Human-Machine Interactive Systems [antikvár]

Many hardware devices present either results or alternatives selected by computers to users. A few are video display terminals (VDTs), touch-tone telephones, and computer-generated speech systems. In part this book concerns the impact and implications of such tools. Alternatively this is an attempt to provide material for researchers, students, and managers concerned with computer interfaces. The subject of computer interfaces is at one level a technical subarea sharing common interests with the broad disciplines of computer science, psychology, and bioengineering. However, it is also a topic thrust to the forefront of interest of a wide variety of individuals who confront one of the most striking technological changes that has occurred in human history-the introduction of contact with computing devices as an essential component of many kinds of ordinary transactions. Point of entry sales, travel and entertainment reservations, and library information, are commonly conducted today by interaction with digital calculating devices that did not exist in the recent past. The papers in this book present several concerns arising from the widespread use of computing. One involves the future implications of further advances of this technology. This is a twofold issue: (a) the potential consequences of changing the basic way that information is managed in areas ranging from design, engineering, and management/planning to information access, education, and clerical function; and (b) improvements that could be instituted from further development of the special characteristics of display techniques, technologies, and algorithms. The latter provides another way to describe the chapters that appear here. The prevalence of information-presenting hardware in society today is a consequence of computer programs that turn digital computers into useful symbol-handling tools. The utility comes from two features not immediately apparent when computers are viewed as calculating machines: high speed, and large volume of accessible data. The authors of the chapters presented here address several ways that both features have been put to use; they also reflect on the consequences of existing or likely new technology involving massive increase in the amount of storage, hence the size of data sets that are computer-accessible. The contributions fall into two main groups. One concerns such broad themes as knowledge, information, and communication, as well as recent special