Everything old is new again

everything old is
new again
designing for the future

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ssoosay/4128397609/

“...it takes on average
20 years for a
technology to make
the transition from
ﬁrst articulation to
maturity (deﬁned as
becoming a $1billion
industry)…the
mouse, for example,
took 30 years. “
– Bill Buxton, Principle
researcher Microsoft

Patent 3522664 November 1967

take for example
the humble fax machine...
(a technology that may ﬁnally have outlived its usefulness)

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mattjiggins/4009310821/

1843

Alexander Bain

The fax machine was ﬁrst
envisioned and patented in 1843
by Scotsman Alexander Bain...

(image shown is of an 1850 iteration)

Image source: Wikipedia

1843 1848

Alexander Bain

Frederick Bakewell

...then improved on
(and patented once again)
in 1848 by Frederick Bakewell.


1843 1848 1861

Alexander Bain

Frederick Bakewell

Giovanni Castelli

Then improved on once again
13 years later, this time by
Giovanni Castelli, an Italian priest...

Castelli’s pantelegraph

Pantelegraph image courtesy ITIS Gallileo

1843 1848 1861 1865

Alexander Bain
ﬁrst fax
service
Frederick Bakewell

Giovanni Castelli

Then in 1865, Castelli went
on to establish the ﬁrst Paris

public fax service...
(the service worked over telegraph lines
and ran between Paris and Lyon)
Lyon

1843 1848 1861 1865 1876

Alexander Bain
ﬁrst fax
service
Frederick Bakewell

Giovanni Castelli

...this was still 11 years
before the invention of
the telephone...
(this isn’t unusual—we don’t always know
the true value of a technology until a
related one comes along)

Photo of
Bell usin
g t h e t e le
phone in
N e w Yo
r k.


1843 1848 1861 1865 1876

telephone
Alexander Bain patent:
ﬁrst fax
service Alexander
Frederick Bakewell Graham Bell
Innocenzo
Giovanni Castelli
Manzetti

Thomas
Six people were known to have been working on Edison

“voice transmission over a wire” around the J. P. Reis
time that Bell was ultimately successful in Elisha Gray
obtaining the ﬁrst patent. Antonio
Meucci

Alexander Thomas Innocenzo Johann Elisha Antonio
Graham Bell Edison Manzetti Phillip Reis Gray Meucci

Image source: Wikipedia - History of the telephone

1843 1848 1861 1865 1876 1877

telephone
Alexander Bain patent:
ﬁrst fax
service Alexander
Frederick Bakewell Graham Bell
Innocenzo
Giovanni Castelli
Manzetti

Thomas telephone
Shortly thereafter, a Hungarian engineer by the Edison exchange:
Tivadar Puskás
name of Tivadar Puskás invented the telephone J. P. Reis
switchboard—which allowed for the formation of Elisha Gray
telephone exchanges (and eventually networks). Antonio
Meucci

Alexander Thomas Innocenzo Johann Elisha Antonio Tivadar
Graham Bell Edison Manzetti Phillip Reis Gray Meucci Puskás

Image source: Wikipedia - History of the telephone

almost immediately—we began
dreaming up ways to move
phones around

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/qwrrty/3989643653

an example from
the early 1920s

A wireless phone prototype for the well-
to-do lady on the town...

Watch the video Courtesy Pathé Films Archive on YouTube

...of course it’s a bit bulky, so the lady
may need a gentleman to carry it...


telephone
box
wire coiled
around a fire
hydrant

“The two ladies are using a small simple HF
radio, probably a ‘Cat’s Whisker’ type. For it
to work it needs to be earthed, which is
why it’s connected to the ﬁre hydrant...”


handheld
mouthpiece

“The antenna (or aerial) is the wire in the
umbrella...”
- Explanation courtesy of Simon Atkins, an Ex-Royal Signals oﬃcer


the simplest solution was
of course to distribute the phones
throughout our environment
(a solution that remained useful for more than 100 years!)

Public phone booth: Lancaster county Pennsylvania

in a pinch, you could
also build a portable booth
a mobile phone center for reporters in 1960s Chicago

Copyright: Popular Science - via modernmechanix.com

Finally, after twenty years of experimentation
(and the invention of microprocessors) we ended up with this....

1983: the $3,995 DynaTAC
the ﬁrst mobile telephone that
could connect to the telephone
network without the assistance of
a mobile operator

...which was released about the same time as this.

