AM+A.SciFi+HCI.eBook.17Aug12 - Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc.

Aaron Marcus, The Past 100 Years of the Future, Page 162
Concluding Comments
This survey provides the space to include examples of HCI within movies and videos
that I presented in my keynote address at the Mensch und Komputer Conference 2011
in Chemnitz, Germany. I am grateful to Prof. Prof. Dr. Maximilian Eibl and to Dr. Arne
Berger for the invitation to present the results of my study (see the online video cited in
the Bibliography). I am especially pleased that I have space to cite some of the
extensive sci-fi films of India and China, but less well known to European and North-
American viewers.
As I tried to make clear at the beginning of this essay, science-fiction movies and the
depiction of human-computer interaction and communication have, of necessity, been
closely intertwined. Cross-cultural sci-fi and HCI trends, patterns, and issues remain
largely unexplored.
Sci-fi movies (and videos) have been always closely linked to HCI and communication,
even if a minor element in their storytelling. In some of these media examples, HCI plays
a more central role. In all these examples, sci-fi media could serve as unusual,
interesting, and potentially valuable material on on which to run heuristic evaluations of
the design. There might emerge a new class of heuristics: what principles should we
follow to make sure that alien creatures can use our products and services, or,
conversely, how should we evaluate alien displays and equipment in terms of their use
by human beings. In an oddly ironic twist, "normal" human beings might be classed as
"disabled" or "less-abled" creatures, much like our world now classes some individuals
with different perceptual or cognitive abilities.
Sci-fi film-makers might benefit from more skilled and extensive use of HCI
professionals in making their movies (almost none are ever credited). As a
consequence, viewers might be exposed to some of the truly latest technologies of R+D
centers (not pop versions of these), including spherical sound, the Internet of objects,
sophisticated personalization and location technologies, and virtual interactions.
Perhaps then we would move beyond the transparent displays of backwards type and
imagery on which Hollywood and other movie-production centers have currently fixated.
Likewise, advanced technology R+D centers could benefit by the inclusion of more
visiting or “resident” science-fiction authors/futurists as consultants in dreaming up
innovative approaches that stretch the imagination of engineers, marketers, business
managers, and user-experience designers involved in developing new approaches to
HCI. Bruce Sterling, a science-fiction writer has served in that capacity. Brian David
Johnson, a futurist at Intel is another. There should be more.
Each world could learn from the “aliens” of the other.
In 1992 and 1999, I introduced Cyberpunk sci-fi novelists to SIGCHI conferences,
inviting these authors to predict the future of HCI. This kind of visit from "outer space"
should occur on a more regular basis. The HCI literature has not yet explored sufficiently
much of sci-fiʼs latest trends, patterns, and predictions. Perhaps now itʼs time to look
more deeply. The evidence of the last 100 years of imagining and visualizing the future
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