The PC has taken us a long way. They were amazing. But it changes. Vested interests are going to change. And, I think we’ve embarked on that change. Is it the iPad? Who knows? Will it be next year or five years? … We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it’s uncomfortable.Steve Jobs2 June 2010

Design in thePost-PC EraDan Saffer@odannyboy

The Memex (1945)

The Memex entirely warped how we think about “computers.”

One computer……for millions of people (1951)…for thousands of people (1961)…for dozens of people (1971)…for a single person (1981)…for home and one for work (1991)…in your pocket and your car (2001)…in every device imaginable (2011)…in everything imaginable (2021)

1970s 1980s

2000s

1970s 1980s

2000s

1970s 1980s

2000s

Marc Weiser’s 1991 TaxonomyTabs (e.g. mobile phones)Pads (e.g. tablets)Boards (coming soon?)

Missing: Dots (invisible objects), Boxes (e.g. toasters), and Chests (e.g. stoves)

Today’s devices are...…networked...context-aware...data-collecting and using...sensor-powered...often multi-purpose...can change after they ship

This wasn’t true 60 years ago during the golden age of industrial design. Or 20 years ago during the PC era. And probably not even five years ago. These were characteristics that we thought only a PC could have, so blinded were we thinking about the Memex computers.

DEVICES

DESKTOP MOBILEAPPS

ROBOTSWEB

PHYSICAL SPACES TOYS

Plate techtonic theory of post-PC era

DEVICES

DESKTOP MOBILEAPPS

ROBOTSWEB

PHYSICAL SPACES TOYS

I n t e r n e tPlate techtonic theory of post-PC era

We shape our tools,and thereafter our tools shape us.

I’m going to put another thing out there in the back of your heads. MM said...

If that’s true, and I suspect it is, then when we make tools, we’re making a lot more than just the object. We’re making ourselves.

What we’re creating is a new kind of consciousness—ours: digitially-distributed among our devices.

With the internet glueing it all together. I know this sounds very San Francisco, so let’s back it up with a little science.

“Readiness-at-Hand”

Heidegger is an asshole, but he had a good notion, and that was the idea of readiness-at-hand.

“The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”

Franklin and Marshall Study of people using a computer mouse rigged to malfunction. The resulting disruption in attention wasn’t superficial. Extended to the very roots of cognition. “The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero “The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”

If that’s true, all the millions, billions of devices we make and will make aren’t just objects. They aren’t just things. They are us, millions of bits of us. They allow us to do things we couldn’t before, which as many have pointed out before, are almost magical. This post-PC era era we’re in is magical. We can do things now that seemed like science fiction even 5 years ago. But more importantly, the devices we make allow us to think about different things than we could before. To be different kinds of people, hopefully better kinds of people.

So when we’re designing devices, it’s not really about what we want the devices to be. It’s about about what kind of people we want to be. Helpful, generous, exciting, thoughtful, useful, beautiful. Those are the kinds of devices we need desperately in this, the post-PC era. Please go design some.