1984: the Apple Macintosh
the ﬁrst commercially successful personal
computer to feature a mouse and a
graphical user interface

...the following ten years were pretty much devoted to
ﬁnding ways to combine these two concepts....

+

...until in 1993, IBM and Bell South released the world’s
ﬁrst smartphone: the Simon Personal Communicator...

ooh, rounded corners…

Simon was not just the ﬁrst device to combine a portable
computer with a phone...it also incorporated many
concepts that are now standard on mobile devices...

clock touchscreen
calendar virtual keyboard
address book electronic sketchpad
email handwriting recognition
text messaging predictive text input

Simon’s creators also envisioned the concept of
apps to personalise and extend the device’s capabilities

+
Accounting Music Player Camera
Version 1.0 Version 1.1 Version 1.0

cartridges designed to fit Simon’s
PCMCIA slot

Artist’s rendering based on photos from “Before iPhone and Android came Simon”

Simon retailed for $899 and sold about 50,000 units
until it was discontinued due to a combination of
“...technical limitations, product delays, a world-class
corporate meltdown, revolving-door management,
and bad business decisions...”

Source: “Before iPhone and Android came Simon”

Simon’s apps were designed to be installed directly onto
the device...yet around that time scientists at Xerox PARC
were experimenting with a slightly diﬀerent approach...

Courtesy Xerox PARC press archive

“ The most profound technologies are those that
disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of
everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it….
- Mark Weiser (1991)

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/armaggeusa/3176297283

To further explore Weiser’s predictions of the
implications of ubiquitous computing, PARC
developed an oﬃce based context-aware
networked computing environment, and a
device they called the PARC TAB.
Courtesy Xerox PARC press archive

The TAB was designed to be carried or worn at all times.
It's size, weight, and features were speciﬁcally intended to
promote casual, spur of the moment, computing.

Name: Marge Eldridge
Office: [ ] Ext: 518
Manager: chorded keys enabling basic
Manages:
25/1/94 14:39 @ [ 461770] one-handed navigation
“ 14:41 @
” 14:41 511 462983
“ 14:42 @
” 14:45

touch screen + stylus

This level of portability (unheard of in 1993) was
made possible by several key design decisions.

constantly connected to other Tabs
and computers through a series of
infrared communication hubs

tiny processor = TAB applications
smaller, cheaper & run on a user’s (far
more lightweight more capable)
(terminal-style)
added beneﬁt: desktop system
device contextual awareness
(e.g. location, interactions with
other devices, data and
applications accessed)

(apparently, researchers at Euro PARC were Mac based and developed ways to use and prototype Tab applications on a Mac)

This environment also
enabled experiments in
“intimate computing”.
One of these was a context-
aware application prototype
called “Forget-me-not”. Name: Marge Eldridge
Office: [ ] Ext: 518
Manager:
The app was designed to Manages:
25/1/94 14:39 @ [ 461770]
serve as an “external “ 14:41 @
” 14:41 511 462983
memory prosthetic”, “ 14:42 @
automatically gathering data ” 14:45
(from the TAB or other
devices operating on the
network). This data could be
used by participants to easily Manages:
track and recall important 25/1/94 14:39 @ [ 461770]
aspects of their lives. “ 14:41 @
phone
date time person 1 call number
person 2 dialled

Forget me not: Intimate computing in support of human memory

1983 1984 1992 1993 today

today

Motorola IBM
DynaTAC Simon
PARC
TAB
Apple
Macintosh

....the iPhone, Facebook and cloud computing
were still close to 20 years away...

when working with technology
it’s easy to believe that if something
is cool, useful or in some way
“superior” it will inevitably thrive

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/remedios/66912941

“
...you’ll never hear someone
spontaneously express a wish
for a ubiquitous house or city.
There are days, in fact, when it
can seem to me that the entire
endeavor has arisen out of
some combination of the
technically feasible and that
which is of interest to people
working in HCI.
- Adam Greenﬁeld, Everyware

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dodoorg/5023608260

...no matter how cool it may be...many technologies,
ecosystems and conditions must align before an invention
enters the lives of “normal people”.
1937 1962 1971 2012

40 years of innovation including the growth of
“The Electrocular” the microprocessor, the Internet, the web, something
network data protocols, display technologies.... normal people
will use :-)

Google’s
Project Glass

use of reﬂector sights in Virtual reality goggles
cockpits during World War II Dr. Ivan Sutherland
University of Utah

It’s worth remembering as well that “normal people” don’t
actually have to use a technology for it to impact their lives...

