The Newton is the first consumer device being marketed as an artificial intelligence product. It was preceded, of course, by automatic smart cameras and fuzzy-logic washing machines in Japan, but the Newton is the first product that claims to break the triviality barrier.
Newton Message Pad: The user interface is great, but it's no AI personal assistant.
The problem here is that people change when they believe they are interacting with artificial intelligences. People make themselves stupid in order to make the machines appear smart.
There is a very narrow range of human behavior which, if properly exercised, will make the Newton appear to be an intelligent product. The Newton demands unnaturally (at least for our era) perfect handwriting, and it assumes that a set of categories of data can adequately describe one's personal affairs. People who use the Newton as a personal assistant have to modify their behavior to fit into its categories. It worries me when people allow themselves to be defined by technology.
Imagine that, in an alternate universe, the Newton had been advertised as a portable display of data that would allow you to do a little bit of data entry on the go, instead of as an intelligent assistant. I think that advertised as such, it would be rather successful. I pretend that's what it is - rather than an intelligent assistant - and I find that I'm about the only person I know who likes the thing.
This is not just an argument with Apple's advertising, because I don't think you can separate a machine from its myth. Television in the US is not a display device that receives broadcast signals, it is a cultural phenomenon. It is impossible to separate that box from its culture. Now is the time to decide what the myth of the Newton should be.
Not much has been said about the Newton's interface, but it is about the best I've seen. I showed the Newton to a 4-year-old, and after a brief demo she was using it with tremendous grace and fluency. I believe that the craft of interface design is one of the most important frontiers of culture. The Newton's user interface is a real triumph, but its positioning as an artificially intelligent personal assistant is all wrong.
As something small and light that you can use to carry around your schedules and notes, and as a telephones dialer, beeper, and e-mail keep-in- toucher, it is definitely the best thing around. But it can only be viewed as that if you cut through the behavior-modification project of artificial intelligence.
Newton: US$699. Apple Computer: +1 (408) 996 1010.
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