At 02:59 PM 11/4/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Dear List members,
>
> I hope the group finds this as amusing as I did, and that you
>won't think I'm being too frivolous.
>
>Kris Utterback
>[log in to unmask]
>>
>>MAJOR TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH!!!
>>
>>Announcing the new Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device called BOOK.
>>The BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: No wires, no
>>electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on.
>>It's so easy to use even a child can operate it. Just lift its cover!
>>Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere-even sitting in an armchair
>>by the fire-yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a
CD-ROM
>>disc.
>>
[remainder of enjoyable BOOK description deleted for purposes of this
augmentation]
Numerous years ago, in the earlier days of computing, I went to a
lecture by a then well-known author of programming textbooks, in which he
announced he was going to announce a wonderful new development. As he
spoke, it gradually dawned on us, the audience, that what he was describing
was pencila and papers. I believe this was before the days of the
Macintosh and Microsoft Windows.
I've had the experience recently of two intelligent people (one of them
my wife, and both of them professors) who said they have trouble with MS
Windows for the same reasons that they have trouble with papers and pencils
on their desktops (i.e., old-fashioned horizontal flat surfaces made to
write and read on.)
Gordon Fisher [log in to unmask]
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