The following is an excerpt from Enterprise Integration Group EVP and chief scientist Bruce Balentine's new book, It's Better to be a Good Machine Than a Bad Person: Speech Recognition and Other Exotic User Interfaces at the Twilight of the Jetsonian Age, recently published by ICMI Press.

Balentine, an expert on the design of IVR and automated speech interfaces, approaches the history and wisdom of automated systems design with the gravity of a true authority, but the tone of a humorist. In this selection from the book, Balentine explains why user adoption for speech-enabled self service technologies has been less than enthusiastic.

The Early Use of Emerging Technologies

Emerging technologies and new product concepts -- if they are to succeed -- are historically accepted very quickly after introduction, despite technical immaturity. Cell phones is the classic example. Even today we tolerate a remarkable amount of disrupted service or diminished sound quality from one cause or another, and the earliest cell phone users lugged around suitcases while driving for miles to get reception. The same kind of technical immaturity was true of early automobiles, televisions, transistors, electric lighting and refrigeration. In fact, almost all successful technologies have been rapidly accepted by end users even at very early levels of maturity. The reasons for the rapid acceptance of immature technologies are well-known:

• The new technology solves a real problem.
• The cost of the new solution compares well against the cost of the problem.
• The new solution -- though limited -- is better than existing alternatives.
• The value of the technology is immediately evident to buyers.

Even the earliest automobiles, for example, offered advantages over horse ownership. Early self-developing films and cameras were clumsy, hard to use and sensitive to environment. But they solved the problem of instant-gratification photography with adequate results. Early transistors were big, and limited in capability, but were still better than vacuum tubes. In all of these cases, the technologies were "good enough" and "affordable enough" to launch major new markets.

Speech recognition -- unique among promising high technologies -- has failed to engender such early user acceptance. Aficionados argue that it has been too immature, that users have to get used to it, that success awaits the "killer app," that the economy is too slow, that there are not enough developers, that a boom is "just around the corner," that we need more powerful hardware, that social psychology has not been applied, or that we need to promote the IVR more aggressively to our customers.

None of the arguments is compelling.

The lines of reasoning in this book aim to discover the root cause of speech technologies' inability to deliver on their promises and claims, to identify a design and business model that can correct the core problems, and then to specify a solution -- what I am calling a Telephony User Interface (TUI) -- that is technologically capable of delivering value within a reasonable set of customer expectations.

To understand what is wrong with speech recognition, we must understand why the immature versions of the technology are not accepted, and why technology improvements do not seem to help. To do that, we must ask several direct questions. What are the problems that speech solves? How much do those problems cost, and how much does the speech solution cost? Are there alternatives? Where is the value?

As we proceed, we will learn four simple facts: First, a TUI that tries to behave like a person will always fail. Second, a TUI that behaves like a good machine not only succeeds -- it is less expensive to develop and more effective in use. Third, the key to building a good machine lies in ergonomic principles already known -- and cannot be found in conversation, naturalness, user delight or similar red herrings. Finally, the users themselves -- almost universally -- embrace this design philosophy when presented with it.

The Jetsonian Age

There is a certain philosophy -- about technology, modern society, and the relationship between people and their larger environment that is now in its twilight. I call it Jetsonian philosophy, and it has exerted a great influence over business, society and politics for more than a half-century. Here I want to define Jetsonian philosophy, discuss why and how it arose, and then set up coming essays about why it is waning and what changes will result from its eventual demise.

Jetsonian philosophy is rooted in the optimism of mid-century America -- a post-war period of growth and invention that boomed out babies, technologies, social change, political movements and waste. The moniker for the age, of course, derives from a TV program -- what other contemporary source could there be? -- in the form of a '60s classic called The Jetsons. The cartoon was the signature piece for mid-century American technology, ingenuity, upward mobility and self-confidence.

Jetsonian thinking goes like this: "No problem is so great that we can't overcome it with technology. And no task is so trivial that it's not worth automating. The future is open-ended, and advancement has no cost. It is our manifest destiny to create new and complicated things in the name of progress, and even in the absence of need."

In the cartoon, you'll recall that George Jetson lives in a futuristic, middle-class world with his lovely wife, Jane, and their two perfectly average children, Judy and Elroy. They are surrounded by, and take for granted, all of the conveniences of modern life. Instead of ground cars, of course, they fly in sporty and fashionable hover cars; and instead of boring, old appliances like washing machines, they have personal robots and lots of technological gadgets to help around the house.

George Jetson works at Spaceley's Sprockets, doing his best for his family as a sprocket maker. Although not too bright, he is well-meaning and jovial. They live in a very tall high-rise apartment building, where Jane just dials up the breakfast each morning, and Rosie the Robot takes care of the house. Ubiquitous moving walkways preclude the need for any kind of physical exertion. Everything appears to be affordable and easily powered by cheap and abundant energy.

