I watched the video of Buzz Bruggeman’s talk from the Zap Your PRAM conference.

“Mental Impulse > Utterance > Predictable Result” is his mantra. He spoke of avoiding the typical intermediary steps currently imposed on us by current software software.

In an industry I am familiar with, pure PC based lighting control systems have not taken off, while the real jewels are expensive behemoths with motorized knobs and faders. The difference is that with a PC you have to move your mouse around, pick one item, and a manipulate it. During a live show you have want to just be able to think, and then move your hands in “preprogramed” manner. Mouses are lousy interfaces for many things in life.

It is common wisdom that modes are bad interface design. Yet essentially mice are very modal - the event that takes place when the mouse is clicked varies widely with the location of the cursor.

ActiveWords is a cool piece of software. One thing about ActiveWords that bugs me though is that it must be preprogrammed. Useful shortcuts are only useful if you have set them up. The Mac “equivalent” of ActiveWords, LaunchBar, though only used to launch applications, urls, documents, and emails, requires no setup and sneakily learns shortcuts as you use it.

Another remark that struck me was “After thinking, language is the most important human activity.” (Or something like that.) I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking lately about language and it’s unnoticed importance.