Aza Raskin wants your computer to vanish, but the 24-year-old is no latter-day Luddite. His goal is to assemble communication with the PC so intuitive you’ll forget you’re using a device. And Humanized — a software company and think tank he and a trio of fellow idealists founded in 2005 — is the means to that end.

While they’ve yet to foment a computing revolution, Humanized did release two successful products during 2007, and their ideas have caught the attention of prominent designers and engineers at major tech companies, including Google. Hundreds of thousands have downloaded Enso, a program that simplifies tasks such as defining words. And 6 million songs have been streamed on Songza.com, a music search engine launched in November. Both embody Raskin’s passion for software designed with citizens in mind.

Raskin views nearly everything he handles in terms of its design. Mobile phones aren’t just devices that manufacture calls; they’re “a Medusa’s

head of seething submenus.” That mindset results from 21 years of Socratic tutelage by his late father, Jef Raskin, the Renaissance man who came up with the concept for Apple’s Macintosh and led much of its development. The oldest of three children, Aza gave his first technical talk as a middle schooler and consulted internationally with his father as a teen. When Jef was diagnosed with cancer in late 2004, Aza left the University of Chicago to work side by side with him in Pacifica, Calif. Shortly after his father died at age 61 a few months later, Aza returned to Chicago, completing four months’ worth of research for his senior physics thesis on dark matter in just weeks. “When he came back, I gave him zero chance of success, but Aza is Aza,” says astrophysics professor Juan Collar.

Raskin and three college friends next founded Humanized, raising…

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