The case against conversational interfaces

I don't know, but I feel like we already have the "telepathic grandfather interface." Or at least we try to have it. My iPhone is constantly guessing at things to suggest to me (I use the share button a lot in different apps) and it's wrong more often than not, forcing me to constantly hunt for things (to say nothing about autocorrect, which is constantly changing correct words that I'd previously typed into incorrect ones)! It doesn't even use a basic, sensible LRU eviction policy. It has some totally inscrutable method of determining what to suggest!

If we want an interface that actually lets us work near the speed of thought, it can't be anything that re-arranges options behind our back all the time. Imagine if you went into your kitchen to cook something and the contents of all your drawers and cupboards had been re-arranged without your knowledge! It would be a total nightmare!

We already knew decades ago that spatial interfaces [1] are superior to everything else when it comes to working quickly. You can walk into a familiar room and instinctively turn on a light by reaching for the switch without even looking. With a well-organized kitchen an experienced chef (or even a skilled home cook) can cook a very complicated dish very efficiently when they know where all of the utensils are so that they don't need to go hunting for everything.

Yet today it seems like all software is constantly trying to guess what we want and in the process ends up rearranging everything so that we never feel comfortable using our computers anymore. I REALLY miss using Mac OS 9 (and earlier). At some point I need to set up some vintage Macs to use it again, though its usefulness at browsing the web is rather limited these days (mostly due to protocol changes, but also due to JavaScript). It'd be really nice to have a modern browser running on a vintage Mac, though the limited RAM would be a serious problem.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/

> With a well-organized kitchen an experienced chef (or even a skilled home cook) can cook a very complicated dish very efficiently when they know where all of the utensils are so that they don't need to go hunting for everything.

Even I can make a breakfast without looking in my kitchen, because I know where all the needed stuff is :)

On another topic, it doesn't have to look well organized. My home office looks like a bomb exploded in it, but I know exactly where everything is.

> I REALLY miss using Mac OS 9 (and earlier).

I was late to the Mac party, about the Snow Leopard days. I definitely remember that back then OS X applications weren't allowed to steal focus from what I had in the foreground. These days every idiotic splash screen steals my typing.

This right here is probably my single biggest complaint with modern computing. It's a phenomenon I've taken to calling, in daily life, "tools trying to be too damn smart for their own good". I detest it. I despise it. Many of the evils of the modern state of tech--algorithmic feeds, targeted advertising, outwardly user-hostile software that goes incredible lengths to kneecap your own ability to choose how to use it--so, so much of it boils down to tools, things that should be extensions of their users' wills, being designed to "think" they know better what the user wants to do than the users themselves. I do not want my software, designed more often than not by companies with adversarial ulterior motives, to attempt to decide for me what I meant to watch, to listen to, to type, to use, to do. It flies in the face of the function of a tool, it robs people of agency, and above all else it's frankly just plain annoying having to constantly correct and work around these assumptions made based on spherical users in frictionless vacuums and tuned for either the lowest common denominator or whatever most effectively boosts some handful of corporate metrics-cum-goals (usually both). I want my computer to do what I tell it to, not what it (or rather, some bunch of brainworm-infested parasites on society locked in a boardroom) thinks I want to do. I can make exceptions for safety-critical applications. I do not begrudge my computer for requiring additional confirmation to rm -rf root, or my phone for lowering my volume when I have it set stupidly loud, or my car for having overly-sensitive emergency stop or adaptive cruise functions. These cases also all, crucially, have manual overrides. I can add --no-preserve-root, crank my volume right back up, and turn off cruise control and control my speed with the pedals. Forced security updates I only begrudge for their tendency to serve as a justification or cover for shipping anti-features alongside. Autocorrecting the word "fuck" out of my vocabulary, auto-suggesting niche music out of my listening, and auto-burying posts from my friends who don't play the game out of my communications are not safety-critical. Let computers be computers. Let them do what I ask of them. Let me make the effort of telling them what that is. Is that so much to ask>