When Nokia opened its flagship store last year in Manhattan, I went to check out its array of upscale cell phones. I was so impressed with the high-resolution cameras, Carl Zeiss Optics and pivoting screens that I almost missed the third floor.

A small stairway leads to a dimly lit room, and a discreet sign reads, simply, Vertu. A saleswoman accompanied me to this inner sanctum, where each phone was lit by a spot and looked like a Fabergé egg. My first question was: How much do these cost? The price tag for the most desirable phone was $86,000. Eighty-six thousand dollars for a cell phone!

I said, “It must have lots of bells and whistles.” “No, not at all,” she replied, and pointed out its unique craftsmanship, diamond encrusted case and simplicity.

Seeing that I was still mystified, the saleswoman announced the feature that, for me, clarified everything: a single, dedicated button that makes a direct call to a concierge almost anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

I looked at my scruffy phone. On one hand, I have used it for years and have not yet taken advantage of all its features and services. But, on the other hand, I would have to study the manual (and the billing plans) for hours to learn how to use all those capabilities.

And thus came my epiphany: the most sophisticated device is one that combines simplicity and service.

Some of you may remember the visionary 1987 Apple film Knowledge Navigator. In the film, a professor opens an elegant laptop and is greeted by a window with a young man wearing a bow tie. The professor does not interface through pull-down menus or double clicks, he just talks. As the “butler” helps the professor with personal and professional obligations, we see that he is the ultimate secretary, able to assist in all matters of research, preparation and handholding, connecting instantaneously with people and data from all over the world. Its promise was a new vision of information access, communication and user interface. Like Vertu, this is the epitome of simplicity and service.

As I left the Nokia store, I thought about the twenty-year-old Knowledge Navigator vision. In many ways, we are there. We can find anything, anytime, anywhere. Like the professor with the butler, we are instantly assisted in all matters. Anyone reading this already knows it: All I have to say is “Google” or “Yahoo!,” and you can fill in the rest.

But guess what? We actually only have half of the equation. We have service, but not simplicity. In other words, the user interface still sucks. Twenty-three years ago, the concept of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), plus pull-down menus and scrolling and double clicks, was a breakthrough. But it is essentially unchanged. Whoever heard of anything in the computer world being the same after 23 years?

By now, this way of interacting with computers (and cell phones and DVD players and iPods) is ingrained. For many of you reading this column, it is your native language. You grew up with it, and your fingers and thumbs know it as well as they know a spoon or a toothbrush or the millions of other things that you learned before you even knew how to read.

In the early nineties, I wrote a number of pieces in this magazine about user interface design. I unearthed one of these columns and was amazed (and dismayed) to see that I could have written it today. The following is the column reprinted in its entirety.