Tag: technology

My implacable hatred for Apple’s relentlessly fascistic vision of technology notwithstanding, I am a longtime admirer of Steve Jobs. I even regard him as somewhat of a role model since I am as confident in my own technological visions as he is in his. It is his unique talent for not only having a vision but also successfully communicating it that makes his recent departure so potentially ruinous to Apple:

Apple has not elaborated on the reasons for Steve Jobs’ medical leave, and it probably won’t unless/until it has to. As a result, those who care about the company and Steve can be forgiven for wondering how serious Steve’s condition is and for looking for clues about this in every communication.

In this vein, in our opinion, the wording of one sentence of Steve’s email to Apple staff is not encouraging: “I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can.”

In our opinion, those are not the words of someone taking a short leave who is confident he will be back at the company soon (or ever). Rather, in our opinion, they read like the tragic, heartfelt sentiments of someone who thinks he might never be coming back.

I wish Steve Jobs all the best and sincerely hope he makes a full recovery in order to come back and subject a new generation of Macintossers to imprisonment in his beautifully landscaped, walled-in, fascist, techno-utopian garden.

And empirical evidence is embraced in its stead.  Now, I have long contended that it is worthwhile to pay attention to those with whom one disagrees even if one is convinced that they are wrong. While I am most certainly not a fan of Malcolm Gladwell and have little regard for science fetishists, after reading What the Dog Saw and engaging in the recent series of discussions related to the limits of science, it occurred to me that even without taking MPAI into account, I was asking far too much of most people in thinking they would grasp the benefits of a radically different interface by simply presenting them with the specifications and features and expecting them to reach the appropriate conclusions.  Most people don’t want to have to think about something in order to figure it out, they want to be informed.  But how can you inform someone of the detailed specifics when you don’t even know what they are?  Most people find it far less meaningful to hear “X will be significantly better than Y because of Z”  than “X is 20, Y is 10.  So X is twice as much as Y.”  They don’t want to think about Z or to work out how much better X is than Y.  In fact, experience suggests that they often regard the first option as complete gibberish.

This should have been obvious to me from the beginning. Whenever people react to something that is perfectly logical by saying that it is crazy, this is little more than an indication that they really don’t understand either the logic or the conclusion. I suspect the modern fetish for unassailable empirical evidence is in part the result of a decline in the average individual’s ability to think in the abstract; I noticed that the early adopters of the interface with whom I have communicated have almost uniformly been highly intelligent. That might appear flattering, except it’s actually indicative of a problem because it means that the vast majority of potential users are not grasping the potential advantage to them.

Therefore, I concluded that empirical evidence was necessary.  I therefore went about designing a means of acquiring that evidence, which has worked out rather well indeed.  I now have a strange new respect for both Gladwell and blind, thoughtless faith in empirical evidence.

I’m not going to bombard the blog with videos, but since a number of you had some suggestions for improvement, here is a new one that shows off our favorite little device kicking it very old school style. I recorded the audio in Audacity rather than Camtasia and imported it this time… it worked better, I think, but I’m still having a few audio-editing issues. Anyhow, this is interesting because it shows how the keyboard can be entirely eliminated from a keyboard-only game.

By the way, does anyone know how the image that shows in the YouTube link can be selected or is it just random?

I have to say that Camtasia Studio has gone well beyond my expectations and even some of my hopes. I’m still learning my way around it, but this test of the picture-in-picture feature shows how versatile it is. The video embedded below is just a test of that feature, which I thought might be a useful way to show what the mouse is doing when the onscreen action is taking place. The result, crude as it is, turns out to be a remarkable and ironic testimony to the ergonomic advantage of the decidedly unergonomically-shaped device; even after having used it for months, I was surprised to see how it virtually eliminated wrist movement as well as the keyboard commands.

Anyhow, now that I know Camtasia works so well, I’m going to set about producing a series of higher-quality videos that will show how the mouse works with a wide range of various games and applications. But first, of course, I’ll wrap up that third inflation video for which Nate is so patiently waiting. I should be able to finish and upload it this weekend.

My own feeling is that time travel is rather less likely than a secret elite making use of advanced technology. Although apparently less advanced phone-wise than we are now; that mobile phone looks bigger than my Android device. Of course, this raises the question: if they had phones in 1928, what do they have now?

If anyone has a collection of old Computer Gaming World magazines from the early 1990s, I am looking for an article written by Mike Weksler about 3D hardware that referenced both Chris Taylor and Ime. It probably mentioned a chip called 3GA as well and would have run sometime between 1992 and 1995. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what issue it was except that it was after the first 100 issues that are archived online at the CGW Museum. If you can tell me the issue, or better yet, scan the article and send it to me, I would appreciate it.

If you like to roll your own, there’s an unexpected little present for you over at the dev blog.

Okay, try not to die laughing, everyone. Especially you, Nate. As it happens, it would appear I need to consider buying a riding mower. John Deere X304 or MTD Yard Man 42-inch? Normally, I’d go for the former on the basis of JD quality, but I’ve heard that there have been issues of late and I can probably get better service from the MTD dealer.