huridocs-tech Browing the Future

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## author     : nettime@bbs.thing.net
## date       : 20.05.00
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<http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36474,00.html> et seq.

   Browsing the Future by Douglas Heingartner

   3:00 a.m. May. 20, 2000 PDT

   AMSTERDAM -- Under the ironic mantle "The End of the
   Browser," the Third International Browserday on Friday
   presented some 35 visions of the future of the
   information interface.

   Far from being an insular techie gathering, organizers
   stages Browserday as an entertaining competition with a
   grand prize of a six-month internship at Medialab, a
   Dutch research organization. There, the winning prototype
   can be turned into a full-fledged program.

   Held at Amsterdam's grandiose Paradiso concert hall,
   representatives from a dozen art and design academies
   throughout Europe each had three minutes to convince the
   audience of their creation's merits, which ranged from
   functional prototypes to wildly abstract digressions on
   the nature of information itself.

   The two winners were Victor Vina of London's Royal
   College of Art for his text-filtering "HyperSPC" project,
   which prunes information back to its bare roots; and Henk
   Jan Bouwmeester for his "Dawn of the Browser" concept, a
   kind of portable, fold-up box that contains whatever data
   a user wants to fill it with.

   While the first Browserday two years ago focused on the
   raging browser wars, the gathering now addresses more
   complex issues such as merger-fever, the danger of
   proprietary formats, the challenge of open source, and
   contrasting views regarding minimalist design and
   media-richness.

   Browser-lite proponents question whether a new visual
   interface is the right way forward, suggesting that a
   word may be worth a thousand pictures on the current
   flash-happy Web.

   Yet others introduced new levels of eye candy, in which
   information takes on the form of spheres or molecules or
   scientifically-quantified emotional components.

   Showmaster John Thackara wondered whether this wasn't
   just "reinventing the wheel," arguing that typographers
   have spent centuries successfully honing the art of
   readability. Why add yet another meta-layer of
   color-coordinated symbols and rotating orbs that first
   need to be studied before being put into use?

   Indeed, the more critical participants gave the strongest
   presentations. Louis Luthy's "Backwards," for example,
   posited that it's the user who's being browsed, while the
   browser software is merely a cleverly-tailored interface
   to lure visitors. The promise of "personalized
   preferences" is little more than a trick to have them
   divulge coveted profile data.

   Likewise, a novel retort to the current
   community-building craze was Suzanne Hin's "Scope
   Browser," which randomly groups users into "families."
   There's no logic to the selection process, and you're
   stuck with your family for life, so you better make the
   best of it. Family members can contact each other for
   advice or chat, offering a welcome alternative to so many
   like-minded e-pals who only further reinforce your own
   perspective.

   Some of the browsers only vaguely resembled the familiar
   programs that currently rule the roost. The "Consumeter"
   is a wireless shopping-bag application from Finland that
   either green- or red-lights the products a user is
   considering buying, based on a pre-programmed profile.

   But this is conceptual small beer compared to the
   "Quantum Browser," which gathers and process all
   information, everywhere, immediately, "even faster than
   immediately."

   On the richer-media side, there was "Terrasonica," an
   audio-based browser that allows surfing from sound to
   sound, bypassing text or images. Its creators suggest
   this could be a new form of storyboarding for films or
   games, mapping out aural narratives first, then filling
   in images and dialogues later.

   (page 2)

   There was also a browser that uses retinal motion and
   brainwaves as input, another that caters to people with
   Attention Deficit Disorder, and the evolutionary "Darwin"
   browser, whose millions of design-element permutations
   offer up a refitted browser each time.

   But ultimately, Browserday is about brinkmanship.

   The thirty-five mini-presentations wound up taking a
   marathon six hours, and the fatigue factor inevitably
   played a role. After the umpteenth reference to meta this
   and object-based that, the final presenters faced an
   uphill battle to tap into any residual audience
   enthusiasm.

   A promising WAP (wireless application protocol)
   application, for example, suggested parsing HTML into a
   tag-free format that would allow any Web page to be
   displayed on a mobile phone, but all that could be
   discerned on the screen was a giant shaky thumb fumbling
   with a shiny Nokia.

   The presentations ended with the apocalyptic "Parasite"
   browser, which "swallows" HTML tags, subverting words
   like "not" or "subscribe." The mischief ends with the
   browser's familiar icons being consumed in a fiery
   demise.

   This flair reminds us that Browserday is and remains an
   initiative by and for designers more than programmers:
   the browser is the "face of the new media."

   Event organizer Mieke Gerritzen said there are plans for
   a New York Browserday this fall.

   Copyright C 2000 Wired Digital Inc., a Lycos Network
   site. All rights reserved.




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