Quantum Forest

Most of us spend our days interacting with objects. Most of the time we do not notice these interactions, so they are ‘good’, meaning invisible, undemanding, non-distracting. For example, I scan the bus ticket when boarding (the only issue is to check if I need to top up the card any soon), turn on the TV, look at the time in an analogue watch. There is no hesitation.

However, there are times when objects claim for our attention. I am walking in the corridor of the school and there are doors, many doors, which remind me of the start of Get Smart. Some of them I have only to push, some I have to turn the handle, but there is no indication of which one is which. There is no consistency.

This afternoon I went to the common room for a cup of tea and nobody has arrived yet. There are eight light switches and no relationship between their position and the lights being controlled. I do not use the switches often enough to remember the ones that I should use, so it is always back to trial and error.

Keeping my photo library synchronised amongst computers running Windows and OS X is difficult if not impossible. The way we interact with collections of pictures is still too primitive. It may be that the abstractions we use are just not that useful for big collections.

These three examples show small interruptions, bumps and — in the last case — an opportunity for someone to make a great product, one that anybody will be able to use.