
How Star Trek artists imagined the iPad... 23 years ago - bluesmoon
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/08/how-star-trek-artists-imagined-the-ipad-23-years-ago.ars
======
RiderOfGiraffes
So you can fly the Enterprise from a PADD, and you can change the interface,
or what it's connected to, and interface with the rest of the ship, and yet
...

... when handing over several reports, they handed over several PADDs

~~~
mechanical_fish
You could write a little essay on the subject of props and what they are for.
It would be a meditation on questions like _why is it so much more
dramatically effective to have two characters fight for possession of a gun
than it is to have them shoot magic lightning at each other from their
fingertips_?

Or you could write an essay on all the things that neophiles forget when they
declare war on paper. The good news is that Malcolm Gladwell wrote that
already:

<http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_03_25_a_paper.htm>

...in the form of a review of an MIT press book on the subject.

Or we could just make a list of why one would use several PADDs if PADDs were
free. You can juxtapose two reports on a desk and rapidly glance from one to
another. (Paging Edward Tufte, who goes on and _on_ about this.) You can walk
into a room with five people and hand one report to the first four and the
remaining three reports to the last one. When you do hand over a stack of
reports, they can be in priority order. And you can add commentary to the
reports via the _way_ you hand over each one: A careful two-handed
presentation (note the proper technique for exchanging Japanese business
cards), a jumbled stack, a light toss, a disgusted look as you gingerly pinch
the report between thumb and forefinger, or even a mock attempt to shield the
bad-news report behind your body as you hand over the good news first. See?
Props are not just for actors; _everyone_ is an actor and we all use props.

~~~
pasbesoin
I voted up, but I'm going to breach HN brevity protocol to comment that that
Gladwell article is really, really worth reading. E.g.

 _But why do we pile documents instead of filing them? Because piles represent
the process of active, ongoing thinking. The psychologist Alison Kidd, whose
research Sellen and Harper refer to extensively, argues that "knowledge
workers" use the physical space of the desktop to hold "ideas which they
cannot yet categorize or even decide how they might use." The messy desk is
not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity:
those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file
the papers on their desks, because they haven't yet sorted and filed the ideas
in their head. Kidd writes that many of the people she talked to use the
papers on their desks as contextual cues to "recover a complex set of threads
without difficulty and delay" when they come in on a Monday morning, or after
their work has been interrupted by a phone call. What we see when we look at
the piles on our desks is, in a sense, the contents of our brains._

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I've now added that to my "Great Articles" project. Forty articles/items now
and gradually increasing.

Here's a question: If you were to put tags on that article, what tags would
you use?

~~~
Qz
That's a funny question considering the quote above is precisely about the
process of filing (aka tagging) things.

~~~
pasbesoin
Tags are a great alternative or adjunct to a hierarchical, single-node
organization. The largest problems I've encountered with tagging are
cumbersome and/or overly limiting implementations.

------
jws
I have on several occasions attempted to make a user interface that looked and
felt like the okudagrams[1] in ST:TNG or DS9. My conclusion is that they are a
stunningly bad use of space and a terrible way to direct user attention. If
only they didn't look so cool I would stop trying.

I think now that I sometimes need to display an iPhone's worth of information
on an iPad the day of the okudagram has come.

[1] _okudagram_ – _Okudagram is a nickname for the interactive (and usually
reorganizable) displays found on control panels in 23rd and 24th century
starships, and beyond. The nickname is a reference to Michael Okuda, a tech
advisor for the show, who created definitive signage styles for a new design
of control panel, without any physical controls, that was used in the later
Star Trek Movies and TNG era productions._

------
rbanffy
Great. Now all we need is warp drive and we can call it a day.

~~~
api
This actually opens a profound issue: why has progress in areas like computers
and biotech been so breakneck fast but has utterly stalled in areas like
energy, propulsion, aviation, etc.?

I think I know the answer: those fields are capital intensive, so their
"generation time" is very slow. But that might not be the only answer.

~~~
sliverstorm
For every person who chooses to dive into computing and biotech, that's one
more person who cannot work on energy, propulsion and aviation. I know I for
one would probably do one of those if I wasn't in computing.

~~~
api
Maybe it's that the job market in computers especially is so much more dynamic
with better opportunity for advancement, so it attracts a greater share of the
best and the brightest.

It might also be accessibility. Anyone can play with a computer. A jet engine,
not so much.

------
DanielBMarkham
Damn Chris -- I blogged this just yesterday. I understand that good authors
borrow and great authors steal, but geesh. At least give it a few days.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1587909>

~~~
gduffy
Do you think you're the only one to notice the similarity, or are you saying
he took something from your article?

------
jsulak
We'd be remiss in not mentioning this: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lcars-
internet-media-reader/i...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lcars-internet-
media-reader/id366238562?mt=8)

------
mjgoins
Hopefully this invalidates some patents.

