The trouble with computers

摘要

It has been called a revolution, and rightly so. Over the past 25 years computers have become a feature of everyday life in rich countries and, increasingly, in poor ones too. Today's machines are fast-a typical desktop now has ten times the number-crunching power of the fastest machine on earth in 1983-and widespread, given that the world's 3 billion or so mobile phones are, in effect, pocket computers. But although computers have become cheaper, more capable and more commonplace, they have made much less progress when it comes to ease of use. Their potential remains tantalisingly out of reach for people who find their control systems, or "user interfaces", too complex. And even people who have no difficulty navigating menus, dialogue boxes and so on, might use computers more productively if their interfaces were better.