OneAndOneIs2

There was a discussion at last night's LUG, started by the resident loudmouth, about how the emphasis on computing has gone in its time from hardware (Remember soldering a motherboard together? Me neither, thank God), to the OS (Microsoft. 'Nuff said.), to applications (Firefox), to services (Google) and therefore the Next Big Thing will be a focus on content & information itself.

So, with that in mind, I started thinking about interfaces and how a bunch of new developments in technology, along with some new ways of using existing things, might work with computers that are designed solely around manipulating ubiquitous-format-based content.

Then I started plugging away with Gimp because there was no way I could do this post without illustrating it. Hence this post has taken a while to write. With any luck it was worth the wait.

So, we start with the next-gen computer. It has a single interface, none of today's separation. The typical mouse-keyboard-monitor combination is replaced with a multi-touch screen. You'll need to watch this video if you're not familiar with multi-touch.

So the mouse is eliminated by a touchscreen, and the keyboard becomes virtual and can thus be tailored to your exact requirements - such as Optimus keyboard-like application-specific key-reassignment; moving the Caps Lock key from its moronic current location; and spacing the keys to suit your hand size, etc.

(As ever, click to enlarge image)

So let's say you want to create a document. You press the "Create a paper document" button and a piece of paper appears on your desktop. The key point of the new interface is that there is just THE interface: You don't have a separate Word Processor interface just to create a document. You just have a piece of paper on your desktop. Touch the paper to give it focus, then start typing on your virtual keyboard.

You have created your document. Now for the fun bit: Moving it to another computer. This is where the interface gets substantially different from the current norm, and much more intuitive.

We're still going to use flash memory to move our files, but in a totally different way. Right now, the two big problems with flash drives is that they all look the same, which can make it hard to find the desired file when you have multiple drives; and the fact that they always maintain a degree of separation from the host computer: They're always a different drive (Windows) or buried in /mnt or /media (Linux).

We're trying to make content ubiquitous: We want to dissolve these separations. If I move a physical document from one desk to another, I just pick it up and move it: I don't make it vanish and reappear.

So with that in mind, we have our new flash drives. No longer thumb drives that plug into a USB socket, but instead a convergence of Wireless USB, wireless power (such as electromagnetic induction maybe), the new paper-thin flexible transparent screens, and the power-free persistence of imagery found in electronic paper.

Sounds complex? For the moment, ignore all the funky technology and just focus on what you'll appear to have: A thin flexible piece of clear plastic. Nothing exciting to look at.

Yet.

We now put our piece of plastic onto the only interface we have: The screen. No plugging anything in: The whole point is that in the future, there is one interface for the computer. Absolutely everything goes through that single interface: The screen. So here goes:

Exciting stuff, eh? We're now looking at part of the screen through our transparent bit of plastic.

Bear with me, this is where it gets complex. So I'm going to continue using illustrations, with the "What you see" information on the left, and the "What actually happens" information on the right.

You put the plastic onto the screen

The flash memory within the device is mounted by the PC

You see a bit of text you want to delete from the document: You touch the screen at the start of the text and slide your finger along to the end of the text, selecting it. Then you hit "Delete" and the text is gone

The screen interprets a single-finger movement like a "mouse click-and-drag" (Finger-movement depicted in blue)

You want to resize the document for a closer look, so you put two fingers on the document and move them apart, zooming in on the page

The screen interprets a two-finger movement as a resize/zoom control (Finger-gestures shown in violet)

You want to move the document from your PC to the flash memory: You place two (or more) fingers on the piece of paper, drag over to the clear piece of plastic, and let go

The screen interprets a two-finger drag as a "move object" command. Upon the document being placed over the location of the flash memory, the file is copied to the flash via wireless USB, in the same way as dragging a file icon to a USB drive icon on a current desktop copies the file.

The piece of paper shrinks to fit on the piece of plastic

When the file is copied to the flash, also transferred is information about what the file contents (in this case a document) should actually look like. This image is resized to fit on the device's own resolution, and the device, powered by the wireless power supply, updates its previously-blank transparent screen with an image of the document.

You pick up the piece of plastic and the document goes with it

As the device is removed, it is unmounted from the PC and the document is no longer resident on the host machine. The image of the document on the device remains in place without power, electronic-paper-like, making it easy to locate the file when you have a multitude of identical flash devices, and also making it possible to access information from a file without even needing a computer: An image file, for instance, could be examined visually, with no need to mount it and view it on a monitor

You take the device to another computer and drop it on the screen

The flash device is mounted as usual on the new computer and the file(s) on it are now accessible.

To copy (rather than just move) the file from the flash to the PC, you place one finger of one hand on it, and hold it in place, whilst touching it with two fingers on the other hand and dragging it off the device and onto the screen.

The screen interprets the combination of a "holding in place" (blue) gesture with a "move it" (violet) gesture as a "copy the file" command, copies the document onto the desktop and opens it.

You want to make this document the first page of another document, so you drag & drop it on top of another document. Then you swipe across the top-left corner where a staple would usually be on a real document.

Each page of a document is a separate file when scattered around the desktop. "Stapling" two (or more) pages together with the corner-swipe gesture links them together into a single file with each page in the order it is arranged on the desktop.

You want to turn the page, so you hold the bottom-right corner in place with one finger and turn the page with a swipe of the second finger

The screen interprets the hold (blue) and swipe (green) as a "turn the page" command

You want to annotate the document to suggest changes, so you drag a post-it note onto the page and write the relevant text on it.

The post-it notes enter metadata to the file in the same way as commenting in a word processor does.

You want to send the document to one of your collaborators without messing about with flash drives, so you drag it onto his icon and release it.

The file is transferred over the network to your friend's desktop

You decide to add a graphic to the document. You pin the document in-place with one hand and navigate to another desktop with the other hand. The file is moved to the new desktop.

Every folder is a desktop: holding the file with a (violet) finger-press whilst dragging in a new desktop (blue) essentially moves the file to a new folder.

The document file is moved to the new desktop, where your images are stored.

You have moved the file to another folder, and the other files contained in the directory are displayed, already-open and ready to manipulate, courtesy of the clever interface.

You drag an image onto the document

The computer embeds the image file into the document

And so on and so forth. I'm sure you get the idea. The main point is that you don’t have a word processor environment to edit a document, you don't use a file manager to move a file to a new location, you don't open a graphics program to view images, you don't plug your flash drive in to anything in order to use it. Everything is done through a wonderfully-intuitive single interface that works exactly the way you expect it to.

Obviously, applications are still there - you would still need a word processor installed in order to create a document. But it's hidden from you: All you see is the piece of paper. You don't navigate through toolbars and dialogue boxes to embed a picture, you just grab a picture and drag it into place. You don't mess about with an IM client to send a file to somebody over the 'Net, you just drag & drop. You still have file systems on your PC and flash memory, but you don’t see them: You just see the flash device as fully-interactive part of your interface. And so on.

All you applications are integrated silently into the interface. All your hardware is integrated silently into the interface. No buttons, no cables, no inconsistent GUIs. In many ways, as far as the user is concerned, no OS, no applications, and no interface at all.

All you have is content, and ways of manipulating it.

So that's my view on the "Next Big Thing" discussion. It's not about "killer apps" - it's about hiding the apps altogether and giving the user constant, direct access to the content itself.