Yesterday I was reading the
introduction to a book written in 2006 by some MIT professors titled '
Software Engineering for Internet Applications'. I was thrilled at the level of ideas they proposed, many of which are a reality now. For example, here is an excerpt:
"...Speaking of mobile browsers, their small screens raise the issues of
multi-modal user interfaces and personalization. With the General
Packet Radio Service or "GPRS", rolled out across the world in late
2001, it became possible for a mobile user to simultaneously speak
and listen in a voice connection while using text screens delivered
via a Web connection. As an engineer, you'll have to decide when it
makes sense to talk to the user, listen to the user, print out a
screen of options to the user, and ask the user to highlight and click
to choose from that screen of options. For example, when booking an
airline flight it is much more convenient to speak the departure and
arrival cities than to choose from a menu of thousands of airports
worldwide. But if there are ten options for making the connection you
don't want to wait for the computer to read out those ten and you don't
want to have to hold all the facts about those ten options in your
mind. It would be more convenient for the travel service to send you
a Web page with the ten options printed and scrollable...."
What is being proposed has already been partly achieved in the 'responsive' web design trend going on for the last two years!
The best part I liked was about how web applications could fulfill the unmet goals of humanity:
"...What are the enduring unmet human goals? To connect with other people
and to learn. Email and "reference library" were the two universally
appealing applications of the Internet, according to a December 1999
survey conducted by Norman Nie and Lutz Erbring and
reported in "Internet and Society",
a January 2000 report of theStanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society.
Entertainment and business-to-consumer e-commerce were far down the
list...."
