Maeda's SIMPLICITY

The Laptop That Walks

Green is in style for 08.

My new XO arrived just in time last week to gift to a close friend. I ordered a bunch more as I am so impressed with the build -- there's still time until December 31 to buy the neatest little laptop available today. And you also help out a worthy cause.

For around the same amount of cash as an XO give-one-get-one deal ($400), I got myself an xmas present in the form of the new Pleo robotic creature. Now, I didn't own a Tamagotchi, nor did I own a Furby, I did have a couple of Aibos on loan from my friend who used to work at Sony but never really got into them, and I don't do the online pet thing either so you can consider me a naysayer when it comes to artificial life forms. But Pleo is really different. I actually feel ... attached ... to this little fella. It's extremely well thought out. From its open-source model, to its sophisticated range of behaviors, to its cute little sounds -- okay I'm a bit in love with this thing and I'm definitely embarrassed.

At the Media Lab and other research institutions around the world, we've been talking about the transition from "personal computers" to "personal robotics" as one day happening for real. I feel it for the very first time. Urooowoowooo (simulated Pleo-ese for "Happy Holidays!").

Hello? World?

Orange and green are in style.

I just received shipment of the new open source GSM phone from my friends at OpenMoko. It's a cute little fella, and comes in a military-style case which certainly contradicts the svelteness of the slim and curvy device. I understand that this is still the first generation of the device (doesn't have wi-fi, etc.) but form-factor wise it is where development is heading. Unfortunately I will have to give this away to the students here at the Media Lab as they will know what to do with it much better than I -- well, I could at least make one phone call before it leaves me ...

Peek-a-boo I CC You

I've been wondering how much my life would be simpler if I no longer received messages that are CC'ed to me. By "CC" I refer to the practice of sending a mail directly to person X and then also sending a copy to persons A, B, and C that are meant to be indirect recipients.

The practice of "carbon copy" was once common on the typewriter to literally make "carbon copies." But now you are more likely to see it used when electronic cash registers fail to handle credit cards properly. Out of an unused drawer will come thin sheets of paper sandwiching blue or black carbon paper to transmit an image through the layers.

---

I wrote the above text on October 5 but it went unpublished. I couldn't figure out how to complete the thought. Now three months later, I know what it is that I was trying to resolve. For my New Year's resolution of 07, I will make a conscious effort (note the disclaimer) to cc less. How does this benefit mankind and myself?

First of all, it means I'm wasting less bytes out there. It makes me a "green digital" person, if there is such a cult out there.

Secondly, it saves me from the endless game of cc add-ons. Like a cheapo sock in the dryer that picks up lint every cycle, an e-mail that is riddled with cc quickly becomes fraught with ugly loose threads.

Thirdly, it extends my 04 resolution to never use bcc which I'm proud to say I really rid myself of the habit. The danger of bcc is getting people caught into the poisonous reply-to-all on the receiving end of a bcc. I quickly delete any bcc'ed email I receive, and also write to the sender that I am not in the practice of bcc-ing anyone.

Finally, by sending an email without a cc, it expresses to the recipient(s) in clearest terms that I care about a specific issue that affects specific people. And I don't need an audience to ratify that clearest expression of attention.

And with that, I cc the entire world on this message as we countdown to the New Year!

Smplicity

I find it interesting to see the various ways that web pages are configured to improve their Google scores. Just google 'smplicity' and the first page is quite fascinating. I feel like I should learn how to misspell better, oh, I mean mispell better, or do I mean m1sspell better? vacfuum qsimplicity smplicity oreview revidw simpljicity simplicity3 revi4ew simplivity reciew review reviewg revie2w simplicity simplicity simplicityr babyb rbaby sumplicity baby babyc baby simplicitgy furnituroe frniture simpljcity simplicityf smplicity furniture8 simplicitybaby sjmplicity simplicxity snow2blowers semplicity snlwblowers snowbloweirs sno2wblowers simplicity sim;plicity simpleicity simpliciyty simplicity5 simplicith smplicity si,plicity partds simplicity lawnmower pahrts [parts simplicuity simplicity 0parts mo9wer simplicity7 pargts mowsr mower0 smplicity simplicify simplicithy partd winniie sipmlicity convertkble whits thef smplicity 64 creib 8winnie thed si,mplicity convertyible cvonvertible ksimplicity convertible rwhite simplic ...

