[chimes]

[steam Whistle]

I just saw something unsettling on Fox News.

And no, it wasn't yet another piece

about the alleged war on Christmas,

which actually sounds like the premise

of an awesome action movie.

What I saw was a colony of BATS.

BATS is Fox's acronym for big area touch screens.

Fox is doing what the makers of Ender's Game

and Minority Report did.

Come up with a non-intuitive and awkward interface

in an attempt to make human-computer interaction look cool.

Back in the olden days, when primitive humans

communicated mostly with speech,

it was easy to dramatize conversations.

Guys and Dolls could actually look dynamic

using telephoness. See?

Press room. Huh?

Wait a minute.

Hello, Sarge? McCue talking.

Hold the line, will ya? What?

You could even build suspense and drama around a chat.

Just listen to me!

You see, Nancy?

With the language and everything?

Look around you.

There's nothing dramatic or exciting

about people using keyboards.

For example, watch this.

[dramatic music]

There.

I just delivered a blistering Facebook beat-down

to some patheticator who doesn't appreciate

Warren Ellis's run on Hellblazer.

My target is probably curled up in the fetal position now.

But all you saw was me staring slack-jawed

at a screen like a moron.

And that presents a terrible dilemma

for the entertainment biz.

How do you wring drama out of that?

Well, like this, apparently.

The media is trying to convince us that in the future,

user interfaces will have us all performing

balletic gestures and windmill swipes.

If modern media barons were smart,

they'd pour money into cutting-edge research

of voice recognition and natural language processing.

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

[HAL] I'm sorry, Dave.

I'm afraid I can't do that.

There. Now, that's dramatic.

Kubrick was right.

About everything.

What's the most ludicrous interface you've seen in a movie?

Let me know in the comments.