Bruno Giussani is a writer, the European Director of the 
There is no shortage of people working on the next-generation computer interface. Here are my favorite two.
In Italy, Alessandro Valli and his team - installed in a beautiful former farmhouse surrounded by vineyards and olive trees in Tuscany - are pursuing research of natural interaction forms - how to translate into technology the "natural dynamics through which people communicate and discover the real world", they say. "Our interaction design work is based on intuitive schemes, that need no explanations, so that common people in public spaces may spontaneously dialogue with the artifact". They've done some pretty amazing things for example in museums (check out the PointAt project). Their latest development is called Grid Interface, a "natural interaction interface to organize and navigate contents such as images, movies and audio", Alessandro writes on his blog. The system makes use of only minimal mouse and arrows functionalities and the minimalistic grid arrangement "allows everyone to feel confident with the interface", says Alessandro. Here is a short (2min20) video that gives a sense of what he's talking about:
In New York, NYU's Jeff Han is instead trying to get rid of the interface altogether. His design dispenses with both the mouse and the common “desktop” metaphor. They are replaced with an intuitive, open-ended space through which users navigate freely with their fingertips - all of them. Enlarging a picture requires only touching it with two fingers and moving them apart -- with the file following their movement and spreading on the screen. There is basically no structured interface to his device: he just " navigates" in the information, zooming in and out of a map or tilting it or redistributing images on the screen just by moving his fingers on it. When he premiered his prototype in February at the TED2006 conference in Monterey (see my original post), the audience let out a collective gasp. Here is the video of his speech (9min30) from TEDtalks:
Concurrently, David Kirkpatrick of Fortune just published a column about Second Life, the synthetic world, which has been getting alot of press recently (see my previous post, including an explanation of what SL is). "No, SL is not overhyped", writes David:
Second Life may be more important, longterm, that even this much publicity would suggest. That's because what it really may represent is an alternative vision for how to interact with information and communicate over the Internet. Yes it's cartoony, but one of the great things about Second LIfe is that whenever you are doing anything, you can see the other people who are nearby as well. This brings a dimension of social life - so elemental to how we live our lives offline - to the Internet in a way that up to now the Web has not.
You are, with your wonderment at what Mr. Han is doing, at the equivalent point where I was about 25 years ago.
I was then first creating a graphic touchscreen software paradigm that has already achieved most of what you are predicting. It has been copied (freely, without compensation to me and without fear of patent or even copyright infringement) by countless companies and organizations around the world, and is in use by millions of people daily.
It's known as the graphic touchscreen point of sale interface.
To use your words, it 'dispenses with the common desktop metaphor' (which had not yet been invented when I created the graphic touchscreen point of sale user interface).
It provides users with 'an intuitive, open-ended space' through which users freely create a graphical language which contains all the rules, knowledge and flow-control with which they can represent a complete replacement for the need to use spoken language to be able to conduct business.
It allows people throughout the world to work collaboratively in real-time, virtual workgroups by directly manipulating the touchscreen graphical interface.
The current version, in use since 1995, is based entirely on GPL'd free software.
It does not require users to even have computers, own them or manage them. All they need are displays with network interfaces.
When Mr. Han and Mr. Davidson have put their touchscreen gui to use in the hands of millions of millions of people, as I have done with mine, then they will have the sense of pride that I have.
When people in worldwide collaborative groups can use their touchscreen gui to actually work together, without having to own or manage a computer, as I have empowered them to do, then they will have the sense of achievement that I have.
Most of what you think you've discovered is all around you already. A lot of what you say is yet to be done has been going on for more than two decades.
Posted by: Gene Mosher | March 09, 2007 at 09:47 PM