In 1993 Jef Raskin wrote the article Down With GUIs! in which he decried the state of user interfaces. He started with a bang: “Bluntly: Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are not human-compatible. As long as we hang on to interfaces as we now know them, computers will remain inherently frustrating, upsetting, and stressful.” And his conclusion was just as strong: “Some of the deepest GUI features conflict with our wiring. So they can’t be fixed….
 
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Back in the 80s there was an AI (artificial intelligence) boom – a euphoric time of specialized computers and the belief that we were going to be able to invent smart computer systems. It was after Xerox PARC‘s peak but before personal computers had the computing power that eventually put specialized high-end workstations on the path to extinction. My first job after college was in Boston at BBN — working in their AI and Experimental…
 
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