It seems that from the beginning of their existence computer interfaces mimicked some object with similar purpose. The first computers was large piece of number crunching equipment, no wonder they used punched cards and tapes like automatic looms or programmable machines.
Later, as the place of usage (terminals) and equipment (computing room) started to diverge the teletype equipment served as a model of entering input and reading output. This metaphor was taken from the telegraph system and was dominant till the arrival of the desktop GUI in the early 80s. This text based metaphor was very strong and is widespread even today among system administrators, programmers and power users. It's very effective but only if you speak "the language of the computer" i.e. the huge set of commands and parameters a shell interface provides.
Next virtual terminals and phone register like interfaces arrived, actually simple variants of the desktop interface.
Then the Graphical User Interface was developed and it determines we expect computers should look and behave. The desktop GUI proved so successful that after thirty years it still the dominant type of user interface, also for smart phones and tablets. Alternatives like Magic Cap, the Metaphor GUI, Looking Glass came and went without many noticing them.
Voice based interfaces (e.g. Siri) are gaining momentum but it's not clear yet what role will they play and how computers will look like in the future.
The other option is FaceBook (or its competitors) which are is designed around connections. Maybe this is the new metaphor. What about a Windows 8 like interface where the tiles are organized around connections? It could have tiles like friends, business, leisure, news, study, finances, duties, travel... maybe set up in a hierarchical way (e.g. clicking on leisure could open films, music, theatre...). The user could organize it's connections "under" tiles and the GUI should take care for the details like which applications to open for the connection. For example if a friend sends a message a sign would appear in the tile and clicking on it would open the appropriate application let it be a chatting app, e-mail client, specific website and so on. Naturally not all connections are humans and not all of them send a message if there is something impbut it's easy to define a search string or write some code. Forthermore direct access top applications, documents and files would still be needed but not primary
Next virtual terminals and phone register like interfaces arrived, actually simple variants of the desktop interface.
Then the Graphical User Interface was developed and it determines we expect computers should look and behave. The desktop GUI proved so successful that after thirty years it still the dominant type of user interface, also for smart phones and tablets. Alternatives like Magic Cap, the Metaphor GUI, Looking Glass came and went without many noticing them.
Voice based interfaces (e.g. Siri) are gaining momentum but it's not clear yet what role will they play and how computers will look like in the future.
The other option is FaceBook (or its competitors) which are is designed around connections. Maybe this is the new metaphor. What about a Windows 8 like interface where the tiles are organized around connections? It could have tiles like friends, business, leisure, news, study, finances, duties, travel... maybe set up in a hierarchical way (e.g. clicking on leisure could open films, music, theatre...). The user could organize it's connections "under" tiles and the GUI should take care for the details like which applications to open for the connection. For example if a friend sends a message a sign would appear in the tile and clicking on it would open the appropriate application let it be a chatting app, e-mail client, specific website and so on. Naturally not all connections are humans and not all of them send a message if there is something impbut it's easy to define a search string or write some code. Forthermore direct access top applications, documents and files would still be needed but not primary
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