Piaget described three stages of learning. We are born with ENACTIVE or kinesthetic knowledge; we know how to grasp and suck. At a certain age we pay more attention to how things look; our ICONIC thinking is mistaken for example by a tall glass as “more”. Only at a certain age do we understand conservation; then we are ready for SYMBOLIC thinking. Bruner says that we always have all three modes of thinking but in different proportions (this sketch is from Alan Kay). Gardner has extended this notion to seven intelligences and I suppose we could find a human-computer interaction style to correspond to each. For present purposes, three are enough.

The development of human-computer interfaces has followed the opposite path. The first interactive computers used teletypes (TTY) and the style of interaction was a dialog of symbols; I type and the computer types back at me. With CRTs we first emulated the old style with “glass teletypes” but with the invention of mouse and bit-map display, the iconic graphical “direct manipulation” interface became the dominant style. This progression suggests that the next stage is enactive interfaces, more suited to expressive musical interaction than with pictures or symbols. One possibility is Ishii’s Tangible User Interfaces (TUI).

Computer-as-person motivates dialog where the goal is autonomy and intelligence. Computer-as-tool motivates direct manipulation where the goals are efficiency and empowerment. Computer-as-media motivates expression, engagement and immersion. In the expressive realm, beyond media are all the notions associated with fashion with wearables as the most obvious implementation. Underneath tools are all the vehicles that depend on infrastructure. Extending the autonomy realm are self-evolving computers that are thought of as forms of life.