"The Unfinished Revolution"

Title: "The Unfinished Revolution"
Author: Michael L. Dertouzos

How to make technology work for us - instead of the other way around

Using a computer should be as easy and productive as driving your car. But today's systems are oblivious to our needs and demand even more attention and work from us as they swell in numbers, complexity, and features.

Michael Dertouzos argues that we must shift the focus of information technology away from machines and back to people. In The Unfinished Revolution, he outlines five key technologies that will help us to do this and offers an exciting vision of how human-centric computers could alter the way we live and work in the Information
Century.

Preface

The Unfinished Revolution sets forth a radically new direction for information technology, and the way it could be used to make computer systems serve people...rather than the other way around.

Fundamental change is overdue. As individuals and organizations everywhere scramble to take advantage of the Web, the Internet, and a myriad of new gadgets, they want to know what they should do. The media, vendors, and pundits respond with advice, trends, possibilities, and opinions in the thousands. Yet the overwhelming outcome of this frenzy is a feeling of profound confusion by ordinary users and specialists alike.

The confusion is justified. Does all this new and exciting technology make us "better off"? Or are we headed toward greater complexity, increased frustration, and a human burden that will grow in proportion to the gadgets and programs that surround us? We certainly can be better off with information technology. But not the way we are headed. Without a fundamentally new approach to computing, the confusion will get worse and the Information Revolution will remain unfinished.

The new approach has been taking shape in my head for more than a decade, although it didn't gel with a name and an action plan until recently. It started with the frustration that I and others felt as we repeatedly tried to harness computers to our purposes, only to discover that we were the ones who ended up under the yoke. The idea became stronger as the complexities of computers increased, as the feature of programs that no one needed multiplied, and as people became increasingly trapped in the use of systems that pretended to change while remaining stagnant and distant from human purposes.

I have called the new approach human-centric computing, and the machines human-centered, to emphasize that from now on, computer systems should focus on our needs and capabilities, instead of forcing us to bow down to their complex, incomprehensible, and mechanistic details. Human-centered computers are not a fantasy. They can be built, right now, with current and emerging technologies. We can even begin with the computers we already have, merely by changing the way we use them. This book lays out the human-centric approach by explaining in everyday language the five basic forces that define it, the ways people will use it, and the impact it could have upon our lives.

What the book does not do is assemble a collage of futuristic vignettes designed to impress through shock. Such scenarios, easy to concoct, are less exciting than what is really likely to happen. Neither do I rehash the faddish mantras to make computers more "intelligent," or more "user-friendly." These are mere restatements of our wish to get out of the mess we are in. They do not show the way! Predicting the future is difficult, but the odds get better when you are trying to build it, rather than guess it. This is the approach that served me well 20 years ago in forecasting the Information Marketplace that is rising fast among us. And it is the approach I am taking now, together with my colleagues at MIT, as we engage in the ambitious pursuit of human-centric systems. It is also the approach increasingly taken by other cutting-edge research institutions and companies around the world as they explore and craft their own visions of the future.

The contributions of many people have influenced my thinking. I am grateful to them and especially to my colleagues at MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. But I do not speak for them and they should not be held responsible for what I say here. The Unfinished Revolution is a declaration of my personal ideas, passions and beliefs about human-centered systems.

I wrote this book for people who use computers, and for the technologies who build them, to offer a new insight about where we should steer the computing juggernaut. I hope the book sets forth a new philosophy for information technology, and provides a manifesto for turning it into reality. I hope it inspires computer users and builders to fuel the torch of human-centric computing with their creative ideas. And I hope it sparks a revolution within the computer revolution.

It's high time we did so!

Michael L. Dertouzos
Weston, Massachusetts