Dialog Box

I was going to simply update the last …quick clicks… entry, but Roughly Drafted’s latest post (article, really), sparks a lot of further consideration and discussion.

In it, Daniel Eran, in his typically thorough, yet readable fashion, gives an excellent overview of the evolution of home video and the format war that occurred as that industry developed. In the corporate espionage, backstabbing, and hubris, analogies to today’s home entertainment market (especially music) are painfully clear.

Looking back on Sony and its decisions regarding the (clearly superior) Beta format is a fascinating bit of hindsight. Perhaps the kernel of the Eran’s argument is this:

…companies [were given] the opportunity to experience the alternative to standards-based development. Rather than a government-run organization establishing standards, individual manufacturers would all scramble to develop their own proprietary systems, optionally choosing to license their designs to other makers.

In hindsight, this worked out really poorly. While companies were already able to compete in delivering TVs that all worked according to the standard NTSC TV specifications, there were no standards guiding a record or tape delivery medium for video.

Because there were no standards, huge resources were wasted in competing efforts to invent new ones. This same principle was later relearned at considerable expense in the field of software development, in networking, and again in video standards. Open formats and open standards solve a lot of problems for the market.

The lack of an open standard did not actually kill home video, however, and I’m not sure that innovation was truly dealt a serious blow. Interestingly, the VHS juggernaut that eventually squashed Sony’s beloved Betamax was fueled by Sony’s own designs, as they eventually (haughtily) pointed out in ad campaigns – “We Invented The Competition.” JVC, the company that launched VHS shortly after Betamax, was using technology derived from both private demonstrations of the prototype Beta systems years earlier, as well as its experience as a partner in Sony’s earlier professional U-matic video tape systems.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice profile on Cory Doctorow, the noted author and Boing Boing blogger.

It’s especially interesting to take a look at Mr. Doctorow as an advocate for freedom within the confines of a particularly bureaucratic and image-conscious university. (As a sample, a university email to students, cited in the article: “as an academic institution, USC’s purpose is to promote and foster the creation and lawful use of intellectual property.”)

His thoughts on the notion of copyright, ownership, and the nature of freedom are just barely brushed, but it is a well-written study of an important figure in society’s efforts to reconcile property and freedom.

Link » | Photo: Cory Doctorow by Ed Schipul

The Interface is, quite literally, where people and technology meet.

I’ll be bringing it up for a while here on this blog, and so for the time being, I have gone ahead and given it a capital I. It’s that important.

Soon, I’ll start to waste some pixels on the Humane Interface, and the essentials of HID — Human Interface Design, but right now, let me point out that there is a second side to the Interface — the technology (the one that is coming into contact with the human…). Before we get too digital or electronic here… keep in mind that technology is not necessarily animated and battery powered. It’s any application of knowledge (science), and so the Interface is not always a blinking button or LCD screen.

Interfaces have been with us since the dawn of human memory, in one form or another. (Picture the caveman refining the smoother, tapered handle for his club.)

So, now, with that in mind, here’s the natural comedy that emerges when we consider users’ modern-day frustrations with Interface design through the lens of a slightly older generation and its struggles with the newfangled Interface of the day: Gutenberg offers In your home support – on Bore Me

(Thanks to the Zinks for the link!)

Update Apr 6 There’s another version of this clip posted here with a few extra seconds of footage and a little bit of a different translation (though it’s a little darker).

Wonderful discussion of software interface efficiency, starting with

• Tantek Çelik’s “Three Hypotheses of Human Interface Design“
then remarkably good discussion and expanded ideas with
• John Gruber’s “Deal With It“
and some followup thoughts some analysis of feeling efficient versus being efficient with
• Gruber’s “A Few ‘Deal With It’ Follow-Up Points“
Hat tip, of course, to the always-relevant Daring Fireball

I love stories.

Stories are what make us human. They are the foundation of community and of continuity. They connect us, teach us, comfort us. We each tell stories. Small stories. Big stories. We yearn to tell stories. Some of us don’t think consciously about it, but we do it all the time. Telling stories, listening to others’ stories. It is the basis of culture. Any culture.

We communicate through stories. I like to think about communications. To study communications is largely to observe how we format those stories — the protocols we follow, the methods we employ, the ways we preserve stories for future generations.

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