Mark Rolston talks about the future of human-machine interfacing with Gigaom
Mark Rolston, Cofounder and Chief Creative Officer of argodesign, is a renowned designer with a 25-year career of creating for the world's largest and most innovative companies. An early pioneer of software user experience, Mark helped forge the disciplines around user interface design and mobile platforms.
Mark Rolston will be speaking at Gigaom Change Leaders Summit in Austin, September 21-23rd. In anticipation of that, I caught up with him to ask a few questions.
Byron Reese: Let's start with what you think we will be interfacing with machines in a decade?
Mark Rolston: For most of the 20th century we imagined our future with very physical visions: Massive superstructures, space travel, and amazing machines taking care of everything around us. Today we see the future arriving very quietly but no less profound than those visions. In ten years we will speak as often, or likely more, to machines as we do each other. With some of those machines we will even develop relationships that leverage human concepts such as trust and friendship. Everyone, everything, and everywhere will be codified, interactive, and addressable through ubiquitous interfaces scattered throughout our environments. And most profoundly we will be part cyborg. I don't mean we will have mechanical implants (although we might) but instead if we were to assess who we are we will find a great part of us has become reliant on our digital dopplegangers. Our friends and business associates will frequently interact with our digital selves. By the way we call this digital+physical new self "Meta-Me". Many of these interactions will occur outside of our interference because our digital "meta-me" has come to know us so intimately that it knows how you think. Today we rely on external systems such as maps and yelp to help make decisions. In ten years our minds will become so entwined with digital systems that we will scarcely recognize our own independence.
So you really think that in just ten years we will count machines among our friends? Do people want emotional relationships with machinery?
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Human-Machine Interface will be one of seven topic areas covered at the Gigaom Change Leader's Summit in September in Austin. Join us.
