Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!RAND.ORG!urban%hercules From: urban%hercules@RAND.ORG (Michael Urban) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: the interface for the rest of us? Message-ID: Date: 6 May 91 17:58:54 GMT References: <9105042144.AA22495@horse.ee.lbl.gov> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 40 Excerpts from mail: 4-May-91 Re: the interface for the r.. Chris Torek@horse.ee.lbl (1810) > Whenever a new technology comes into existence, people spend an > enormous amount of effort on making it look like previous technologies, with ridiculous (and often hilarious) results... I noticed this at TRW years back, when the people who wanted a `paperless office' really meant filling in forms on screens instead of on paper. My comment at that time was that if the automobile had been designed the way computers are used, the engine would have four legs and take gasoline-soaked hay through its mouth. To this day, I think that computer use took a bad turn somewhere in the late sixties. Instead of using computers to re-think office procedures and reduce paperwork and the amount of data that people have to deal with, we have instead created an inhumanly overheated demand for data. The forms that people fill out are longer and more frequent than they were, say, 20 years ago (I recently had occasion to look at my father's 1040 for 1971. Less paper than my forms, and my father owned a small business). More memory and faster processing just means more and bigger forms. I am, of course, not a Management type, nor have I any expertise in office procedures. But, somehow, using computers to do everything the Same as Always (just More and Faster) seems unimaginative to me... Hm. As I was typing that paragraph, my brain threw me an irrelevant and purely visual image of a placid Imperial Chinese residence in the most bustling section of Shanghai. Either I need to get something to eat, or my subconscious is trying to draw an equation between the incredibly bureaucratized structure of Imperial China and today's garbage-data explosion. Mike PS. If you decide to visit LA during the next six weeks, our Renaissance Faire runs until 9 June. I am there on Saturdays. If you do somehow manage to contain your eagerness, the Northern California edition (same management, many of the same cast, and very much the same show) runs in Marin County in September.