1937 1960 1962 1971 2012

40 years of innovation including the growth of
Gilbert
“The Electrocular” the microprocessor, the Internet, the web, something
Klopfstein, a
network data protocols, display technologies.... normal people
French test-pilot
will use :-)
creates ﬁrst HUD
system for use in Google’s
commercial Project Glass
aviation

University of Utah

...the most useful and widely deployed implementations may
also turn out to be relatively mundane...

1937 1960 1962 1971 1988 2012

Gilbert
“The Electrocular” BMW implements the something
Klopfstein, a
ﬁrst HUD-integrated normal people
French test-pilot
telematics will use :-)
creates ﬁrst HUD
system for use in Google’s
commercial Project Glass
aviation

(modern day version shown)
University of Utah

“Technological revolutions have
several interesting properties.
First, we tend to overestimate
the immediate impact and
underestimate the long-term
impact.

Second, we tend to place the
emphasis on the technologies
themselves, when it is really the
social impact and cultural change
that will be most dramatic.”
– Don Norman, Drop everything you’re doing

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jordanﬁscher/61429449

learning how to use
a new technology is one thing...

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jcfrog/4692750598

making space for it
in our lives is another

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/krossbow/4509414056

even when the value proposition
should appear obvious

Bell telephone advertisement in National Geographic, 1958 - via Modernmechanix

this not only makes it tricky to market new products...
it can also prevent those who design and develop them from
imagining something completely new...

From futurists to product designers...we can’t help but insert bits
of the present into our dreams of the future...

telecommunication in the year 2000
...as imagined in 1910

Utopia: The Quest for the Ideal Society in the Western World

...and re-imagined in 1956

Scientiﬁc American, 1956 - via Modernmechanix

Home of the Future:
as imagined by Disney Imagineering, MIT
and Monsanto in 1957

The home of the future looks
futuristic and is entirely
made of plastic!

-1957-

Watch the video on YouTube

...the interior however is
designed to feel familiar, with a
“normal” looking piano and
dining room...

-1957-


The recurring selling point
however is plastic. There are
plastic countertops,
(motorised) plastics shelves
and a “luxurious” set of plastic
cups, plates and dishes.
(Monsanto’s involvement obviously had
something to do with this, but plastic was also
the modern substance of the day).
-1957-


In the bedroom “the lady of the
house” has her own private
plastic boudoir. On the
counter is a speaker phone,
complete with ultra modern
push buttons instead of a
rotary dial.
(Note how lovingly the wife stares at the phone
while speaking to her husband. On the one hand
it’s charming that multitasking as you speak
wasn't yet socially acceptable but it also kind of -1957-
sad that 50 years later, we still spend a lot of time
staring at our phones.)


The man of the house has the
pleasure of shaving in his ultra
modern bathroom—fashioned
out of one giant piece of pre-
moulded plastic.
There’s also a “built-in” razor.
(The razor is corded and hardwired to the wall :-)

-1957-


The future of shopping:
as imagined in 1969

The lady of the
house browses a
selection of
tempting oﬀers via
video display.

-1969-


Push-buttons and
dials are used to
control what
appears on the
display...

-1969-


She then uses
another device to
key in her choice
of purchase.
(It was hard to imagine at that
point that devices might just
“talk” to each other).

-1969-


(To prevent social
embarrassment...)
the husband
receives an
itemised list of his
wife’s purchases.

-1969-


...which he
carefully inspects...

-1969-


...he then prints a
copy of the order
and uses a touch
screen and stylus
to sign in approval.

-1969-


but mixing old and new isn’t all bad...

sometimes it may be
exactly what we need

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/davilla/3363343340

The “old” brings with it
familiar metaphors...

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mujitra/6778948371

...and provides a common
conceptual framework.

familiar gesture
says “I get how
to use this...”

...transforming something alien into something that feels magical,
yet familiar enough that you can see yourself using it.

so many wires...run away! almost like shopping at Nike :-)

Courtesy Makerbot Industries Blog and on Flickr

“Successful products are precisely those that don’t
attempt to move user experiences signiﬁcantly,
even if the underlying technology has radically shifted.

