Mapping the Futures of Other Worlds

In reading John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, I found that my mind was drawn to imagine the described extrnal PDA’s and internal BrainPal™ interfaces to be similar to our current day iPhones and voice controlled assistants. This may be because I am accustomed to such technology, and this experience bled into my interpretation of the futuristic devices in Scalzi’s novel.

After doing some research, I discovered that Old Man’s War was published in 2007, while the iPhone and Siri were relased in 2007 and 2011, respectively. Thus, although touch screens were already existing when the novel was conceived, voice-controlled interfaces were not. In consideration of touch-screen interfaces that respond to the user’s body (namely, their fingers), Scalzi’s touch-screen interfaces responds to a stylus. This most closely mirrors the use of pen and paper, in which the user grips a narrow object that, when making contact with a flat surface, produces some kind of feedback.

When imagining how the described PDA would work in reality, my interest was sparked in the various use cases of a single device. For example, assessment facilitators may use their PDAs to administer tests to the recruits, while the doctor uses his to perform tasks and review patient information. I considered how particular devices, let’s say in this case an iPad, are used in various contexts today. Although its a trivial detail, the flexibility that applications provide us is often overlooked. Various devices of a particular product or hardware gives its users agency to perform tasks specific to their needs, while also connecting them to other users of the same type of device.

I was particularly fond of BrainPal™, as I have recently worked very closely with Siri’s interface. Although the dialogue and actions the software can perform is limited to its programming, the user can’t help but assume that it has some semblence of “free-will” or intention to harm the protagonist if he does not respond to requested tasks. For example, when the system asks John to say the word “no” in order to register his voice, his immediate fear is that BrainPal™ would mistake this statement as defiance and somehow inflict harm upon him.

The context BrainPal™ inhabits may have informed the way John percieves the technology. As the interface is internal, and BrainPal™‘s dialogue is experienced in a similar way that John hears his own thoughts, any boundary between human and machine has then been eliminated. BrainPal™ also has the option to display a text-based interface in the viewer’s line of sight, which not only differs from current technology by way of medium, but by responsiveness as well. In our current technology, visual information requires capturing the user’s attention to bring the device within their line of sight, whereas BrainPal™ is responsive to the viewer. By relating imagined devices to that of current day, we can begin to understand the situations and interactions that influence user’s perceptions of technology, as well as the user’s experience.