[net.cog-eng] Cuddly as a Teddy Bear?

ralph@utcsrgv.UUCP (ralph hill) (10/31/83)

(Personally, I have a stuffed dragon).

I think peterr has something there with the emotional response question.
I have noticed (when using vi) that I often do things using fancy vi
commands (lots of y's and p's) when I know I can do the job much faster by
simply deleting and retyping.  The reason I do this, is, it some way, it
is more comfortable.

Back to teddy bears...  Back in 1980, Nicholas Negroponte concluded his
position paper submitted to Seillac II with: " ... most creative thoughts
will come from a kind of magnanimity which at once can draw upon a
technical breadth and can ask without embarrassment the very simple
question - does it feel good?"

He suggests in this paper (and elsewhere) that eventually we will buy
computers not by there technical specifications, but be their 'feel'.
Just like we buy cars (or teddy bears).  The implication is that,
eventually, unmeasureable aspects of the interface will become very
important.

------
N. Negroponte.  (1980).  The  Metaphysics  of  Television.
     (in) R.A.  Guedj,  et al. (Eds.), Methodology of Interaction.
     Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, pp. 311-316.

-------------------
         Ralph Hill   CSRG   University of Toronto

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mark@cbosgd.UUCP (11/04/83)

	I think peterr has something there with the emotional response
	question.  I have noticed (when using vi) that I often do
	things using fancy vi commands (lots of y's and p's) when I
	know I can do the job much faster by simply deleting and
	retyping.  The reason I do this, is, it some way, it is more
	comfortable.
Effort to do something is more than just the physical effort to move
your fingers.  It also includes the mental effort to do figure out
what to do.  I often do something that I know will work because it's
a thing I do all the time, even if it's not optimal this one time.
For example, I have
	alias m make
in my .cshrc, and usually give a make command once:
	m libscreen.a
and then just type
	,m
to redo the last "m" command.  (I use , where many of you probably use !
as the csh history character.)  So it's in my head that ,m repeats
the last make command.  Sometimes the last make command was just
	m
and when I type
	,m
I get back the expansion
	m
But it's still mentally easier than trying to remember just what the
last make command was.

	Mark