Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!apple!well!shf
From: shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Evaluating the 'entertainment' value of a piece of software?
Summary: "Fantics"
Keywords: entertainment software
Message-ID: <11547@well.UUCP>
Date: 6 May 89 05:48:02 GMT
References: <5434@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <12591@ihlpy.ATT.COM> <17778@cisunx.UUCP> <17154@mimsy.UUCP> <28953@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson)
Organization: The Blue Planet
Lines: 34

+-- thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Thom Gillespie) writes:
| [...] I've noticed a factor I haven't seen addressed anywhere.
| Software or Interfaces
| have a certain 'entertainment' value which makes them seem more useful or
| pleasurable to users.

Ted Nelson coined a term for this -- "fantics."  I quote:

	By "fantics" I mean the art and science of getting ideas across,
	both emotionally and cognitively.  "Presentation" could be a 
	general word for it.  The character of what gets across is always
	dual: both the explicit structures, and feelings that go with them.
	These two aspects, exactness and connotation, are an inseperable
	whole; what is conveyed generally has both.
	...
	 ... technically-oriented people who think that systems to interact
	with people, or teach, or bring up information, cna function on
	some technical basis -- with no tie-ins with human feelings,
	phychology, or the larger social structure -- are kidding themselves
	and/or everyone else.  Systems for "teaching by computer,"
	"information retrieval," and so on, have to be governed in their
	design by larger principles than most of these people are willing
	to deal with: the conveyance of images, impressions and ideas.
	That is what writers and editors, movie-makers and lecturers,
	radio announcers and layout people and advertising people are 
	concerned with; and unfortunately computer people tend not to
	understand it for beans.

Of course, he's not talking about any of us.  :-)

(From Computer Lib/Dream Machines, by Ted Nelson.)
-- 
		Stuart Ferguson		(shf@well.UUCP)
		Action by HAVOC