How stories of impossible form our future?

When browsing through web thinking about what to write in my blog post for the course, I stumbled upon a Wikipedia page called “Outline of human–computer interaction”. As I scrolled down the page, I saw list of movies that feature interesting user interfaces, and somehow that list got my attention (probably because the list contained many movies that had impressed me one way or another). The list also reminded me of a book called “Physics of the impossible” written by Michio Kaku. The book itself is mainly about cool things like teleportation and time travel that are possible in science fiction stories but in reality they are impossible, at least in our time with our technology.

Even though teleportation and time travel are interesting visions, the actual part of Kaku’s book I was thinking about when reading through the list was the Preface. In the very beginning of the book Michio Kaku writes about science fiction stories from the past - and especially about stories that have, in their own time, described almost unthinkable visions of future technology and inventions. He also writes about how some of those visions have also become everyday reality to us. For example, in his book Kaku writes about Jules Verne’s novel “Paris in the Twentieth Century” which was forgotten for 130 years. When the novel was published in 1994, it revealed a vision that is very close to the reality we are living in - a world with worldwide communication network, glass skyscrapers and gas-powered automobiles. Verne surely was a great visionary - or a great time traveler, who knows.

A natural language bot user interface from a film "Passenger".

How all of this is related to interaction techniques then? The past visionaries and the list of movies made me think about the possibility that science fiction stories are probably playing a part in our field too, as a source inspiration to create new kinds of user interfaces and interaction techniques, if nothing else. The same way that physicists and other scientists working in the fields of algorithms and formulas, we also get inspired by great stories of unseen technology. Even if user experience aims to look technology through human mind instead of algorithms and formulas, we also get fascinated by cool technological solutions in the stories the same way as other science people, at least I do.

To pick an example of a single system and of a single interaction technique, I also decided to read a little bit about history of virtual reality headsets. It seems, that there has been a short story in 1935 called "Pygmalion's Spectacles" that was referred as one of the first visions of virtual reality glasses. There have also been many attempts to create virtual reality solutions since 1950’s, but only now, with the help of small scale high-resolution screens, the technology has reached a point where truly immersive virtual reality experiences are possible - even at home. We are at the point where utility and usability of virtual reality headsets that enables a huge variety of different experiences to be consumed easily. That also makes us ask what would be the best way to interact with the virtual reality and to try different solutions and how to improve the virtual reality experience. The road has been long but along the way there has always been people who have thought “I want to believe” and pushed forward.

This video suggests that the virtual reality has it's roots in 

19th century.

For me the conclusion of this all is that we should tell and hear stories to take a look into our future and pursue our dreams. Telling and hearing stories isn’t enough though. As important as dreaming and visioning are, it is only a fraction of creating something new. And that’s why we study and teach ourselves new things and learn history of things as well. In many cases we probably will reuse existing and well working ways to do things, e.g. well working interaction techniques, but at some point we may have a possibility to try something new. And that may be the point when stories come alive. Beside all of this, I also realize that it is not a fact that great inventions are actually based on the stories that describe these inventions in the first place. But it is nice to think things have some history and the stories that seem impossible may come true.

This blog wasn’t exactly about a single interaction technique or a system but this seems to be the way my brain works when there is no clear focus for me to follow. Hopefully you got something out of all the rambling. :)

By the way, what kind of user interface concept has caught your attention in a story or in a film lately? The first one that came to my mind is the natural language info bot/AI from the film “Passengers” that is presented in the picture above. That one was interesting and funny at the same time when I saw it in the movies.