For millions of years, humans have used tools to ease the tasks they need to perform in order to
survive. From historical tools such as chiseled-rock spear points to tools of the 21st century,
humans have used their innovative talents and their enriched understanding of science to create
technologies and tools to support their needs. Computing systems are the latest and arguably National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 2003. The terms “computers” and “computing systems” are used interchangeably throughout this document. These terms encompass individual computational nodes, memory, storage,visualization other special purpose hardware, and the software that operates them. They include
desktops, laptops, workstations, computational grids, supercomputers, hand-held personal digital
assistants, networked sensors and actuators, and low-power computers on satellites. most complex tools that humans have ever created. Their use continues to evolve and grow as
their speed and capability increase.
From their earliest days, computers were used for scientific, engineering, and cryptographic
computations. Early human users of computers both wrote and read the bits that computers
understood. With the advent of programming languages and translators such as assemblers and
compilers, humans used characters (numbers, letters, and punctuation) and words to write
instructions in ways that humans understood, and which translators turned into computerreadable
commands. Conversely, computers converted the bits that comprised the results of
computations into numbers, words, and sentences that humans understood. Humans viewed the
content created by computers as reflecting that computers could think, which greatly expanded
the potential roles computers could play.
Computers could not just compute, but could also produce sentences that people could understand.Understanding what a computer is doing in human terms rather than in computer terms was an
early step in human-computer interaction. As humans observed what computers could do, they
adapted the computer’s capabilities to satisfy their needs and desires. Today humans use
computers to communicate, interact, and share in diverse ways:
• To write and talk to each other
• To exchange artifacts of personal interest such as photos, music, and videos
• To exchange artifacts used in the workplace such as text files, drawings, and visualizations
Ideas about what computers could do for humans grew as single stand-alone computers that
performed only one set of calculations using data on external media such as tapes evolved into
our multi-functional 21st century systems. More ideas came as networks of computing systems
were built to transmit bits almost instantaneously around the world for other computers and
software – and people – to use. In a seemingly never-ending cycle, new computer-enabled
capabilities, devices, and environments are envisioned, developed, and deployed for use by everlarger,
more diverse, and more demanding populations. These human activities have greatly
expanded computer usage.
Humans use computers to meet their needs and desires as long as they can easily do so. A user will not invest in learning to use a computer when such learning is disproportionate to meeting those needs and desires. User communities assess ease-of-use differently, and the great
variability in human needs and capabilities means that ease-of-use has many aspects. For
example, astrophysicists will invest extraordinary effort to use fast new (and difficult-to-use)
computing systems to conduct their research because they have no viable alternative. Each
science and engineering community has its own assumptions, data, information, vocabulary,
computing needs, and ways to communicate, interact, and share. Each community has developed
its own computing system capabilities. Building easily traversed bridges among such systems
and across nations, languages, and cultures, is a demanding task.
Sumber : https://www.nitrd.gov/pubs/hci-im_research_needs_final.pdf
