The most important benefits for users are in the following areas:
The telephone company's proprietary software provides various useful
communication services, including conference calls, call forwarding, paging
services, voice mail, and so on, but the computer on the desktop has no
information about what those are or how they're being used, and the telephone has
no information about how its actions are related to those performed on the
computer. Moreover, the computer itself is still perceived as a personal
productivity device, whereas the telephone is perceived as a communications
device that makes it possible for groups of people to share their work, exchange
ideas, and run an organization.
When you answer the phone, our computers also connect with each other
automatically, and the drawing document on my screen appears in a window on your
screen. Any changes you make to the document are instantly visible to me as you
make them, and anything I do to the document is instantly visible to you; we are
sharing the actual document in real time, not just a bitmapped image. When I move
the pointer, your pointer moves, and vice versa. We can both talk on the
telephone while treating our computer screens as if they were one shared piece of
paper, pointing, making notes, and making corrections just as we would in a
face-to-face meeting.
When we're finished and hang up the phone, we each retain a copy of the original
drawing document, a copy of the new version that we worked on together, and even
(if we both agreed to it explicitly) a digital recording of part of our
conversation. No need to travel 50 yards (or 50 miles) for a face-to-face
meeting. No need to discuss visual problems without a visual reference. No
printing, photocopying, uploading, or downloading.
This example gives just a taste of the kind of solution that Taligent technology
can deliver effectively in a multiuser environment. Chapter 3, "A human interface
for organizations," introduces the Taligent human interface in
more detail. An example of software limitations
Telephones and computers sit side by side on millions of real business desktops
in every industry, but these two essential pieces of equipment can communicate
with each other at only the most rudimentary level, if at all. The computer may
be able to dial the telephone with the aid of a modem and communicate with other
computers, but it has no other information about what the telephone is being used
for. A new kind of solution
What kinds of interactions might be possible if telephones and computers could
share some basic information about the people who use them to communicate?
Suppose you are an illustrator and I need to talk to you about a drawing you have
prepared for a book I'm writing. Instead of printing out the drawing and
arranging a face-to-face meeting with you, I can open the drawing on my computer,
then dial your number by dragging an icon that represents you over an icon that
represents my telephone.
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