Summary

"The best way to predict the future," said Alan Kay, the Xerox PARC scientist who came up with the idea of a laptop computer, the Dynabook, in 1972, "is to invent it." The future arrives, second by second, whether we want it to or not, and it is the job of interaction designers to invent it, or at least to make it more humane. The sheer number of products and services, augmented by new technologies, that will become widely available in the next decade and their likely effect on the world will be staggering. Between the advancing technology and the people who will use it stand interaction designers, shaping, guiding, cajoling the future into forms for humans.