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User Interfaces: The Next Hub of Innovation & Saturation

I was discussing with my father today about why the next big growth in the world of computers is going to be in (or atleast revolve around) User Interfaces and User Experience. But before i begin to layout the arguments for the same as i did with my father, let me put a few things in perspective. All the advances in computers has happened over a short span of 4 decades simply because great advances were made in the field of mathematics, for nearly 400 known and documented years before that. We have used it all up. In order to come out with the next best hardware or algorithm we need the next big break through in pure sciences. There is a certain level of saturation with the innovation in hardware these days. This is simply because, we have done what we could have done with the 0 and the 1. The binary has been stretched to all kinds of forms and applications possible. The so-called and seemingly new ones are nothing but new manifestations of its older forms. Hence, there is an urgent requirement to look at something new. Something earth shattering. There is a need for a break-through. (And i am not talking about original ideas.) This limitations in hardware has led us to develop better software. And we have achieved a great level of saturation in that as well. While innovations in any field are a never ending process, but it will be slow from now on in both these fields. When a single processor could not handle the processing requirements, they brought in multiple processors. Before that, they wrote the best possible code for a single processor. After the advent of multi core processors and unavoidable use of distributed systems, there was a great demand in writing good parallel algorithms. This perhaps is a fresh area for innovation, but not the one to last long. In stark reality it is based on pre-existing fundamentals of algorithmic designs and programming paradigms. In my opinion it is an area with a short lived demand for aggressive innovation, at least compared to the amounts of time that have been required in other areas of computational research, software engineering and the likes. So the big and small of all this is thus, we have hit a level of saturation when it comes to innovation in hardware. We have almost made it as fast and power efficient as we could. The same goes with Software which is run on that hardware. The advances in parallel or cloud computing that are required will be met shortly with ever evolving business needs. WE have done what we could with the existing norms of science (i am primarily talking about the binary) as far as hardware and the logic running on that it is concerned. So where does that leave us, as the computer fraternity? In this entire race of innovation, we ignored User Interfaces for a very long time. The command prompt in my opinion took too long a time to move out and many of us are still influenced by its hangover. The time has really come to involve rich user interfaces for all users. This is the next big hub of innovation. The idea is to use every grain of logic and hardware capability that we have developed so far, and use it in the development of new and improved UIs, which start moving towards Natural Interfaces via which human beings can access a world of information and the power to process it. The revolution for great UIs has always been there, with Microsoft and Apple as our guides. Its time to get out of this rut of developing great logic and not interfacing it properly with the world. Its time to introduce innovation to presentation.