Outhouses and Offices

This is not a pleasant thought, but it is certainly relevant to any technology worker out there today.

I have been devastated by an event of last week -- when a certain person accidentally damaged our main laserprinter. The printer has been down for over four days now, and may come back up later this week. You can bet that I have used my best ability to print to other printers (six of them) in the building, however that has been a terribly frustrating experience.

While looking for the printer that might want to print my file, a colleague asked why I don't have a laserprinter in my office? With the low cost of printers today, it doesn't seem impossible for me to have a printer in my office. I just don't want to. I've never really wanted to, but have never been certain why. Until now.

I realized that my frustration with not being able to print out my file for many days, is something like a kind of a state of mental constipation. The act of printing my ideas out onto paper is what will make me feel ... well, better in that way we experience when we animals go on a bathroom break.

The reason why I don't want to have a printer in my office is because I find it akin to having an outhouse in my own office. Laserprinters generate all kinds of annoying fumes, and inkjet printers can endlessly frustrate you with their noise during the process of flushing your mind. Regardless of whether the printer is your own or it is elsewhere in the building, don't forget the fact that the "toilet paper" often runs out, and you have to go running around looking for that extra bit of Letter-sized paper to finish the job. I do see the upside of having your own printer because then you know how it is being treated, and also can take care of its upkeep yourself without fear of vandalism. Hmmmm.

In conclusion, I believe that having regular access to a healthy, working printer is the key to keeping your mind well in the digital age. When the digital equivalent of Nature calls, you gotta go. Oh ... I think I have to go.

Instant-On

I was glad to see that at this year's CES, one of our SIMPLICITY consortium sponsors, Toshiba, has assumed leadership of an subtly important area: electronic devices that turn on quickly. This is in accordance with the third law of simplicity and helps to validate its importance in the marketplace.

In the early 90's there was a challenge to the computer industry by ex-Apple exec Jean Louis Gassée in the form of the "Be" computer. I think we have one here somewhere in a Lab closet thanks to the fancy talking of former Media Labber Tom White. The one thing that amazed me about the machine was how fast it would boot up. Flip the power switch, and within a few seconds you'd be ready to go.

There is this Zen-like stare we all assume when we are presenting somewhere with a laptop, and wait for the computer to come out of sleep (or else simply power-on). Your eyes sort of focus on the wall, and the person (or often a large audience) waits for the image to appear, sitting in their own kind of trance. It's an awkward moment felt by all. There's nothing you can do but wait. Wouldn't it be nice if we all didn't have to wait so often? I'm waiting patiently.

Red, White, and Black

I see red. Do you?

When I was an intern at Texas Instruments in 1988, we had these computers called "Explorers" that predate the use of the word "explorer" (as in the increasingly marginalized "Internet Explorer"). Since the computers were of an experimental design, they were given the lovable nickname of "exploders." With its bitmapped display (read "black and white") as the primary means for display, we would often fantasize about a day when color would appear on the computer screen. One time I used colored whiteboard markers on the exploder screen to simulate a crazy future scenario of a full-color image on display. Getting the color imagery to animate on the screen was ... errr ... tricky of course.

Skimming USA Today on a return trip from Vienna earlier this month, I did a doubletake when I saw the headline "Preschoolers see red" underneath a black and white photograph. The photo depicts many poinsettia plants in bloom so I could understand the imagery beyond what was presented. I reflected upon how spoiled we are today on the Web to be able to display any kind of image -- whether it be color, moving, or superhuge. Everything and anything can be made to appear as it should be. Where will our power to imagine on our own eventually go?

When Google Ate The World

Safe from Google?

