1
Societal and Individual Impacts

Future Interfaces
 New devices: portable, inexpensive, small, wearable, mobile, personal ,
robotic, engulfed
 Context-aware devices
 Perceive user needs
• Small medical sensors that monitor health
• Hidden detectors that protect from dangers
 Visual, aural, tactile, gestural interaction
 Universal usability to facilitate
• Voting
• Crime reporting
 Biometric identification to reduce the chance of terrorism
2
Societal and Individual Impacts

Ten plagues of the information age
 Anxiety: overcoming fear of technology
 Alienation: less direct connection with others
 Information-poor minority: affordable technology for all
 Impotence of the individual: lack of receiving assistance from an individual
 Bewildering complexity and speed
 Organizational fragility: over-dependence on technology
 Invasion of privacy
 Unemployment and displacement
 Lack of professional responsibility: organizations responding impersonally
and denying responsibility for issues (e.g., blame it on the computer)
 Deteriorating image of people
3
Societal and Individual Impacts
4
Societal and Individual Impacts

Strategies for preventing the plagues
 Human-centered participatory design: include users in the design process
 Organizational support: user support with interviews and focus groups
 Job design: avoiding the electronic sweatshop
 Education: continuing education and on-the-job training
 Feedback and Rewards: reward users for detecting problems, and provide
feedback on the problem resolution
 Legislation: laws related to privacy, rights of access and computer crime
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_dVn3JUyog
5
Societal and Individual Impacts

Who invented the internet?

J. C. R. Licklider – A Psychologist
 BA in physics, math and psychology
 MA in psychology
 PhD in psychoacoustics
 MIT associate professor established a psychology
program for engineering students
 Head of the Information Processing Techniques
Office (IPTO) at ARPA (the birthplace of the internet)
 Received the Franklin V. Taylor Award from the
Society of Engineering Psychologists
6
Societal and Individual Impacts

Licklider's ideas contribution to the development of the Internet

He foresaw the need for networked computers with easy UIs

His ideas foretold
 graphical computing
 point-and-click interfaces
 digital libraries
 e-commerce
 online banking
 Man-Computer Symbiosis
7
Societal and Individual Impacts
 Licklider - Man-Computer Symbiosis
 Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960)
 Specified the need for simpler interaction between computers and users
 Vision: "Men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the
criteria, and perform the evaluations.”
 Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to
prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific
thinking."
8
Societal and Individual Impacts
 Licklider - Global computer network
 "Intergalactic Computer Network" concept (1962)
 These ideas contained almost everything that the Internet is today
 “It seems reasonable to envision, for a time 10 or 15 years hence, a 'thinking
center' that will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together
with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval. The picture
readily enlarges itself into a network of such centers, connected to one
another by wide-band communication lines and to individual users by
leased-wire services.”
 His paper The Computer as a Communication Device (1968) describes his
vision of network applications
9
Societal and Individual Impacts

From The Computer as a Communication Device (1968)
 Access to information while viewing a presentation
10
Societal and Individual Impacts

From J. C. R. Licklider The Computer as a Communication Device (1968)
 Vision of Email?
 Vision of eHarmony?
“The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the
home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just
in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for
most people––as remarkable as the telephone.” [Steve Jobs in Playboy,
Feb. 1, 1985] 17 years after the paper by Licklider
11
Societal and Individual Impacts

From The Computer as a Communication Device (1968)
 Vision of Texting?
12
Societal and Individual Impacts

From The Computer as a Communication Device (1968)
 Vision or Spam?
13
Societal and Individual Impacts

From The Computer as a Communication Device (1968)
 Vision IM Blocking?
14
Societal and Individual Impacts
http://www.viggle.com/learn-more/
In the near future everything is connected…

Smart Phones

Smart Homes

Smart Cars

Smart Retail
http://www.ford.com/technology/sync/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6pM2aJL8Wk
http://moto.arrisi.com/VideoSolutions/US-EN/SolutionSites/4HOME/Overview
15
Societal and Individual Impacts
And then comes…

Gesture Free

Context-Aware Computing

Ubiquitous Computing

Cloud Computing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7yZAXVw9uI
https://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCuPx9shWT0
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Societal and Individual Impacts
“The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t
change the world. It really doesn’t. We’re born, we live for a brief
instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time.” -- Steve
Jobs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjgrsCKL-I8
http://www.applegazette.com/feature/6-things-apple-did-notinvent/
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Societal and Individual Impacts
“The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur
because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what
it means to be human” -- John Naisbitt
 “The World in 2030" by Dr. Michio Kaku
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=219YybX6
6MY
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Societal and Individual Impacts
 “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to
be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only
way to do great work is to love what you do. [Stanford
commencement speech, June 2005] -- Steve Jobs
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/
~westerma/About_Wayne.
html
http://www.applegazette.com/feat
ure/6-things-apple-did-not-invent/