for the Palm, using Eleksen technology. It's not the best keyboard in the world, but it does let you type with a relatively lightweight unit that doubles as a protective casing. But the same technology allows you to build seats that know where you're sitting, or carpets that know where you're standing. Let your mind wander into the various rooms of your house, and think how much an intelligent system could deduce about your intentions from your posture - what you are sitting on, where you are lying, how energetically you are moving. It's another user interface, but not as we know it.
    Radio, of course, changes everything. Increasingly, when you buy a bit of electronic gear, you will find that it has a wireless built in. So a company like Ubiquitous can follow you around, and can tell what you're trying to do - perhaps even before you've started doing it.
    Some dreams are just that - dreams. I used to do public after-dinner speeches prophesying a time when your phone might call mine and have a long conversation using my voice and your voice with neither of us knowing. Voice-recognition technology would recognise the words: 'Guy, are you free on Thursday? Give us a call.' My answer-phone, having checked my diary, might respond: 'Yes, I'm free but I'll be in Bristol until 4pm.' Yours would say something like 'OK, let's meet in the King's Arms at six.' When I got the message, I would confirm or change the date. But voice-response systems have fallen far short of this.
    An always-on Internet link between my pocket PDA and the answering machine changes this. It's possible for me to get an alert that the message is coming in, and that the phone call is too complex for the robot; I can see what the robot thinks is happening, or I can tune in.
    More importantly, the answerphone disappears. It has already migrated to the phone exchange, where I retrieve it with 1571. But if the system knows where I am, then it can be with me.
    And what, exactly, is a phone? Obviously, it's something you talk into and listen to, which connects you to someone else; but what else? It has a dial, which is a data-entry device, and it has menu keys, left and right arrow, yes, no, delete, copy. It tells you who is calling, so it's a display; it holds phone numbers and names, so it's a database. Microsoft's Pocket PC Phone Edition mixes the two, and gives you a phone that's too big to handle, or a display that's too small to read easily. Clearly, that's not the way to go long term. We need a display that is big enough to read but is not part of the phone; and a phone small enough to fit in our ear that obeys instructions entered through a separate keyboard. The keyboard need not exist, physically. Check out Canesta's 'perception technology', a tiny laser device that draws a keyboard on the nearest surface and uses an infra-red sensor to watch and see what you're doing with your fingers.
    Keyboard, display, earpiece, microphone and GSM radio can all be linked together via Bluetooth today, or by ultra-wideband radio in a decade or so. But you may not use devices that you carry with you. If you are in front of a full-size keyboard in an office, why not use that to enter data into your phone? If you're in front of a big screen, why pull out my 2in square Nokia screen, to look up someone's address? If you are watching TV when a call requesting information comes in, why go to a computer in another room to look it up? Why not use your remote control unit instead of a mouse to scroll through the data? Often the system could deduce what you want. If you pull a pocket display out, you shouldn't have to turn it on; when you put it away, you shouldn't have to find the off switch.
    What has hamstrung our designs has been the need to load the right program on the right device. But if I mark bits of text to copy something I'm writing, I don't need to know that one bit is from an Acrobat .pdf format and the other is a Word 2000 file. I just copy and paste. It can be done - have a look at Picsel's excellent user interface for pocket computers to see how simply and easily. Ninety per cent of menus that are GUI today have become redundant. In future, people will be astonished at the complexity of today's control systems. Increasingly, once you start trying to do something the system will work out your intentions. 'Do what I mean' computing may still emerge.

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