At a recent unofficial gathering of Future Salon'ers, there was a discussion about a demonstration of four robots doing a japanese fan dance to music (I think it was seen at CES in Las Vegas last week). The remark was that it was vaguely disturbing because your intellect knows that they are just robots, but someplace deep in your brain you know that they are alive because of the way that they move.

As a user-interface designer in the 80's for companies like Apple Computer, and as old 'groupware' professional in the early 90's, I've been quite disappointed with how design of collaborative apps appears to have practically ceased since the introduction of the web. It is not that there haven't been lots of new features added in the last 10 years, it is that they are often too complex, or are pure eye-candy and not particular useful.