Somewhat interesting article about pinball machines in this month’s Wired. Calling it “warm entertainment” because you still have your hands on a partially mechanical object. I bet at some point the trend in computers to become convergent and small will reverse and find a niche for warmer computer interaction. We like that tactile/auditory feeling of physical stuff just like we need to chew and taste when we eat.
Presently physical interaction is designed as a necessary evil; for example a Bang & Olufsen stereo. We take something that must be a certain size and try to make it beautiful. Instead in the future we’ll take something that’s too small (a camera the size of a keyring could actually be awkward to point, interact with, and view movies on), and make it bigger, and have so much freedom when we do so. It won’t be an exercise in molding the device, it will be about building a human-centered experience, almost devoid of technological constraints.