In fact the whole point of user experience design is to
manufacture the necessary normalcy for a product to
succeed...” - Greg Borenstein

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ducdigital/2892313560

with nothing familiar to hold on to
it’s maybe not surprising that
some ideas never quite make it

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jurvetson/302869583

but metaphor and familiarity
only go so far...

Golly gee...with a
contraption like this,
my wife could spend the
whole day shopping! Good
thing I still have to approve
all those purchases!

many new technologies require
features to (implicitly) alleviate social angst

Source: Wikipedia

In 1982 GRiD Systems Corp. released the ﬁrst clamshell style laptop.
The GRiD Compass 1100 cost $8,150, yet that’s not why it failed to catch on...

“It was designed for business executives. And...one of the
biggest obstacles, we had for selling the product was the
fact—believe it or not—that it had a keyboard.

Business people, who were in their 40s and 50s, didn’t have
a computer or keyboard in their offices. It was associated
with being part of the secretarial pool. And so you'd put
this thing in their office and they'd say, "Get that out of
here." It was like getting a demotion. They were really
uncomfortable with it.”
– Jeff Hawkins speaking at the Computer History Museum

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ducdigital/2892313560

according to anthropologist Genevieve Bell
a technology must have the potential to impact us
in three ways to cause social angst...
(or as she calls it “moral panic”

Women and children ﬁrst : technology and moral panic

it has to change
our relationship to time...

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/faceme/2882556082

it has to change
our relationship to space...

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/shokai/4678255766

...and change our relationship
to other people

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/misbehave/2352753067

...changes in our relationship to time and space
don’t come along nearly as often as they used to....

the phonograph
suddenly made it possible
to hear the voices of the dead...
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/puuikibeach/7400339252

“...it is really flying, and it is impossible to divest yourself
of the notion of instant death...“
– The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century

the advent of the railway
caused intense fear of death...
(above and beyond that caused by horrific accidents)

Train wreck at Montparnasse, 1895, Wikipedia
http://www.flickr.com/photos/puuikibeach/7400339252

...it also caused what the Lancet medical journal
then termed “nervous fatigue”...

“...even the elementary concepts of
space and time have begun to vacillate. Space is
killed by the railways, and we are left with time alone.“
– German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/svensson/601272668

shifting time and space may now seem
somewhat mundane...

...but changes in our
relationships with people
will likely cause angst for
many years to come

...so what can the past teach us about
designing for the future?

we often talk about the future
as if it will arrive, fully formed on
our doorstep one ﬁne morning

Public domain: Space colony art from the 1970s

residential smart
card entry
4G already
old, organically formed overtaking 3G
neighbourhoods

...and the stories we tell

city-wide wi-ﬁ

contactless Octopus
smart card

but the future is already here...
smart grid and

the old all jumbled up
environmental monitoring

with the new...
paper map from
the hotel

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/milo_riano/4336541309

the success of the products we design
will be deﬁned not merely by the
technologies we invent...

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/preetamrai/5438199316

Rate of acceleration/deceleration of technology adoption by country

but by the cultures that
choose to welcome them...
Research by Intel measures the rate at which technology adoption exceeds (or falls
below) expectations for the country’s level of GDP. Rates have been averaged across
three technologies: mobile phones, PC’s, and internet users.

which brings us back to the humble fax machine...
a technology that now gathers dust in
all but one “modern” culture

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mattjiggins/4009310821/

culture of
handwritten documents

warmth & personality

instant visibility

tech literacy: 1/5 of the
population is over 65

use of seals instead of
signatures for official
transactions in Japan, fax machines still thrive
in the home and at work

Source: Japan and the fax: a love affair http://www.flickr.com/photos/kankan/55026589

But culture isn’t just about them...
(these people we call “users”)

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz once
defined culture as “...the stories we
tell ourselves about ourselves. “

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leweb3/6498812861/

The more technology surrounds us,
the more all of us will play a part in
deﬁning these stories...


...the future will not just be deﬁned
by the next big invention—it will be
also be deﬁned by our ability to
dream beyond existing ones.


“
...innovation is not about doing something
new out of thin air. It is about forgetting
that what you are doing is old.
- Dawn Nafus, anthropologist

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/keepwaddling1/3048726936/

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Presentation deck available @
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amazing photographers on

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0

@yiibu
thank you

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/tinou/453593446

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