When The Shovel Is Made Of Dirt

London, 2007

About ten years ago I read an article in Boot magazine (that mag either died or was reborn as PC Magazine - I'm not quite sure) about 3D computer UIs. The premise was that the closer the UI is to matching the dimensionality of our normal perception, the 'better' experience it would be for the user.

I wrote a letter to the editor, making two points:

1. Human perception is AT LEAST four dimensional, and really more like 12 or 16 or something like that, so 3D ain't gonna cut it
2. The central notion of a UI matching the dimensionality of human perception - whether 4 or 16 - actually would render the UI incapable of BEING a UI, since it would then be another object like any other object in the world, rather than a window into or tool for manipulating another dimensionality (hence the title of this post)

The author of the article did reply to me, and the magazine printed both my letter and the author's reply. In her reply, she said one thing that I now see, ten years later, as the key to (what I now see as) my misunderstanding: She granted me the upper value for dimensionality of human perception, but that whatever that value, the closer we come to matching it in the UI, the easier it will be to manipulate the things that the computer organizes.

You see, I was faulting her notion of a "real" UI on the basis of redundancy: we would end up dealing with just another normal, everyday object. Yes, BUT, that object would itself in turn be manipulating non-ordinary-everyday objects - namely, the logic and processes of the computer circuits. That logic and those processes are what are still fundamentally different from the UI, and therefore the UI can still function as a tool vis a vis the logic and processes.

I still have questions, though...