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And I have to say that I -you know- use my iPhone, and deal with my
AT&T contract, and ah...
you know, you experience the frustrations that all
of us experience with the communication devices that we have today.
It’s both a joyful story, in the sense that -you know-
the era that we’re living in right now is very much the Stone Age
of convergent, hand-held, individual
sort of technological broadcast technology. This has never existed
before in human history, and we are just at the very beginning of it. So
in a sense, World Usability Day is all about
you know, human beings -instead of picking up stones and sticks
and fashioning weapons and tools to
help them dig and cook and hunt
and acquire nutrition- you know, we are all
together today sort of scavenging these market-based
communication solutions, and seeing what works for us.
Now, you know, we had
a couple of...
a hundred thousand years -actually, you know, if you look at what anthropologists say- we had
about 2 million years to develop the technology
for most of what constitutes humanity today. We don’t have
the same amount of time to narrow the range of technological
solutions in the communication domain. The world, with 6
billion people on the planet, needs
usability as a principal, NOW. In other words,
the-the-the *successful* solutions need to *precede*
the experimental trial and error. Because
we don’t have the margin for error that we used to have. And we can’t afford
to landfill -you know- ten devices for every one that's
successful. So World Usability Day is a manifesto, not
to help out, you know, vindicating my dad -who would be happy to be
vindicated...and I would be really happy to just get him off my
back, so if World Usability became a global thing, I would
just be able to say “Dad, see, that’s the whole ‘user bias’ thing right there.
You did it.” And he would go, “Thanks. Thanks for that. Somebody finally
recognized it.” - ...No, World Usability Day is,
is, is all about creating a manifesto
for investigating the human/machine
interface, that...that recognizes
that we are evolving as humans, and that we need to be responsible
for that evolution. The ability to communicate on a
planetary scale -whether it be in gaming, or social networking,
or whether it be in simple voice communication, or whether
it be in maintaining databases of families or nations,
or whether it be in maintaining political databases which constitute
this sort of civic involvement of nations and regions throughout
the world- these are huge, emergent issues
in human evolution, and the technology to enable them
needs to be accessible to everyone. And
right now, that is definitely not the case. And
in this moment, this window, when
the solutions haven’t been, sort of, congealed into a kind of a
universal global standard, it is only the
engagement of, of citizens around the world that is the
sort of “pushback” to corporations and governments
and -sort of- global organizations that will decide *for* us
what the interface will be. And then *we* will adapt
to *them*. We will be evolving to *them*. And that would be,
of course, the saddest outcome of all. So World Usability
Day is, is...is a *key* -sort of-
channel to define what the global community will look like,
what civic engagement and democracy will look like,
and ultimately, the quality of all of our lives.
We’ve left the moment where technology can simply be dropped
on us. It is *humanity* that has been dropped
on designers, and communications, and
ah, the, ah, sort of, Corporate Creators of objects.
And it is *we* who must demand the usability,
because...ah, the business models of
waiting to see what “accidentally” works, ah, will not be viable
in this century. ...So! Um...is there anyone
who wants to...you know, sort of...throw a cellphone at the wall,
or smash something with a hammer? We will give you the
opportunity a little bit later to express your opinion about the New York
ah, ah, voting ballot. How many of you voted last week, or, ah,
two weeks ago? For how many of you was that a, ah, ah,
“***” experience? (audience laughter) Ah, how many of
of - for how many of you was that a frustrating experience?
(audience members raising hands) Ah-ha. How many of you -and I can’t imagine
that this crowd is the kind of people who have
like, suggestions for improvements, (audience amused)
or, you know, fill out the form, like, or add comments to blogs-
(sarcastically) ah, you guys aren’t really like that, right?- Anybody have any sort of suggestions
for how the ballot could be improved? Raise your hands? (audience raising hands) Right.
You can keep thinking; those of you who didn’t raise your hands, keep thinking, we’re going to give you an opportunity
to give an actual “pitch” for how to improve
the usability of perhaps one of the most important communication objects
in American democracy, and that is the ballot. That’s
just an example here in New York, but it’s an issue everywhere in the United States,
and certainly, everywhere in the world. ...And so, I thank
Elizabeth, and Gloria, and all the folks, and certainly the people at Bloomberg,
and by the way, there are a couple of jobs that Gloria didn’t mention. Um,
(looking at notes) Ah, Michael Bloomberg is actually looking
for someone to mow his lawns...must be
willing to fly to the Carribean at a moment’s notice...and
and (responding to comment offstage) -yes, there we go, excellent, good-
...TGI Friday’s is looking for dishwashers over at the Empire State Building...
...um, and ah...
CNN is looking for someone to deal with Elliot Spitzer's
schedule. (audience laughter) They didn’t really
give me any more details about that, but his new show is doing really really well.
Ah, anyway. Thank you very much. Thanks so much (audience applause)