GUI magic

Monday November 7, 2005 - 4:47PM EDT

I've been thinking about this for a while but I think the weight of it finally hit me today. Currently computer software is dominated by input methods and not functionality. Computer programs are not intelligent so we have to come up with various input methods to get the functionality we need. We as users are at the mercy of the computer's lack of intelligent and unwieldy input methods. What we want to be able to do is simply explain to a computer what we want to do and have it understand. Not have to go through various input hoops just to calculate something on a spread sheet. You should simply tell the computer that you want a certain calculation of certain data and it should do it. No more remebering various commands and typing them in. Computers should be extensions of human thought. They should be able to do things we can't do very well very fast. Like calculating numbers and whatnot. The whole software industry is built around creating various input methods to get the functionality that they think we need. We still don't have programs that automatically shape their interface to how we work or what we are thinking because a computer can't understand us.

What would be cool is on the fly customizable interfaces. You simply tell the computer how you want the interface setup and it does it.