We'll meet again

So something weird happened, and apparently over the course of the last little while I've written 15 pages on the topic of metaphors within design, without realizing it. I've never really written anything not for school before, and I'm sure it's riddled with grammatical and structural errors, but it's strange that I did it at all, really.

I'm interested in the subject though. It's sort of interesting to think that 50, maybe 100 years from now, the majority of computer users aren't going to have any reference for the existing metaphors in computer and interface design. By that I mean the use of the terms "desktop" "folder" "file" etc. I mean, when was the last time you ever picked up an actual folder? When was the last time you filed something away in one? Shit, people really only think about their desktops as a surface to put their computers on these days, and as we move into mobile computing being the norm, will that reference even still make sense? Sure, these things still exist now, but it's something that we need to think about in the future.

I've also noticed that some more advanced systems that we use (websites, for instance) use even more archaic metaphors. The home page is in technical terms the index page. This is a reference to the earliest forms of Hypertext (the early codices, and more specifically Diderot's Encyclopedia) , which while making perfect sense, is something that is becoming lost in our new language, at least on the subject.

Look at your keyboard, see the way the keys are arranged? They're arranged in the order that they are because that's how typewriters were arranged. Typewriters were designed that way because the speed of the typewriter meant that they wanted a longer gap of time between each key stroke, so that the letters had time to return to the carriage before the next one was struck. Essentially the layout of the keyboard is designed specifically to cause you to need to reach further to get the letters that would commonly come next (statistically speaking, based on the last key you pressed). Of course, this is now so engrained in our understanding of how these machines work that it would be a trying task to reconfigure the keyboard for real efficiency. And while that's all and good, who knows how these other archaic methods of representation are holding back progress in these things? Why do we treat applications like we used to treat toolboxes? Why do we need to click on an icon to open an application? It's all this old fashioned system of selection and usage based on a physical world that is just not important or relative anymore. I'm not proposing that all of this change immediately, but it's something I like to think about.

Who knows though. Some things indicate a move away from these metaphors. Apple's Springboard concept that the iPhone uses is a much more effective concept of space and interaction where there is no underlying contextual metaphor, and is still effective. There are still problems with it, I think, but I also think it's just the beginning.

Anyway, maybe after finals are over I'll open it up and go over it and maybe post it up here or somewhere, it might be something interesting to read, or it could be 15 pages of me rambling, I've been pretty sick.

Ja