The odd similarities between one of Japan's indigenous portals called goo versus the now prescient google always bothered me. I figured it was only a matter of time before google ate goo, because lexically it had already succeeded. Since 2003, goo uses google's search engine technology so I figure that eventual assimilation shall be swift and painless.

Come to think of it, Yahoo! and Google are awfully similar aside from the intrinsic design differences. What is it with the "double-oh" bit? Maybe it's some sort of new kind of semantic feng shui? I could always add another 'o' in my name (Joohn) for good luck. Ah! that's a sign! "Good" has the double-oh. "Food" does too. "Too" does too! "Book" does so as well.

Speaking of books and the active project by Google to eat up all the printed information in the world (I'm overstating this of course), I wonder how the books themselves feel about this new inevitability. Walking in Paris I happened by a rare books store. I began to telepathically ask the books there, "When will you be eaten by Google?" They replied back to me, "Think carefully my son, what year is it?" Come to think of it, the year 2005 looks awfully similar to 2oo5. Maybe 2010 is when Google's magic spell disappears? I begrudgingly put my money on Microsoft (and I'm a Mac guy!).

Yahoogle!

Simplicity is about staying simple.

Today I was asked by Jessie Scanlon of Business Week regarding the difference between the design of Google and Yahoo! So, I fired up the the all-seeing eye of archive.org to look way back in the past. In short, a lot happened and nothing happened. I captured the evolutionary process in some thumbnails I collected and arranged in the image above (which has a larger version if you click on it). The top row is the evolution of Yahoo! and the bottom row is Google. I had forgotten that Yahoo! came first. As you can see from the thumbnail, in 1996 Yahoo! looked not so much different from Google. And then in 1997 the once familiar two-column approach emerged. Around 2000 everything got terribly complex. Meanwhile, in 2000 Google emerged from Beta with an uncharacteristically complex masthead that announced opportunities to join Google, at which time some talented engineering folks really did "get lucky" I guess.

From 2000 onward, Google declared themselves as the simplicity-themed search engine and they've managed to maintain their position by literally keeping it simple. Which is why in 2005 we "google" things on the Web more often than we "yahoo!" things. Only time will tell if this is always to be the case. Considering how if I google simplicity I am the third link, whereas when I yahoo! simplicity I am the second link, I'm not sure which one I favor more. I think that my curator in France would prefer that I go back to preparation for my show so I really don't have to decide at this very moment ...

Without A Trace

Cumulative loss of time = approximately 1 hour this year.

I'm a big fan of the Danger HipTop. Although it's something of a chunky device, I continue to carry it in my trousers' front pocket. I wouldn't categorize myself as a gadget freak. I guess I'm more of a one-gadget kind of guy. When I picked up my HipTop from my desk yesterday, I thought it was odd how a paperclip seemed to be stuck to its face. How was it sticking there? My electrical engineering degree from MIT suddenly kicked in, and I remembered that the speaker had a magnetic element that was naturally pulling dearly on the metal in the paperclip.

Today I engaged in my normal weekly ritual of picking up some groceries at the local overpriced Japanese food store. They have a parking system that uses a magnetic card to time your point of entry. I always forget where I put this card, so over the year I developed a system of placing it inside my pocket next to the flat face of the HipTop. Oddly, I began to see a pattern where I would go to validate my parking only to discover the parking attendant frantically try to get the magnetic reader to read my card. After several minutes, he would give up and generate me a new card. I found this to be highly inefficient if applied to all customers that parked here (which is quite a few). Why don't they fix this ridiculous system? I would be further vexed when I would get the validated card, and drive up to the exit point and be unable to exit because the system couldn't read my card. I wondered how they could use such an inefficient and unreliable system? Why was technology failing me?

Today a light went on in my head. HipTop speaker + magnetic card = problem. I now know which pocket to keep the parking card in when I visit the market. Sometimes technology isn't the problem. It's the combinations that kill us.

Nowhere To Go

Where will you run to?

After a long, unruly travel schedule I am now at home. And I can do my favorite thing -- which is to walk around the block. I don't walk particularly fast. I strive for a normal pace. But it's particularly hot in New England right now. So my pace is a little more brisk than usual.

