When the weather is bad I take a bus to work. I’m forever grateful to the person at the bus stop who informed me that you can text New York’s MTA

Futures of text | Whoops by Jonathan Libov

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2021-06-15 02:30:07

When the weather is bad I take a bus to work. I’m forever grateful to the person at the bus stop who informed me that you can text New York’s MTA service to find out exactly where the bus is and when it’s going to arrive. Sure, an app that put the bus on a map would be more rich in information, but when I got to texting Bus Time I thought, “Thank god I don’t need to download another f------ app for this.”

In contrast to a GUI that defines rules for each interaction — rules which, frustratingly, change from app to app — text-based, conversational interactions are liberating in their familiarity. There's only really only one way to skin this cat: The text I type is displayed on the right, the text someone else typed is on the left, and there's an input field on bottom for me to compose a message.

The other primary alternatives to the “There’s an app for that” paradigm are Google Now and Siri today. However, I’m skeptical of a future where we communicate with computers primarily by voice. The visions in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Her portray voice as the most effortless interaction, but voice actually requires a lot more cognitive and physical effort than pointing with a mouse, typing on a keyboard, or tapping on app icon and then navigating the UI. Consider all those times you’ve exchanged a million texts with someone while making plans when voice would have resolved it much more quickly. Text is often more comfortable even if it’s less convenient.