On lifestreams
Those are the goals of our lifestream (or “information beam”) project. In our view of the future, users will no longer care about operating systems or computers; they’ll care about their own streams, and other people’s. I can tune in my stream wherever I am. I can shuffle other streams into mine — to the extent I have permission to use other people’s streams. My own personal stream, my electronic life story, can have other streams shuffled into it — streams belonging to groups or organizations I’m part of. And eventually I’ll have, for example, newspaper and magazine streams shuffled into my stream also. I follow my own life, and the lives of the organizations I’m part of, and the news, etc., by watching the stream flow.
On document previews
My desktop might be crammed with icons, but the icons tell me basically nothing about what’s inside the corresponding files, apps, and so on. My file system, mailer and net search engine return mainly lists of words; I have to read them line by line.
Compare that to how I search my office for a document. My visual sense is key. I remember roughly where I put the document and what it looks like. Or compare this to how I interact with a magazine stand: my visual sense guides me to things that interest me. Once I’ve got a magazine in hand, I can flip through it and find what’s interesting.
If info-beams weren’t visual and browsable, they’d be worthless. Each element in the stream must show you a compressed visual summary of its document; when you touch a stream element, you instantly get a larger visual summary.
This interview took place in 02003, several years before technology like Quick Look was released.
