Life is unexpected. Yep. If no other theme better permeates these Flash Forwards (of which there are only two), it would be that we should wholeheartedly embrace the uncertainty of the future. Unfortunately, that future at times means we cannot attend to our blog posts, and sometimes that’s a travesty. Here, however, I’m finally catching up.

The Dr. Coulter I meant to introduce you to — or at least one incantation of him, of possibly many — would look something like this: Aside from his stunning good looks, brilliant personality, admirable intelligence and, let’s rightly admit it right here and now: his deeply poetic romanticism (to which all the women swoon), Dr. Coulter would be a computer science or software engineering professor, likely more teacher than researcher, somewhere respected, holding a Ph.D. in microsociology.

“But why do they swoon? Charlie, tell me why they swoon!” — Knox Overstreet

Okay. I admit: I’ve embellished on some points. But the real kicker was supposed to be the microsociology.

I stumbled upon microsociology when I was thinking about an MBA, back when I wrote The Prestige. Many schools in New York City focus on finance, and beside their MBA programs offer classes in economics. A few clicks on Wikipedia gets you to sociology, or better, macrosociology, dealing with human interaction on a wide scale (such as with economics). A few more clicks gets you to microsociology, the inverse, dealing with human interaction on a more personal scale.

Microsociology, to the extent I understand it, extremely interests me. I like paying attention to personal communication, almost overly so, to the point where I reflect on it as it happens; in fact, I wouldn’t mind researching it for its own sake. However, I want to keep using the degree I received from Florida Tech, and I still want to focus on software, namely testing. Thankfully, microsociolgy fits right in; that is, if we swap some humans for computers.

Some might not call this microsociology and instead call it human-computer interaction — which it probably is — but I don’t intend to focus on haptics interfaces or better UI design, etc. At least, not directly. Instead, I hope to research the more personal side of computing (i.e., “What makes users angry,”) and try to use that research to improve how we develop software and what bugs we decide to fix first.

My hypothesis is that, based on human social expectations with other people, we may place similar expectations on computers. And if so, the bugs that “break” these expectations may be the most damaging, eliciting the most emotion from the user. Perhaps the reason we personify computers at all (I’m sure we’ve all proclaimed, at one point, “it’s thinking”) is because we have unconscious expectations that they (they???) are thinking entities. And that they’re stupid. And that they don’t do what we tell them to do. And maybe — and this is only a hypothesis: If we study this phenomenon, it may help inform our design decisions up front as well as help us decide which bugs to fix after the fact. And if James Bach is right, and a bug is truly “anything that bugs you,” then we may really be onto something.

But, of course, life is unexpected, and the beauty of the future is, to quote greatness, “[that] you never know what you’re going to get.” Still, this research would be exciting in it’s own right (assuming it hasn’t already been done), easily earning its candidacy as my next Flash Forward.

Note: Flash Forwards are only flashes. I’m hoping someone corrects me on the things I take for granted, as I have a tendency to unintentionally hurt books I read, and my microsociology books are currently unscathed.

Update: See comments thread for more discussion.

I’m going to start something we’ll call a Flash Forward.

Whoa Doc. This is heavy. — Marty McFly

That’s right. In an attempt to flesh out some career possibilities I’d be interested in pursuing, I’ve decided to blog about the ones that may have actual footing in reality.

The first is Medill’s (Northwestern University’s) Knight Foundation Scholarship. It seems the Journalism program at Medill has recognized the ever-increasing influence of the Internet, and has at the same time realized the opposite decline in print media. To keep up with the times — or to boldly go where no one has gone before (let’s face it; this is cool stuff) — Medill is giving away full rides to students interested in fusing technology and Journalism.

What’s great about these scholarships, and what makes Medill a clear candidate for my first Flash Forward, is it’s an actual possibility. Given my technical background, my interest in writing (this blog) and the timeliness of the opportunity — the deadline for January 2010 is this June, and the program is only a year long; I can see myself jumping for it.

But it’s true: As Doc Brown said, the future hasn’t been written yet. Stay tuned for my next Flash Forward, where I introduce you to Dr. Coulter (in training) and a few ideas for graduate study in Software Engineering.