[zenbowman]

Voice is a separate issue, but this has the same problem as a touchscreen. We are very sensitive to touch. It's quite possible that with the proliferation of touchscreens, children may find increasingly less tactile feedback in the world around them (due to various other reasons - less play time, sterilized playgrounds, etc) and we could end up with a generation of adults lacking the same tactile ability we have today.

So I don't think the problem solves itself, it just compounds.

Much like our loss of movement ability, it seems to become less relevant, until you notice that we've lost an essential part of what makes us human.

Its about time computers started fitting humans and not the other way round.

[kndyry]

> Its about time computers started fitting humans and not the other way round.

This is a really interesting argument and has got me thinking. I have to say that I agree with your sentiment. The problem is that I think we've entered into a kind of feedback loop; a compounding problem as you described it.

Technology and intelligence have allowed us to rapidly accelerate our fitness while simultaneously and subtly forcing us to become increasingly dependent upon them for continued advancement. In short, tech informs the ways in which we progress and, in the interest of further progress, our new (less human?) norms inform the progression of tech.

I think there are examples of this all over the place: infants expressing confusion at a screen that is not touch sensitive, memes and texting idioms seeping into spoken conversation, or people asking their device to call someone and intentionally mispronouncing the name the same way the device does so that it "understands."

But I also disagree that tech can start fitting humans in the sense you describe, because I simply don't think that's possible anymore.

There's a post on the front page right now discussing self-experimentation with black widow bites, a comment from which [0] strikes me as relevant to the argument I'm about to make. To quote, "[humans]...are pretty weak creatures all things considered." A lot of cutting edge tech today is focused on AR and mobility. That's because, as the quoted comment notes, humans are weak; a weakness which also extends to our senses. Touch seems so fundamentally human, yet a computerized sensor can tell us so much more than a fingertip about a surface. It sounds terrible when I write it, but there it is: information is powerful (addicting?).

It's impossible for us to conceive the kinds of situations humanity will face in the future, but after a certain point the limitations of the human body will have to be addressed. Right now that means computers.

So, I suppose what I'm saying is that, imho, computers actually are fitting "humans," it's just that they are fitting what we have, will and must continue to become rather than what we once were. And that's probably a good bad thing (rather than bad bad) in the long run.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7860997

[wklauss]

Computers are fitting humans, thats why they are now a thin slate you can easily carry around.

And there is a feedback when you touch a glass surface, it's just it doesn't give you a non-visual clue that you have pressed a letter and that you have grown accustomed to.

I don't think that's a dealbreaker for the generation that is growing with tablets. I certainly don't see my teeneage cousins or nephews/nieces worried at all about using keyboards. If they have them around they might use them but they type fast on the screens as well. Most of them no longer have a laptop or desktop anyway. I've seen them writing whole essays on the phone while lying on the bed.

Talking about lost feedback, think about what a huge step back was for our grandfathers generation to abandon handwriting and switch to pressing keys on a typewriter. I'm pretty sure we could have argue back then about how little feedback you get from a key vs. the flow of the hand and the friction of the paper when you write. And somehow we adjusted so well that most of us are probably incapable of writing a handwritten letter nowadays. We are not "less human" because of this.

We will survive.

And note I'm not trying to say that this is the new status quo and we should all accept it and move along. I'm sure we will see a lot of different approaches to solve the issue in the future. What I'm saying is that the pool of users these solutions speak to is diminishing. We see this ideas and think that they'll appeal to everybody who uses a tablet. Most likely they'll be only used by a niche market. Nothing wrong with that but definitely something to take into account when trying to launch a company around them.