3/6/26
I don’t know why people think that chat is the Peak Interface design… It’s a useful interface for some kinds of task, but why would I want ALL interfaces I ever engage with to become a chat box? I don’t think that makes any sense.
I feel like I read recently about some other phases of this where X old pattern would totally be eradicated in favor of new simpler pattern. I should try to find that again.
Why do I want to ask a chatbox what my bank account balance is? Maybe, that’s fine actually… But, why do I want to ask a chat box to show me my transaction history for the month? Really, I guess, any kind of input driven task doesn’t make sense to me to use a chatbox for.
It seems reasonable to assume that there will never be One Universal Interface. A generalist interface is going to be inherently less useful for some specialist tasks. Even if chatboxes become the new default interface (which I also doubt) I think we’d still want specialist non-chat interfaces.
Earlier hyperbolic thoughts on a related “futuristic” interface:
We don’t even exclusively use screens for interfaces to computers. We have keyboards and mice and we even have toasters, with microchips in them, that have knobs and buttons and levers.