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Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

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Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

#31

Post by exocortex »

eranation wrote: post #24

This is all great, and really beautiful and well produced. What worries me, is that even today, with our simple 2D word / excel, people utilize about 10% of the feature in a good day, and it takes me a few google searches to find where microsoft has hidden "insert your favorite lesser known function here" in version X. New UX (and by new UX I mean things like holographic / hands manipulate augmented reality items on…

Confusion is the first step to learning anything worthwhile. We shouldn't be shielding people from it. I have a feeling that if as a species we're going to create some Media for Thinking the Unthinkable, it won't be by continuing to emulate 2D paper. Of course people are going to "require user training" - if we stopped to design for the most common denominator we'd never increase the scope of our expression.

We navigate and create complex systems every day that could be more easily absorbed and understood with more complex, dynamic representations. I see the world as pictured as one where Word no longer exists, where you can send someone a simulation and be understood in a few minutes instead of spending hours with a whiteboard or months getting a proof of concept built by a development team.

"is she a publisher? a researcher? a biologist? a teacher?"

Why not all 4?

Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

#32

Post by seanmcdirmid »

noblethrasher wrote: post #5
jyzzmoe wrote: post #2

Remember the gorilla arm. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html

Something like gorilla-arm might be good thing: Humans probably aren't supposed to be sitting in front of a computer for hours at a time; gorilla-arm is just a non-dismissible signal that it's time to take a break.

You can only go so long at a whiteboard, what saves us is that we usually spend more time taking than writing.

Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

#33

Post by [deleted] »

milesf wrote: post #29

Ever notice how companies like General Motors & Microsoft like to make "concept" stuff like this, while companies like Apple and Tesla don't bother? Who's actually delivering on great stuff? Companies that talk about it, or those who just clam up and get to work?

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

#35

Post by Spooky23 »

mc32 wrote: post #17
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #6

It seems like most of the things demonstrated are changes to the gloss of interfaces, higher resolution etc... I don't see radical "productivity" improvements - eg. making input significantly easier through BCI. The touch options they show are a scaled versions (larger/more ubiquitous) of what we have now with stylus/touch input and wearables. For example, why is the big drafting table radically better than a tablet…

What struck me was that people were there almost as props. It was as if technology had advanced so much (information gathering and intelligence) that the people were more or less redundant and were 'doing things' just to act out our newfound purpose. Basically all the information was there and people more or less had veto power --yes or no. I know this is just conceptualization, but they may not be that far off. It l…

The proles of the future will be futzing with the Sharepoint sites that are no doubt the backend of the future of productivity.

Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

#36

Post by AndrewKemendo »

mc32 wrote: post #28
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks fun and would appear that people would have lots more free time to do whatever, but for the most part things were done by machines for people. Is that not the "promise of technology?" That is a world I am trying to create - one where we work not out of necessity but out of passion, so I am fully behind that. I just didn't see anything in that video that blew my mind in that respect. I would love to see somet…

Yes, that has always been the promise of technology, to deliver people from tedium. The unanswered question, if people aren't really needed to do 'work' (giving them the free time) where or how do people earn a living? Moreover, as machines/automation/computers make us more efficient, this hasn't translated into free time individually but rather made people previously employable, unemployable. So the free time that w…

I would argue this is one of the key questions of the 21st century. The best answer anyone has so far is basic income.

Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

#37

Post by interpol_p »

mc32 wrote: post #30
interpol_p wrote: post #19

So Microsoft's vision of the future is for us to continue to be touching flat screens well into the future? Pinch to zoom, drag and drop. Those two gestures pretty much dominated their vision. There seems to be a lot of production value in this video, but it doesn't seem thought out. The interfaces just show drag and drop, and then items spouting animated complex information. There also seems to be a hell of a lot mo…

As I said in another post, the video pretty much reduces people to a secondary role. It's not so much technology enabling us or aiding us, but more we supplement technology --but only because technology is allowing us to interact. The good is that people would have a lot of free time (presumably to do good things), the unanswered question, is now that most people are redundant, what do they do to earn a living? Magic…

I don't really think the video reduces people to a secondary role. It shows people driving the technology for the most part. My issue with the video is that the technology demonstrated within it doesn't seem to enable or aid any more than what we currently have. It just happens on more screens with more animation.

I would like to see technology take our tasks from us. I love thinking, designing and creating things, but there is still so much tedium in implementation. To take that away would be to accelerate everyone's creative ability.

If we had the ability to automate all tasks then we probably wouldn't need to earn a living. We would need a government could recognise that the value created by our technology should be distributed amongst everyone equally.

Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

#38

Post by shanselman »

tdicola wrote: post #4

I'd love to know why companies even waste time making videos like these anymore. Looking back at past stuff (like the 'smart home' from Microsoft in the mid 90's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V_0xDUg0h0 ) it's pretty hilarious how out of touch they are with reality.

Really? That kind of looks like 2015 to me.

Re: Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision

#39

Post by frik »

Bill Gates last vision video "information at your fingertips" (1995): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XxeY-OchwY

It shows a wallet PC (=smartphone), digital currency (like BitCoin), touch screen, digital personal agent (next-gen Siri/Cortana/Watson), database based filesystem/shell (like Windows Cairo & WinFS - vamporware).

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