The Unfinished Revolution: Human-Centered Computers and What They Can Do for Us

by Michael L. Dertouzos

Book Overview

If our cars were as difficult to drive as our computers are to operate, they would never leave the garage. Yet everyday we put up with infuriating complications and incomprehensible error messages that spew forth from our technology: software upgrades crash our machines, Web sites take forever to download, e-mail overwhelms us. We spend endless time on the phone waiting for automated assistance.

In effect, we continue to serve our machines'...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0066620678
• ISBN13: 9780066620671
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Harper Business
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Explains how these computers will change our professional

Unfinished Revolution focuses on human-centered computers and how they can change our lives reveals a technology which adapts to people; a new concept in how designers are producing computers. Human-centered computing uses five key technologies which will expand human capabilities: Unfinished Revolution explains how these computers will change our professional specialties and personal lives alike.

Unfinishable revolution?

Few people have more credentials to speak about progress and challenges in human-computer interaction than M. Dertouzos - the head of the Laboratory of Computer Sciences at MIT, which has a distinguished record of cutting-edge research in this and other fields. And yet many arguments and predictions in the book remain somewhat unconvincing."Why computers aren't as easy to use as cars?" - asks the author, like many other people before him, frustrated by their perpetual complexity and cumbersomeness. But comparison with cars is misleading. Cars are not designed to allow motorists to put under the hood any additional gadgets they fancy, or to perform arbitrary maneuvers, pushing every button and handle simultaneously. Yet the development of PC industry was based on accommodating ever more and newer gadgets under its cover, and on allowing almost any user's action, short of whacking a motherboard with a sledgehammer. Of course, many flaws of computer systems are due to the industry's geeky origins and traditions, or specific biases of programmers and early users. But the roadmap described by the author is not the first serious attempt at radical improvement, and the goal it is hardly closer today than a few years ago. Why? This probably has a lot to do with the economics of the computer industry, rather than other, more subjective, factors. As much as both hardware and software companies try to convince us how hard are they working to improve usability of their products, to eliminate bugs and crashes, the dirty secret of the industry is that it is not a top priority. Quality simply does not pay. In the "physical" world we often buy new things just to replace broken, or worn-out ones, not necessarily because the older items are hopelessly obsolete. Manufacturers have time and resources to gradually work out the kinks and improve design almost to perfection. With computers, on the other hand, "physical" amortization is low, so the only way to sell new systems is to cram them with more new features, no matter how poorly designed at first, and to make existing ones (no matter how proven and reliable) obsolete and incompatible. Simply reducing the number of bugs will not generate many sales. As a new feature appears, buggy and frustrating to use at first, the economic machine of the computer industry kicks into high gear. Magazines write raving reviews to increase their own sales, add-on manufacturers rush to incorporate it and propagate it down the sales channels, application developers write new drivers and other utilities which make new feature indispensable and previous versions obsolete. As a result, today complex software is not unlike a human genome - a product of often messy and chaotic evolution, rather than a compact and elegant design. Pieces of active, useful code ("genes") are surrounded by "junk", leftover from previous generations of development, often redundant and useless. Why it is there? Because it is easier and cheaper to throw more

Another masterpiece .... all is not acheived already!

The great Professor does it again. His very nice flow and simple direct writing makes the point every time. Prof Dertouzos is a legend, who has excelled at showing the way for the uses of Technology. This book is probably is 10-15 year time horizon, but for all those tech-friendly people, it helps define a plan of action on how to proceed further in the Tech arena. Read "What will be" and seeing the various insights become reality, you will go through a hair raising experience to think of the things he refers to in "The Unfinished Revolution"A must read!!.

A Vision for Designing More Useful Information Technology

Although this book was written for both people who use computers and for the technologists who use them, the latter are the primary audience. General computer users will find their normal complaints about bulky, balky technology recognized here, but will get little but emotional support for near-term improvements. The primary benefit of the book comes in the many scenarios of interactions with information technology to simplify, speed, ease, and improve the processing to better serve the user's needs.Dr. Dertouzos is always on the cutting edge of the information revolution in his role as the head of MIT's Computer Laboratory. The core of this book is captured in chapter 8, where MIT's new Oxygen project is described. This is a prototype of "human-centered" information technology. The system combines a portable device for wireless communication, a stationary system built into a room (with transportable software from the portable device to the stationary system), and a network to support the interactions of users to the technology in new ways. The strongest part of the book is in complaints about the limitations of current information devices and networks. These will be familiar to any computer user, but it is refreshing to hear them from someone involved in drawing the outlines of the future. These include bulky software that does too much (like the word processing program most of us use that keeps automatically reformating what you have typed into something you don't want), weak interfaces between multiple programs and products so they crash when combined, the need to type so much information in, lousy search engines that waste your time, horrible telephone robots for getting to the right number, difficulties in sharing information, and the burdens of unwanted and unneeded e-mail.His solutions focus on five areas: Letting people converse with information devices in ways similar to how you would speak with a service person in a business; using e-forms to capture your information once and to then automate the sharing of that information with organizations who legitimately need it; finding answers by building on information that others have learned whom you trust; changing the method of distance working and learning so that the interactions are made more realistic and better summarized; and allowing you to tap into personalized, custom software preferences wherever you are and with whatever device you are using. Each area contains several examples of how these changes might work, many drawn from actual Oxygen applications that are now operating. So you should think of this book as focusing on what will be technically feasible in the next five years or so. I hope that Dr. Dertouzos will write a sequel to this book that looks further ahead than that in order to begin to spell out an even more improved version of information processing. As much as I was attracted to his vision here, I found that it mainly focused on enhancing the ways that I

good source of research ideas

You'll be disappointed in this book if you're looking for WIRED Magazine-style "here's how much fun the future is going to be" writings. You'll also be disappointed if you're looking for the standard Don Norman or Alan Cooper suggested improvements on the personal computer.Dertuozos writes for his peers, managers charged with deploying research and development resources. If this is your job, you'll get one or two ideas from this book that will change your research agenda. That's worth 5 stars....