From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Jan 30 18:47:27 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CDB5F14DC3 for ; Sun, 30 Jan 2000 18:47:22 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) id NAA64023; Mon, 31 Jan 2000 13:17:11 +1030 (CST) Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 13:17:10 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: Christian Weisgerber Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Slaves of computers (was: GUIs are flawed) Message-ID: <20000131131710.G62824@freebie.lemis.com> References: <20000129163556.A69961@tougas.net> <870cqi$h68$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i In-Reply-To: <870cqi$h68$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sunday, 30 January 2000 at 4:57:06 +0100, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > > Sociologists often gibber about computer user's turning into slaves > of the machine rather than the other way around. It doesn't sound > as ridiculous anymore once you see how PC users debase themselves, > and do the most grueling, repetitive, mind-numbing work unfit for > humans. (And of course the sociologists' computer experience is as > PC users.) Many years ago I went to the Hannover trade fair and saw my first-ever colour terminal (see how long ago it was). It was some IBM 3276 derivative, and it displayed a menu saying "If you want to know more about the IBM 327x colour terminal, enter "1" and press Enter". So I went and pressed 2 to see what it would do. The program reacted reasonably (redisplayed the screen), but a droid wandered over to see what trouble I was having. I told him what I was doing, and he said, "Don't do that. Do what the computer says". I don't think your description of these people as "PC users" is completely accurate. I'm a PC user too, and so are you. You're talking about a mentality which pervades the industry. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message