Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Re: Just the facts.
Blind leads mute, mute leads blind. Both not the best by any measure.
Let you imagination roam free. Imagine having to follow someone who can't
see and you cannot tell him/her where they are going wrong. Or how about
the reverse? (blind faith) How many would have followed Hitler if the were
able to see even faintly where he was leading? All bad stuff. (01)
Just notice, Jack, that you are speaking about technical solutions to a
cultural problem. Good ones, perhaps the best, but I fear that they will
make very little difference. I wish I had an answer. All that I can say
from my obervations is we seem to be looking for the solution in the
problem box. (02)
It is now 3:45 pm (15:45) Pacific Coast, US of A. In the spirit of full
cooperation, I too am off to hoist a pint. (Liberty Ale for The Anchor
Steam Beer Company) CHEERS (03)
GER qeds (04)
Jack Park wrote:
> Why hasn't it happened?
>
> I have just a simple theory, and I really have no idea how to articulate
> that theory, but it goes something like this:
>
> WYSIWYG won.
>
> Some of the discussions for OHS-like capabilities that I have heard
> along the way seem to argue (though not argued forcefully) for taking
> steps in directions other than those which won the hearts and minds of
> people everywhere. For better or for worse, we are stuck with windowing
> systems that are a long way away from those that Douglas Engelbart
> demonstrated more than 30 years ago and which still exist in his
> powerful Augment system. The hard way? Maybe so; I don't really know. I
> just know, or think I believe that we are creatures of the habits we
> construct for ourselves, and changing those habits is a bitch.
>
> From my perspective on that situation, the argument can be made that an
> OHS ought to start with something horribly familiar. It turns out that
> OpenOffice is pretty (but not completely) familiar. They have
> concentrated on getting interoperability with MS Office right, but left
> a bunch of irritating (there's that word again) differences in behaviors
> -- like 32k row limit in the spreadsheet, just to name the showstopper.
> Elsewhere, Peter Jones mentioned the Multivalent browser. I've been
> playing with that for a long time now. Only problem with it is that it's
> not really a robust HTML browser; it does a lot of other things quite
> nicely, however. In fact, with a bunch of coding, it could easily
> qualify for one version of an implementation of the HyperScope, a
> browser that is supposed to bring together all sorts of different
> document types. Starting down the HyperScope path, however, brings out
> discussions of views and view changing capabilities, and those arguments
> begin to enter paths that deviate from the familiar. Maybe that's
> needed; maybe that slows things down.
>
> A breakthrough? I'll hoist a pint to that!
>
> Jack
>
> Did you mean "Mute leading the blind?"
>
> At 02:10 PM 10/6/2002 -0700, Gerald Pierce wrote:
>
>> Straight, clear and to the point. So the real question is Why hasn't it
>> happened? For that, we seem to persue a course of constant technical re-
>> finements resulting in a set of tools of great elegance and beauty that
>> the public at large, if they notice at all, step over with mild
>> irratation
>> on their way to more of doing it the hard way.
>>
>> I'm sure you have all heard of the expression of "the blind leading the
>> blind" It seems to me that Doug has an even more frustrating task,
>> namely being clear of vision but short of voice. More like "the blind
>> leading the mute"!!
>>
>> What we need is a breakthrough. There is some insight into human nature
>> that we are missing. THAT is where we must look. The way it is now we
>> stand around and ask "When all the Temple is prepared within, why waits
>> the weary worshipper outside?"
>>
>> GER qeds (05)