I turn the corner, and I see a strange planter on the side of the road. Why is it there? I get closer to see that it is an overturned 17" CRT computer monitor. Someone had recently discovered the sleek thinness of an LCD computer monitor and unceremoniously ditched his or her CRT. Poor CRT.

My LCD digital display is not anything special. It's just a regular 21" monitor. The advantage of digital, they say, is that I can see things crystal clear. Sometimes I long for my CRT as its fuzziness made everything look softer ... more real?

At MIT and with the display at my home, I've noticed a disturbing phenomenon. Digital displays sometimes frizzle-frazzle. I mean, they sort of have glitches once in a while -- sort like hiccups. Yet saying "boo!" to the computer screen unfortunately does not scare the hiccups away. What's this thing about digital perfection? I think it is simply a good marketing term. Perhaps that which is digital is ironically what is most imperfect of all? I must go to rescue that CRT.

Keep Cool

Early Japanese air-conditioner.

Summer visited the Boston area today. Not only was the weather summer-y, but the activity that my research team participated in today was summer-y as well. A quick visit to the beach provided the perfect defocusing mechanism for planning future research directions.

Driving a long way on a hot day is greatly facilitated by the modern amenity of air-conditioning. You press a button, and your car becomes a refrigerator-in-motion. An alternate method to cool down would be to do what dogs do where they stick their head out of the car with their ears and fur flapping in the wind. When humans try to do it, they look like fools; but dogs make getting cool look awful cool.

But Boston isn't really hot. Japan is much hotter. When I lived in Japan, and in the middle of the hottest summer, my friend told me a neat story about the wind chimes that are quite common in Japan. Do you know the glass or metal chimes that hang in the windows with a little strip of paper to catch the wind? They make a sound in onomatopoeic Japanese like chirin, chirin. I guess in English that would be ding, ding, ding. My friend explained that the reason why these chimes are so popular in the summer is that they are considered to be natural air conditioners. By hearing the sound of the chime, one is inspired to feel cooler throughout the house. The wind is essentially made visible to the ear. Audible that is.

I am constantly stymied by the lack of advancement in the auditory channel when it comes to information handling. I recall in the 80's there was some work emerging in this area. And you see little flashes here and there. But I have yet to encounter a really wonderful integration between sound and video tracks in the area of information display. Of course videogames lead in this territory ... but I am frankly tired of playing games. Why doesn't a ubiquitous tool like Microsoft Excel use the audio channel as a way to enhance the data display experience?

And for that matter, what happened to control-G? On the old terminals you would hit control-G and you'd hear the terminal beep. Control-G was the "bell character" and I know that it still is, however my word processor doesn't know about these kinds of mappings anymore. Maybe they should bring this feature back as a way to keep you cool at your computer. Just hit a few Control-G's and the ringing might take you to the feeling of a cool breeze as signaled by a wind chime. You could also instead just get real AC. That'd probably be simpler.

MIT Alum Jennifer Jamieson writes, "A quick follow-up to the Japanese windchimes story that reminded me of this... during my undergrad, I took a Japanese sociology elective and the (Canadian) professor told us a story about her days living there, how she so enjoyed the gentle sound in the breeze that she kept them outside her window through the late fall season. Her neighbours began making casual comments about how she must be feeling so cold these days, very chilly. It took her several weeks to realize that everyone else had taken their chimes down, and they were hinting that, with the colder weather, the auditory hint of a cool breeze was now a reminder of discomfort rather than relief from the heat. I've had windchimes in the summer since taking that class." What a lovely story!

My friend Jane Hudson from Massachusetts writes, "I went to a lecture/reading by Paul Theroux last night, and I have to say actually hearing his voice along with seeing his body/language made all the difference in the way I apprehended his information." Perhaps the idea of multimedia should be less about what is delivered, versus what is actually felt in the multisensorial plane.

Error on Deck

An error occurred while processing this directive.

How does one make this seem more convincing?