In other words -- although the Jetsons are a family living in the future -- it's actually a sitcom about America in the '50s. A futuristic complement to the contemporaneous Stone Age animation, The Flintstones.*[see footnote]

Here's an example of a Jetsonian philosophy that I came across not too long ago. I read a magazine in spring 2000 -- immediately after the millennium craze -- that devoted an entire issue to speculation about "The Next 1,000 Years." In it, well-known computer science, human factors and technology experts along with futurists and visionaries of various flavors all gave their view of technology at the next change of the millennium -- as we move from the year 2999 into the year 3000.

Some of the articles were slightly interesting or at least provocative. But most were downright superficial. My favorite was a piece describing a graphical display mounted to the ceiling above the bed. When you wake up, your favorite news programs appear. The system has an eye-tracking device, so wherever your eye lands is presumed to be the topic of interest. Then the intelligent and personalized system is able to find more information about that topic and related topics for your customized news-reviewing pleasure. Of course you can also talk to it and it to you.

As the fantasy continues, you move from your bedroom to the kitchen, where you continue to converse with appliances and outside news sources -- perhaps adding gesture to the mix. Then you switch back to voice-only inside your car as you commute to work. At work, you are surrounded by information devices of all kinds.

I was so amused at this vision of the future that I checked the date on the issue. Indeed, it turned out to be March -- meaning that it shipped to arrive in early April. So I speculated that these articles were an April Fool's prank, a collection of satirical tongue-in-cheek spoofs. I'm still not certain (The optimist in me wants to believe that bright people with a sense of humor created the issue to relieve tension after the anxiety of Y2K proved to be a non-event.), but I have since come to the conclusion that the issue was in fact serious.

The vision in the magazine is Jetsonian for several reasons:

• There is an implicit assumption that the purpose of improving a user interface is convenience or pleasure, not empowerment or productivity (Finally, a way to read the newspaper without having to sit up or turn pages!);
• The article assumes that we will be doing the same things in 1,000 years that we do now -- it will just be easier to do them;
• The eye-tracker on the display solves a problem that the user doesn't have; and
• The discussion is completely about the user interface in the abstract -- no mention is made of user needs or tasks or the larger world environment.

We have to look at the history of technology and world events to understand the conditions that led to Jetsonian thinking. Remember that the entire world was completely transformed by a great 20th century war -- that is, the single war that extended from the end of the Edwardian age in 1914 until the invention and use of the atomic bomb in 1945. We entered that great war with a political system of alliances by marriage, an economic system based on aristocratic land ownership and colonialism, a world population of 2 billion or so human souls, and the first wave of the industrial revolution still in living memory. We left it with a cold war, a political system that pitted West against East, an information revolution, and a baby boom economy on our hands.

Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Jetsonian thinking. I'm just saying that it's on its way out. Obsolescent if not yet obsolete. No longer relevant to the social and economic circumstances in which we find ourselves. And what's more, such discontinuities are expected and predictable as our society moves through change after change -- they've happened before and will happen again. Just as the great war -- in only 30 to 40 years -- replaced an old order with a new, so also does the electronic and information revolution change the basic characteristics of current circumstances.

Many of us want to think that Jetsonian thinking is new, and is the result of the information revolution, but it is not. Jetsonian thinking is instead quaint and old-fashioned, and is contemporaneous with that revolution. We are now on the other side, and already starting to see some fundamental social and economic transformations that have come from realizing the impact of Jetsonian myopia.

The following are some of the attributes of Jetsonian philosophy, and the resulting economic and technological partners with which it has danced.

• Conspicuous consumption and a throwaway economy;
• A deep belief in the inherent stupidity and laziness of consumers;
• Faith that the long-term goal of technology is to find a way to get out of work, not to accomplish work;
• An apparently infinite supply of cheap energy and cheap labor;
• A fundamental confidence that if something can be done technologically, then it rightfully should and will be done; and
• A disconnect between how we live with technology today and how we think we're going to live with it tomorrow -- despite the lack of any roadmap that bridges the gap between the present and the future.

Understanding Jetsonian thinking and how deeply ingrained it has become is essential if we are to grasp the technological and economic changes that lie in our near future. The discontinuity that is now under way will, over time, completely redefine our culture's view of the role of technology in human society.

*Footnote: The complementarity of The Jetsons and The Flintstones underscores an attitude toward tool making and tool use that contrasts with The Clan of the Cave Bear. The Flintstones showcases Fred -- a dopey but mensch Everyman -- just the kind of character that sitcoms love to portray. Unlike Ayla and Droog, Fred Flintstone and his tribe prefer to let others do the thinking. Just like Ralph Cramden, Ed Norton, George Jetson and Homer Simpson, Fred exemplifies the sort of lovable materialist that is the hallmark of the American archetype.

--Balentine's book is available right now at www.icmi.com.

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