Interactive computing

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In computer science, interactive computing refers to software which accepts input from the user as it runs.

Contents

Interactive software includes commonly used programs, such as word processors or spreadsheet applications. By comparison, non-interactive programs operate without user intervention; examples of these include compilers and batch processing applications that are pre-programmed to run independently.

Interactive computing focuses on real-time interaction ("dialog") between the computer and the operator, and the technologies that enable them. [1]

If the response of the computer system is complex enough, it is said that the system is conducting social interaction; some systems try to achieve this through the implementation of social interfaces.

The nature of interactive computing as well as its impact on users, are studied extensively in the field of computer interaction.

History of interactive computing systems

Ivan Sutherland is considered the father of interactive computing for his work on Sketchpad, the interactive display graphics program he developed in 1963. He later worked at the ARPA Information Processing Techniques Office under the direction of J. C. R. Licklider.

There he facilitated ARPA's research grant to Douglas Engelbart for developing the NLS [2] system at SRI, based on his visionary manifesto published in a 1962 report, [3] in which Engelbart envisioned interactive computing as a vehicle for user interaction with computers, with each other, and with their knowledge, all in a vast virtual information space.

In a 1965 report, [4] Engelbart published his early experiments with pointing devices, including the computer mouse, for composing and editing on interactive display workstations. Engelbart's work on interactive computing at SRI migrated directly to Xerox PARC, from there to Apple, and out into the mainstream. Thus, the tree of evolution for interactive computing generally traces back to Engelbart's lab at SRI. [5]

In December 2008, on the 40th anniversary of his 1968 demo, SRI sponsored a public commemorative event in his honor. [6]

Current research

The HP Sprout, a projector-camera interactive computing system. HP Sprout.jpg
The HP Sprout, a projector-camera interactive computing system.

The need for constant user interaction in interactive computing systems makes it different in many ways from batch processing systems.

Areas of current research include the design of novel programming models [8] and achieving information security and reliability in interactive computing. [9]

IPython [10] is a software system for scientific interactive computing, [11] supporting data visualization, event-driven programming and a number of related GUI toolkits. [12]

The Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Interactive Computing formed in 2007, offering masters and doctoral degrees via collaboration with more than 40 faculties. [13]

The Tangible Media Group of MIT, led by Professor Hiroshi Ishii, seeks to seamlessly couple the dual world of bits and atoms by presenting a dynamic physical form to computation. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Engelbart</span> American engineer and inventor (1925–2013)

Douglas Carl Engelbart was an American engineer and inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularly while at his Augmentation Research Center Lab in SRI International, which resulted in creation of the computer mouse, and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to graphical user interfaces. These were demonstrated at The Mother of All Demos in 1968. Engelbart's law, the observation that the intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential, is named after him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">User interface</span> Means by which a user interacts with and controls a machine

In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, while the machine simultaneously feeds back information that aids the operators' decision-making process. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls and process controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to, or involve such disciplines as, ergonomics and psychology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Rulifson</span> American computer scientist

Johns Frederick (Jeff) Rulifson is an American computer scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivan Sutherland</span> American computer scientist and Internet pioneer

Ivan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subject at the University of Utah in the 1970s was pioneering in the field. Sutherland, Evans, and their students from that era developed several foundations of modern computer graphics. He received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for the invention of the Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the National Academy of Sciences among many other major awards. In 2012, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology for "pioneering achievements in the development of computer graphics and interactive interfaces".

The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), originally "Command and Control Research", was part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ARPANET</span> Early packet switching network (1969–1990), one of the first to implement TCP/IP

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first computer networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet. The ARPANET was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. C. R. Licklider</span> American psychologist and computer scientist (1915-1990)

Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, known simply as J. C. R. or "Lick", was an American psychologist and computer scientist who is considered to be among the most prominent figures in computer science development and general computing history.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to human–computer interaction:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Mother of All Demos</span> 1968 computer demonstration by Douglas Engelbart

"The Mother of All Demos" is a name retroactively applied to a landmark computer demonstration, of developments by the Augmentation Research Center, given at the Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (ACM/IEEE)—Computer Society's Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, by Douglas Engelbart, on December 9, 1968.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Taylor (computer scientist)</span> American computer scientist

Robert William Taylor, known as Bob Taylor, was an American Internet pioneer, who led teams that made major contributions to the personal computer, and other related technologies. He was director of ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office from 1965 through 1969, founder and later manager of Xerox PARC's Computer Science Laboratory from 1970 through 1983, and founder and manager of Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Research Center until 1996.