An error occured while process907934799zcxvsdljljl;

No. That doesn't look convincing enough. The touch typist in me is too stuck on focusing on the numbers row to create '907934799' and then the home row and lower row indicate the dabbling of my fingers 'zxcvsdljljl;' My error message appears much too contrived.

If I am to say it twice, does it seem more convincing?

An error occurred while processing this directive.
An error occurred while processing this directive.

No. An error wouldn't waste time to make something look coherent. How about if I repeat this continuously for maybe 7 times without any carriage returns.

An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive.

Now, that looks pretty good. Maybe we can make it more "graphic" by making it blood red like Quentin Tarantino might suggest.

An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive.

Color is always effective when there is more so let's do that, and let's also add an abrupt interruption.

An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred while processing this directive. An error occurred whi

Oooh. That's good. I feel a chill tingling up my spine at the realism of it all.

Do we want to see error messages? The alternative is for the computer to stay completely silent when something wrong has occurred. But do we really like to hear the computer whine? I guess it depends. If it is an error that we can correct through some conscious interaction, then I think that those kind of error messages are tolerable. You feel an itch. And you are able to scratch it.

But when there is an error message that occurs, and you haven't the slightest idea how to address it ... you get, well, angry. Sure, I'm all for gaman when it comes to the weather or the big things, but when I'm sitting there for an hour trying to hook a USB label printer to my computer and I am having simply no luck, then I have to say that my blood pressure does indeed rise.

Error messages are a way for a device to admit some form of fault, whether it be its own fault or pointing the finger at the other technology it might be tethered to. Wait a second. The "silent treatment" that a delinquent device can give you might be worse than irresolvable error messages. There is no admission of guilt by the device. It sits there all kind of innocent. Who me? Operating improperly? No. It's got to be you doing something wrong.

And then when all hope seems lost, you pick up the manual to see if the manual really tells you how to fix the problem. I recall the entirely unhelpful phrase uttered many times by upperclassmen when I was a neophyte to computer programming "RTFM." Maybe my early trauma surrounding manuals prevents me from placing any faith in them at all? In the end, I figured out my problem with hooking up the USB label printer without referring to the manual. The solution was to not pay any attention to the manual, and to do something completely illogical. My blood pressure is back to normal again.

Creativity and the Cat

Autofocus captures the better picture.

I have been examining the literature in the field of creativity lately. There seems to be endless amounts of work in this area. What makes a person creative? Is it their environment? Is it their upbringing? Are they born creative? Are there people that are not creative? How is something more creative than something else? Can you measure creativity?

A month ago on the topic of measuring creativity, Media Lab researcher Brian Silverman, who is probably one of the greatest software tinkerers in the world, said this to me, "The most interesting things to quantify, are those that cannot be quantified." There's a lot of truth in this statement.

During a trip to the zoo, my daughter took a photo of a cheetah. The cheetah is a quite beautiful and fierce-looking animal if you've never seen one up close before. Thankfully the cheetah was behind a sturdy metal fence. I tried to explain to the photographer that the autofocus would have problems focusing on the cheetah as it would probably focus on the fence instead of the cheetah. It certainly did. And the picture turned out better. Was the camera being creative?

Recent MIT graduate Annie Ding pointed me to this fellow's lucky accident. It appears to be a camera that has problems from a spill in the water, but the "problems" deliver some digital image processing accidents that are favorable to people. I've had my share of "accidents" on the computer where video memory freaks out. These moments have been entirely special because they exhibit the computer's true, pure, unadulterated creativity. In essence, the computer is giving us the finger in the way that all self-indulgent artists have earned their right to do so. Has the computer earned its right? I think so. They work awfully hard for us. I wish for more moments of the construction of beauty by the computer. I'll be waiting.

Zorked

This week I gave a talk at the FIPP Congress where there is now an international push to ingrain the slogan, "Magazines Make Things Happen." The magazine publishing industry is faced with the difficult task of re-inventing itself in the new reality of the Web. Why would someone travel through the rain to get to a newstand or bookstore to pay $3 to $7 for a stack of paper when you can just sit at your computer and visit the online version for $0? The MPA has a variety of statistics that support a reality where people still like magazines. Are these statistics true? Well, yes. I still read magazines. I still buy them too. And if I have a chance to pick them up for free, I'm there.

