I have one of the most advanced prosthetic arms in the world – and I hate it(inputmag.com)

I have one of the most advanced prosthetic arms in the world – and I hate it

https://www.inputmag.com/culture/cyborg-chic-bionic-prosthetic-arm-sucks

1 comments

A distant friend in college was completely blind; an exceptional student that you'd catch studying with his screenreader. I asked him about his experience of it; he was using a mac, and they apparently have some pretty good integrated features for that type of use. He was getting some help with having some material transcribed so he could read it. I wanted to try something like it, but proprietary software is was the table.

To that end, I used Emacspeak for a couple of weeks earlier last year, to extend the range of my interface with the computer. It didn't stick, but I'm about to give it another go soon. Audio cues are absolutely superior to visual ones in some contexts, and emacspeak is definitely amazing.

Humans have mastered so many instruments with esoteric interface designs constrained by physics (I'm imagining mostly musical ones, but I'm sure there's others), but HCI innovation since the keyboard and mouse has been basically 0. Visual interfaces (from text) were a gigantic leap forward, but made tasks trivial from the command line hard (can't pipe a visual interface), and tasks impossible from the command line easy (drawing a freehand line on screen). Touchscreens were a great invention, but their real advantage is their versatility. They suck along so many other important measures like accuracy, tactile feedback, speed of inputs, multiple inputs etc (try typing with your eyes closed on your actual keyboard vs cellphone), yet plague all devices no matter their purpose (touchscreens for important hardware inside a vehicle/heavy-machine? Fuck you.)

Interface design (for the masses) is stagnant/worse with every year. "Best to stick to an impotent interface that's understood, easy to control and monetize."

All of these, and the author's original problem with their prosthetic are a symptom of the plague of spectacle over substance.