__/ [ John Bailo ] on Friday 08 September 2006 17:42 \__
> The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>
>> I have to agree also with Steve Woz -- or was it Jobs? --
>> in which a computer should be as simple to use as a
>> toaster,
>
> That is one of the biggest fallacies in the history of technologies.
>
> There is no rational reason that a computer should be "easy to use".
>
> Computers perform at the edge of every human capability: writing,
> knowledge, thought, mathematics, science.
>
> Are these things /easy/?
>
> Or take the emotive side: communities, personality, popularity, dating,
> relationships.
>
> Are these things easy? Yet computers are in constant use by people for
> these things.
>
> Or how about gaming?
>
> Games are ever and ever more complex. It's not possible for someone to
> sit down at a computer and "play WOW". He'd be booted out the
> community. Likewise, it took me days and weeks of play to be able to
> really participate in an UT2004 Onslaught battle.
>
> Yes, I think there should be a more /gradated/ scale of use: easy
> interfaces for easy things. But trying to make everything on a
> computer *easy* is a Fool's Quest.
I find this observation very interesting. I have been arguing for a while
that in order for a professional document to be produced, a proper
typesetting launaguage must be used, at an abstract level or using some raw.
Certain information must be embedded by the user rather than be guessed
automatically (e.g. structure semantics). For that reason, WYSIWYG
paradigms, while supposedly simple, produce some of the worst Web sites and
poorest documents. The fact that their adopters choose the wrong tools does
not help the quality of the content either.
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Can Mac OS X and Vista catch up? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYjv0S_k0xo
http://Schestowitz.com | Open Prospects ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Tasks: 140 total, 2 running, 136 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
http://iuron.com - knowledge engine, not a search engine
|
|