At the conference I met a publisher in Hong Kong named Robby Yung. One thing that particularly struck me we was how Robby said that the "killer app" in China on mobile phones has nothing to do with full-motion and full-color 3G-style content, but instead it is SMS-based text adventures. Text adventures. Wow, that brings me back to the days of early computing. One of the first programs I typed into the computer was a text-based adventure game. You didn't buy software back then -- you'd go to the bookstore and buy one of three or so books/magazines with program source code in them to manually enter into your computer. If you aren't aware of the genre, it's quite spare but brilliant in its own way.

Instead of a GUI (Graphical User-Interface) you use a TUI (Textual User-Interface) to type in commands like, Go West or Pick up box. Often times the computer would say something back to you like, Huh? What do you mean? Of course it couldn't understand everything you were trying to say. The king of the text adventures was probably Zork. I'm surprised to find that you can actually download and play these games for free now.

I'm glad to know that the Chinese are playing in this entirely civilized genre of gaming. No sound, no texture-mapping, no fast-action button-pushing. They are living within the imaginative space of their mind, instead of what they see as a direct representation. Sounds healthy for the mind. Wait a second, isn't that what is called, "reading"?

Regarding of my use of the TUI term, that was a slight pun on something we have here at the Media Lab called Tangible User Interface for something that should have been rightfully called CLI (Command-Line Interface) as pointed out by Paul Waite in the UK, "I'm sure I'm sounding a bit silly now for telling you something you already know, but I do like the way 'Command-Line Interface' reminds us of a time when we just told computers what to do - commanded them to do our bidding. There is a certain simplicity in a machine that will only do exactly what you tell it to, regardless of how arcane or incomprehensible the method of telling it is." On this topic, here's a funny book by Neal Stephenson called, In the Beginning There Was the Command Line.

Jeremy Lehrer, Editor at Print Magazine in NYC, writes, "Referencing Zork brought back memories. Indeed, when my girlfriend visited my parents' house back in Cincinnati for the first time, I got my mom's 80s-era IBM computer running and showed her what it was like to play Zork III. I still remember the solutions to some of the puzzles, even today." Clearly Jeremy is more intelligent than I as I recall never being able get very far in Zork (or any game for that matter).

API Decoder Ring

I have the honor of serving on the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum in NYC. The thing I enjoy the most from the experience is to learn how a government-operated museum works. It's the kind of thing you'd never think would be terribly simple in structure or procedure. Given the current political climate of the US you would think that frivolous things like museums might be on the downfall. It turns out there is a great deal of positive leadership currently in position at different levels that is thankfully keeping the concerns of culture and general delight as part of the ongoing mission of the US.

At a recent meeting, I had the opportunity to explain what an "API" is. Given all of the press that Amazon's API and Google's API have gotten in the recent press, the assumption is that everybody knows what an API. I think if you've never programmed before, truly understanding what an API is does not come natural. When I google "what is an api" I get many definitions that make sense in computer-ese, but not in everyday peoplespeak.

In short, an API can be thought of as a company's internal telephone book with descriptions of key personnel's titles and job descriptions where you (the outsider) are free to call those people up to do your bidding. Some API's like Google's and Amazon's give you (the outsider) a limited number of phone calls to different sections of the company as a way to make sure that many outsiders can reliably get their phone calls answered.

As you can guess, in the real world you would never want to be able to have anybody call up employees in your company and expect to get tons of work done for them. There's this thing called "money" that makes the world go around, and there wouldn't be enough cash to pay your own people to service all of the outsiders. Turns out on the computer, the people answering calls are just little bits of program code that are not unionized (yet!) and thus are able to handle a great deal of capacity in a tireless fashion.

Thus the term "Application Programming Interface" begins to make sense (even to me). You have a running computer application that has an interface (the "phonebook") that one can program (the "phone call") externally. API's are the bread and butter of today's sophisticated systems. Don't be seen without one.

