In an article in the SF Gate, Asian Pop / Off key, Jeff Yang writes about interfaces, languages, and the opportunities for new devices.

The so-called Third World actually has a built-in competitive advantage: Because developing nations haven’t had access to certain technologies in the past, they aren’t inextricably bound to them when quantum breakthroughs make those technologies obsolete.

This is what fuels the “leapfrog” principle — where nations skip generations and become early adopters of new and better paradigms, bypassing copper wire for fast wireless, or deskbound computers for handhelds. Leapfrogging means that the Third World should really be thought of as the Next World — younger, more populous and potentially better equipped to take advantage of the transformative technologies of the future.

The keyboard is a last-generation input method being pushed on the Next World; it’s a Western artifact that automatically reduces Asian, Middle Eastern, and African languages to second-class status. The XO-1 may be a terrific learning device for kids in Western countries, but to the markets for which it was designed, it may be an interesting solution for the wrong problem.

By contrast, the iPhone, the Nintendo Wii, Perceptive Pixel’s smart walls — they’re all devices that have succeeded in part because they remove the artificial translation layer that previous systems have required to get things done. “I think we’re beginning to realize that the keyboard and mouse are actually slowing us down,” says Han. “The keyboard used to be ahead of the curve: You were slowed down by the limits of microprocessors and dial-up modems. Now it’s starting to feel like input is the bottleneck — the bandwidth limitation is between you and the screen. So people are looking for better, faster ways to request and manipulate information. People are ready for alternative interfaces.”

Posted: 12|19|07 at 2:48 pm. Filed under: Publishing. New here? Follow this entry via RSS 2.0. Pinging is currently disabled.