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The case against conversational interfaces
11–20 of 225 posts
Re: The case against conversational interfaces
#12There’s an interesting… paradox? Observation? That up until 20-30 years ago, humans were not computerized beings. I remember a thought leader at a company I worked at said that the future was wearable computing, a computer that disappears from your knowing and just integrates with your life. And that sounds great and human and has a very thought leadery sense of being forward thinking. But I think it’s wrong? Ever si…
> Screens and remotes, and I think there’s something sort of anti-humanly human about it. Actually, it's the reverse. The orienting response is wired in quite deeply. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienting_response When I was teaching, I used to force students using laptops to sit near the back of the room for exactly this reason. It's almost impossible for humans to ignore a flickering screen.
Sensitivity to stimuli behind orienting impulse varies by individual and I wish I was less sensitive on daily basis.
These days screen brightness goes pretty high and it is unbelievable how many people seem to never use their screen (phone or laptop) on anything less than 100% brightness in any situation and are seemingly not bothered by flickering bright light or noise sources.
I am nostalgic about old laptops’ dim LCD screens that I saw a few times as a kid, they did not flicker much and had a narrow angle of view. I suspect they would even be fine in a darkened classroom.
Re: The case against conversational interfaces
#13Get a proper physical keyboard to write, and stop using smartphones as typing devices.
Re: The case against conversational interfaces
#14There’s an interesting… paradox? Observation? That up until 20-30 years ago, humans were not computerized beings. I remember a thought leader at a company I worked at said that the future was wearable computing, a computer that disappears from your knowing and just integrates with your life. And that sounds great and human and has a very thought leadery sense of being forward thinking. But I think it’s wrong? Ever si…
I went through Waldorf education and although Rudolf Steiner is quite eccentric, one thing I think he was spot on about was regarding WHEN you introduce technology. He believed that introducing technology or mechanized thinking too early in childhood would hinder imaginative, emotional, and spiritual development. He emphasized that children should engage primarily with natural materials, imaginative play, storytellin…
Wasn't Waldorf a cult?
Re: The case against conversational interfaces
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been theory crafting around video games for children on the opposing premise. I think fundamentally the divide is on the quality of content — most games have some value to extract, but many are designed to be played inefficiently, and require far more time investment than value extracted. Eg Minecraft, Roblox, CoD, Fortnite, Dota/LoL, the various mobile games clearly have some kind of value (mechanical skill, ha…
Oh, his theory wasn't about video games though, they didn't exist in 1910, it was about the full breadth of human sensorial systems being used in the context of our neurology for a prolonged period of time during high neuroplasticity (0 to 6 was his theory). I haven't really played video games, so I don't know much about them personally.
No I get that; video games are just my medium of choice. The problem I was trying to get at is these arguments and perceptions usually stem from the degenerate cases, which only get worse the further in time you go, but I don’t think it’s really due to the technology itself. You have the same braindead systems appear in any medium of entertainment — there are definitely systems of total waste in sports, physical play (I’ve yet to encounter anything so degenerate as balltapping — and that shit spreads rapidly once it starts), literature, etc.
It can hardly be said that a studio ghibli flick stunted the imagination of children worldwide but I would definitely believe it if you suggested cocomelon rotted the brains directly out of their skulls
I think it’s also worth noting that kids have a shitload of time. They can engage in both technologies and physical play and other activities simultaneously; the problem occurs when singular or few activities overwhelmingly consume that time — which is why I claim the unbounded timesinks can be catastrophic — and what I think most people are worried about when they blanket-ban whole systems/mediums
Re: The case against conversational interfaces
#16> The second thing we need to figure out is how we can compress voice input to make it faster to transmit. What’s the voice equivalent of a thumbs-up or a keyboard shortcut? Can I prompt Claude faster with simple sounds and whistles?
This reminds me of the amazing 2013 video of Travis Rudd coding python by voice: https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI?si=AwBE_fk6Y88tLcos
The number of times in the last few years I've wanted that level of "verbal hotkeys"... The latencies of many coding llms are still a little bit too low to allow for my ideal level of flow (though admittedly I haven't tried one's hosted on services like groq), but I can clearly envision a time when I'm issuing tight commands to a coder model that's chatting with me and watching my program evolve on screen in real time.
On a somewhat related note to conversational interfaces, the other day I wanted to study some first aid stuff - used Gemini to read the whole textbook and generate Anki flash cards, then copied and pasted the flashcards directly into chat GPT voice mode and had it quiz me. That was probably the most miraculous experience of voice interface I've had in a long time - I could do chores while being constantly quizzed on what I wanted to learn, and anytime I had a question or comment I could just ask it to explain or expound on a term or tangent.
Re: The case against conversational interfaces
#17Completely agree, voice UI is best as an augmentation of our current HCI patterns with keyboard/mouse. I think one of the reasons this is, is because our brains kind of have separate buffers for visual memory and aural memory (Baddeley's working memory model). Most computer use takes up the visual buffer, and our aural buffer has extra bandwidth. This also means we can do things aurally while still maintaining focus/attention on what we're doing visually, allowing a kind of multitasking.
One thing I will note is that I'm not sure I buy the example for voice UIs being inefficient. I've almost never said "Alexa what's the weather like in Toronto?". I just say "Alexa, weather". And that's much faster than taking my phone out and opening an app. I don't think we need to compress voice input. Language kind of auto-compresses, since we create new words for complex concepts when we find the need.
For example, in a book club we recently read "As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow". We almost immediately stopped referring to it by the full title, and instead just called it "lemons" because we had to refer to it so much. Eg "Did you finish lemons yet?" or "This book is almost as good as lemons!". The context let shorten the word. Similarly the context of my location shortens the word to just "weather". I think this might be the way the voice UIs can be made more efficient: in the same way human speech makes itself more efficient.
Re: The case against conversational interfaces
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went through Waldorf education and although Rudolf Steiner is quite eccentric, one thing I think he was spot on about was regarding WHEN you introduce technology. He believed that introducing technology or mechanized thinking too early in childhood would hinder imaginative, emotional, and spiritual development. He emphasized that children should engage primarily with natural materials, imaginative play, storytellin…
Wasn't Waldorf a cult?
It is, packed of pseudosciences, which we still suffer today.
In Switzerland, we get often measle outbreaks thanks to his cult.
Re: The case against conversational interfaces
#19There’s an interesting… paradox? Observation? That up until 20-30 years ago, humans were not computerized beings. I remember a thought leader at a company I worked at said that the future was wearable computing, a computer that disappears from your knowing and just integrates with your life. And that sounds great and human and has a very thought leadery sense of being forward thinking. But I think it’s wrong? Ever si…
Playing computer games since an early age made me who I am. It required learning English a decade earlier than my peers. It pulled me into programming around start of primary school. I wouldn’t be a staff engineer in a western country without these two.
Re: The case against conversational interfaces
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