Ad-am I Am?

Yesterday I was introduced to the word "Adam" (or "Advanced Amateur") by MIT alum Ernie Liang. Ernie leads new business development for Epson and is on the lookout for the next big thing in digital imaging. I think I learned at least four new trendy words from our conversation.

The thing that I like the most about this abbreviation for "Advanced Amateur" is the way you say "adam." You don't say "Adam" as in the name of a boy named Adam. Instead you place a synthetic pause between "ad" and "am." You say "Adam." My interest in the word however stops there. I am uncertain of what the word actually means.

I was an amateur. Now I'm better than the average amateur so now I am an advanced amateur. I'm not a professional yet. I wonder if they have a word like "Prepro" which could mean "Pre-Professional"? When does one stop being just an "Adam" and moves to being "Prepro"?

I think I prefer to be a lifelong amateur. I am.

Charles Hinshaw of Indiana writes, "What is interesting is your assessment regarding meaning. You imply that Amateur and Professional are points on the same conceptual scale (one that would progress from amateur to advanced amateur, and along to advanced professional, presumably) On the surface, this makes sense -- products are positioned along those lines, especially in the realm of software. But the big assumption that unravels the whole thing is that mastery of something is tied to a profession. What if the amateur and professional spectrums exist parallel to one another? (separated by motive or circumstance) Advanced vs. Normal defines the degree to which one has mastered a specific skill. Amateur vs. Professional describes the role that that skill plays within their life. A person can change in one way without affecting the other (if, for example, I was an advanced amateur digital photographer, and quit my job to become a professional digital photographer, my skills would not diminish just because the role that photography plays in my life has changed.) Maybe in an earlier time, we could equate skill with professional practice -- but with a wealth of resources available to master a wide range of skills, that type thinking may be becoming obsolete. Since you have already expressed that this moves beyond your interest in the word, I'll stop there -- you just got me thinking." It's good to think.

Command Not Found.

Being pushy gets you nowhere.

Signs in our environment are like direct commands given to us in the most unsubtle of ways. My old professor of signage Kiyoshi Nishikawa once told me that he marveled at the "God-like" characteristics of signage in a building. "You tell everyone in the building, where to go, for the life of the building. You are their guide, forever."

Of course, there are times when we cannot obey the commands from the higher power. For instance in the figure on my right in a hotel late at night in Queens, the sign beckoned to me that I should push the door. Yet it was paradoxically chained up. How might I be able to fulfill the command given to me? Naturally I felt like I was letting someone down. That's never a good feeling.

It was around 11PM and my research group was at MoMA setting up an exhibit for a show when the mysteriously powerful undergrad (now graduate student in EECS) Max Van Kleek started to giggle in his infectious manner. I heard a story about Max once regarding a dialogue he had with a dog. Max said to the dog, "Go fetch!" And the dog looked back at Max quite quizically. Max then shook his head and said, "Ah, command not found."

Command not found. This is certainly a message we do not see very often in the age of the graphical user interface. Command not found. expresses the stark, and absolute, limitations of a computing machine's capability. In the old days, the computer was honest to us. Nowadays, the computer tries to fool us into thinking that it knows and can do everything. But we know that not to be the case. Or at least we all should.

Is it Live? Or is it Digital?

The anti-Gehry approach to digital architecture.

I park my car under the Gehry-designed Stata Center at MIT every day. The view from my office at MIT gives a striking view of the crumply/shiny complex. I am told that it is the pinnacle of mating computers with architectural thought. Some sort of incredible software was used that was originally created to model airplanes. The building is the most expensive building on campus by far. Everything on paper and by word of mouth tells me that I should respect the heck out of the powerful-looking complex.

Housed in the building is my former major at MIT (Electrical Engineering at Computer Science). It stands as a mecca for all that is great in technology, and its house was literally built by the wonders of technology itself. Yet when I look at the center from afar, I feel strangely happy that I do not live in such a confusing-looking building. One thing that worries me is that we tend to equate powerful technology with extremely complex outcomes. I wish life were ... simpler.

