The PDA and BrainPal in Old man’s War
In Old Man’s War, a military-focused science fiction novel by John Scalzi, protagonist John Perry comes face-to-face with some startlingly intuitive technology. A trainee for the Colonial Defense Forces, he is equipped with a Personal Data Assistant (PDA), which is some kind of handheld touchscreen device, and a BrainPal, which appears to be screen-less and is enmeshed into John’s very body. The writing, however, is rather vague when it comes to the appearance of these devices. Below are some sketches of what I assume to be their true nature, based on the context clues given by the author:
PDA
I imagine a marker-sized, flat (rounded edges) object that can easily be carried around or stored. A stylus (mentioned explicitly in the story) is magnetically attached to one side). A speaker/microphone is at one end, and a button is at the other. Notifications arrive either as sounds or the flashing of that button. Pressing the button causes a screen to slide out, full of modules of different sizes. The PDA (while not as seamlessly in-tune as the BrainPal, which I’ll cover later on) is still able to track a user’s mental state, records, and responsibilities. Depending on the tasks the user has to do that day, some modules will be bigger than others. When one module is hit, the screen will resemble something more along the lines of what we see on phones today, with back buttons/breadcrumbs/emerging keyboards. The “home” module will always be visible.
BrainPal
The BrainPal is a much cleaner and simple interface. Because it has been calibrated to one’s body (specifically an artificial body that already has tremendous mechanical attributes), there is little need for navigational UI elements. The interface is overlaid on the user’s vision and can be either voice-activated, text-based, or thought-based. With text, the words’ color automatically adjust against the background so that they are always legible. Features like GPS will play out in real-space. On the right or left, modules with notifications will appear as CTAs. Altogether, the experience will be similar to augmented reality…only, here you have cat eyes.