SRI International's Augmentation Research Center (ARC) was founded in the 1960s by electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing.

Social computing is an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems. It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wally Feurzeig</span> American computer scientist

Wallace "Wally" Feurzeig was an American computer scientist who was co-inventor, with Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon, of the programming language Logo, and a well-known researcher in artificial intelligence (AI).

NLS, or the "oN-Line System", was a revolutionary computer collaboration system developed in the 1960s. Designed by Douglas Engelbart and implemented by researchers at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the NLS system was the first to employ the practical use of hypertext links, the mouse, raster-scan video monitors, information organized by relevance, screen windowing, presentation programs, and other modern computing concepts. It was funded by ARPA, NASA, and the US Air Force.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shell (computing)</span> Computer program that exposes an operating systems services to a human user or other programs

In computing, a shell is a computer program that exposes an operating system's services to a human user or other programs. In general, operating system shells use either a command-line interface (CLI) or graphical user interface (GUI), depending on a computer's role and particular operation. It is named a shell because it is the outermost layer around the operating system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intelligence amplification</span> Use of information technology to augment human intelligence

Intelligence amplification (IA) refers to the effective use of information technology in augmenting human intelligence. The idea was first proposed in the 1950s and 1960s by cybernetics and early computer pioneers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IPython</span> Advanced interactive shell for Python

IPython is a command shell for interactive computing in multiple programming languages, originally developed for the Python programming language, that offers introspection, rich media, shell syntax, tab completion, and history. IPython provides the following features:

"Man-Computer Symbiosis" is the title of a work by J. C. R. Licklider, which was published in 1960. The paper represented what we would today consider a fundamental, or key text of the modern computing revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Notebook interface</span> Programming tool blending code and documents

A notebook interface or computational notebook is a virtual notebook environment used for literate programming, a method of writing computer programs. Some notebooks are WYSIWYG environments including executable calculations embedded in formatted documents; others separate calculations and text into separate sections. Notebooks share some goals and features with spreadsheets and word processors but go beyond their limited data models.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project Jupyter</span> Open source data science software

Project Jupyter is a project to develop open-source software, open standards, and services for interactive computing across multiple programming languages.

References

  1. "What is Interactive Computing?". Beki's Blog. 2011-01-27. Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  2. About NLS/Augment, Douglas Engelbart Institute
  3. Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (1962), Douglas Engelbart Institute
  4. Computer-Aided Display Control (1965), Douglas C. Engelbart
  5. Administrator. "Interactive Computing - Doug Engelbart Institute". www.dougengelbart.org. Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  6. Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing, Douglas Engelbart Institute
  7. "Hands-on with the HP Sprout, an imaging powerhouse built into a touch-friendly PC". PCWorld. 2015-02-03. Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  8. Perera, Roly (2008-05-14). "Programming Languages For Interactive Computing". Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. Proceedings of the Workshop on the Foundations of Interactive Computation (FInCo 2007). 203 (3): 35–52. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.95.7225 . doi:10.1016/j.entcs.2008.04.085.
  9. Beaver, Donald (1991-08-11). "Foundations of Secure Interactive Computing". In Feigenbaum, Joan (ed.). Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO '91. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 576. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 377–391. doi:10.1007/3-540-46766-1_31. ISBN   9783540551881.
  10. IPython official webpage
  11. Perez, F.; Granger, B. E. (2007-05-01). "IPython: A System for Interactive Scientific Computing". Computing in Science & Engineering. 9 (3): 21–29. Bibcode:2007CSE.....9c..21P. doi:10.1109/MCSE.2007.53. ISSN   1521-9615.
  12. IPython documentation on interactive computing
  13. School of Interactive Computing official webpage
  14. Tangible Media Group official webpage