Earlier today Om penned a delightful note on his and, more important, his mother's experience with the iPad. It sparked a bit of thinking about my feelings towards the device and to technology in general..
but first consider a bit of physics....
Imagine that you can watch the movement of water molecules an ordinary ice cube. Cold ice. Perhaps -20°C or so. The water molecules are locked into a fairly rigid crystalline form. There is a bit of jiggling motion that gets more intense as heat is added to the ice. Temperature is a physical property of matter that turns out to be related to the intensity of the motion of the molecules. The greater this motion - this kinetic energy - the greater the temperature.
Without becoming formal it is important to note that heat is not directly related to temperature. To understand this turn keep transferring energy to the ice - heat it up. As you transfer heat energy the temperature of the ice begins to increase:
-14°, -8°, -2°, 0°, 0° ‚0°, 0°, 0°,0° ...
Hold on .. something seems wrong. We're adding heat energy to the ice and the temperature stopped increasing at 0°C. Looking at the molecular scale you notice something else is taking place. The nice crystalline structure is beginning to break down. There is just enough motion that some of the bonds that have been locking the water molecules into a rigid body begin to break. As the process continues order continues to break until almost all of the molecules have taken on a new order where a few of them link up and then break apart in an incredibly complex and chaotic dance. The water molecules have a natural attraction to each other, but there is enough jiggling that they can only hold together in small group, typically about four or five water molecules at a time, for about a thousandth of a billionth of a second - a picosecond.1 The resulting mass of water is no longer a crystalline form and is now a liquid. The heat went to change the structure of the ice cube from a jiggling crystal to wildly dancing groups of water molecules. The liquid water has a motion that corresponds to 0°C. All of that energy being transferred to the ice crystal went into changing the structure of the ice rather than raising its temperature.
Now with the 0° liquid water, begin adding heat to the water and measure its temperature:
0°C, 6°, 12°, 18°, and so on
The change of physical state of the water from a solid crystal to a liquid that can easily flow is called a phase change. It turns out that water requires a lot of energy to move from solid to liquid form, but to the naked eye you really don't notice much is going on other than you have to keep transferring a lot of energy to get the cube to completely melt.2
So what does this have to do with the iPad?
Nothing physically, but it is an interesting metaphor for me. I'm very interested in transparent, some would call them liquid, interfaces where the machine seems to melt away and you find yourself directly manipulating information and concepts. Such interfaces allow you to get deeply into a task and become oblivious to the machine. Take Yo Yo Ma's cello as an example. In his hands it is really an extension of his body - perhaps an extension of his soul - as he enters a flow and wonderful music comes from them. The interface, for him, is perfect and he doesn't think in terms of playing an instrument.
I've had these experiences of flow with good paper and pencils sketching things or doing physics. Colleen has had them playing volleyball. You can probably make a list of interactions where you've had them. They are enormously important for creative work and I find myself trying to create conditions that allow them. I find, like Douglas Adams, that distractions can destroy flow and send you crashing back to the local reality.3
So a really good interface - more than that - a really good user experience does not distract as you move through the boundary into flow. In a sense it has supported a phase transition in how you think.
The iPad has a very good user experience. I don't own one, but I use Sukie's original iPad regularly. I frequently find myself doing things and not realizing I'm using a computing device. It has begun to melt away. I've also noticed the retina display on my iPhone 4 makes displayed objects seem like they are on the surface of the glass and that I am directly manipulating them through touch. The illusion can be quite strong in well designed programs. But to date neither device supports the type of program that would cause me to rush out and drop five or more Benjamins to have my own.
About a month ago I found myself sketching a gift for a dear friend. I tend to make gifts rather than buy them for those who are close and this one involved a trace-like flow as I sketched out the design. At one point I realized I was really hungry and noticed six hours had gone by in a blink. Then it became time to work on the final design using my Mac and a drawing tablet. The fact that I am drawing on a surface that is disconnected from the display makes it very difficult to achieve flow and the result wasn't quite what I was getting with the paper and pencil.
The iPad 3, or whatever it is called, may have enough computational power and resolution to achieve the level of transparency that allows my creative phase transition to kick in and bring flow. I'm going to be very excited if it is demoed with some killer drawing applications.4 To me a transparency of user experience that allows me to seemingly directly interact with information is the core of the post PC dream. The price point won't be terribly important to me. It would probably support any of the creative things I do with a pad and pencil and has the potential to go far beyond.5
The Mac was the first computer good enough to criticize. I want something good enough to give my mind a bit of freedom. I suspect we're very very close to the beginning.
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1 The chemistry and physics involved is *really* interesting and I recommend further study if you want to understand the nuts and bolts! Basically the water molecules are attracted with a special class of dipole-dipole interaction known as hydrogen bonding. Note that a picosecond is about the distance light travels in a thousandth of a foot - about a hundredth of an inch.
2 Water has a very high heat of fusion (solid to liquid) and heat of vaporization (liquid to gas). It turns out to be very important for weather and many other systems.
3 From The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where he describes how to fly. Look up the text or listen to him read the section.
4 Procreate is probably the best iPad drawing program to date. Add what I think the better display might give and some additional power to let the objects flow easily combined with iOS and a pressure sensitive stylus and it can happen.
5 Consider what Garageband and some other music creation programs for the iPad have allowed .. as well as transparent interfaces for music for Macs in general. Just ask Björk.
I love your use of physics in this one Steve!
Posted by: Jheri | 03/09/2012 at 08:50 PM