While visiting Austin enroute to a dinner with a nice set of faculty and students, I happened to spot a very normal looking building towering over the parking lot in which I stood. It looked fake actually. Something that a simple computer program might create. It was right there in front of me, and it was real. The entirely synthetic and rigorously folded building was the perfect reflector for the beautiful blue Austin sky. It was a subtle message from the digital world that whispered with a Texas twang, "Simple ain't bad."

Undo It.

A book unbound, is no longer a book.

Whenever I travel, I am something of a fanatic for reducing the amount of weight and volume that I have to carry on a trip. The power brick for my computer is a special super-light model. I carry super-mini sizes of all of my toiletries. The bag I use was chosen based upon comparing it by weight to the other bags in the lot I chose from. If a stranger were to pick up my bag, they'd certainly mistake the owner for "mini-me" from the Austin Powers movies.

In the pursuit of baggage weight reduction, I stared at my heavy heavy Organizational Behavior textbook for a long bit, and came to the conclusion that I didn't want to lug it across the United States. Should I xerox the pages I'm supposed to read? That would take maybe an hour or so in front of the copy machine. Should I not bring it? I would probably fail my upcoming quiz if I did so. Hesitations came to a close, and I reached for my trusty razor blade. The key pages were suddenly released from the bindings of the book. My problem was solved.

And then another problem became immediately evident. How would I return these pages to the book? Nine years ago when I arrived at MIT, in similar fashion I sliced apart many of my books in order to scan images for my classes (digital cameras were not so great back then). Those books have never recovered from surgery. I knew that the book before me would never recover as well. I immediately thought, "Where's the undo key?"

When I left MIT for art school seventeen years ago, I recall a drawing class where I faced a similar moment. Drawings were made in ink on paper. I spent a day with a drawing, and then ... I made a mistake. My hand unconsciously reached for Command-Z ("undo" on the Macintosh; control-z for the Windows users). But neither the key, nor the keyboard, was anywhere in sight. So I did what every illustrator does in a moment of desperation towards a deadline. I worked with the mistake, and the drawing turned out actually better than I had planned.

Computer tools give us the option to undo often, and now infinitely. What would computers be like without undo? We'd probably all be a bit more careful. And we would probably learn how to live with our mistakes. A mistake is often a blessing. Why would you want to undo a precious gift? My book is now accordingly blessed. It's a lot lighter too.

Amos Bannister in Australia comments, "As I have said to my clients on more than one occasion when discussing required functionality of applications, "Does an elevator have an undo button?" An elevator's interface is pretty much as simple as it can get. You can choose a floor to stop at, and you typically have three other buttons: "Open door", "Close door" and "Emergency stop". If you press the wrong button, there is no "undo".

Martin Gomez in the Philippines adds that, "Actually, the more modern elevators like those found in corporate towers enable you to "undo" your action. If you pressed the wrong floor/button, just hit the same button twice and its light will turn off. Thus, undo-ing what you did."

Bob Prior of MIT Press (and the editor of my programming book Design By Numbers) gives the perspective of a seasoned book publisher: "Why, buy a second copy of the book, of course! One for destruction and one for preservation."

Tom Erickson of Minnesota comments from a seasoned UI researcher perspective, "I agree, in part; certainly, I think, infinite undo makes me less careful (though one might also say more willing to experiment). But it also seems to me that mistakes made when interacting with computers are of a different character than those made by hand. If I'm drawing, my hand might shake, the line might go a bit askew, or show signs of more or less pressure than intended; while vexing, such slips do not move one very far off the intended trajectory, and allow for the exploration of one's chosen terrain from a slightly different direction. But slips when using digital systems are not necessarily incremental departures from one's intent. A slip of my hand is not likely to cause the paper to spontaneously combust, all circles to change to squares, or black ink to turn to (blinking) red ink, but releasing the mouse button one menu item too soon, or inserting an infelicitous space in 'rm *.tmp', may well invoke the digital equivalent."