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nancylebovI was thinking it might be fun to torment people with visions of a future where computers work, and when I say work, I mean the simplicity, reliability, and transparency of an old-fashioned landline. You learned how to use a phone when you were a kid, the interface was fairly simple and intuitive, and then you knew how to use a phone. For decades.
The problem is, I have no idea how such a world would work. Would it take "do what I mean" capacity for computers, including the ability to make sense of vague and possibly incoherent desires? That would be the program which could write this story for me.
Greatly increased human intelligence, so that managing computers is no harder than counting to three is now?
Something else?
For that matter, I have no idea what would be a worthwhile story to set in a world where computers work, if the story is not going to be about computers ceasing to work. (Difficulties of interfacing with alien computers?)
The idea lacks dramatic tension. In fact, if there were such a thing as lacking dramatic tension on steroids, this would be it.
People would have to have a war or something.
I guess it's karma. A computer annoyed me (I can't even remember about what, there are so many things), so I thought I could annoy you folks, and I ended up annoying myself some more. Anyway, I hope this question offers some entertainment or annoyance or something.
There may be hope-- it's not quite a Do What I Mean situation, but it was reasonably easy to find out how to recover a file on a Windows 7 machine, and then do it. Who knows what wonders the future may bring?
I will probably outlive the need to reinstall the comments button for Facebook every time Firefox updates.
The problem is, I have no idea how such a world would work. Would it take "do what I mean" capacity for computers, including the ability to make sense of vague and possibly incoherent desires? That would be the program which could write this story for me.
Greatly increased human intelligence, so that managing computers is no harder than counting to three is now?
Something else?
For that matter, I have no idea what would be a worthwhile story to set in a world where computers work, if the story is not going to be about computers ceasing to work. (Difficulties of interfacing with alien computers?)
The idea lacks dramatic tension. In fact, if there were such a thing as lacking dramatic tension on steroids, this would be it.
People would have to have a war or something.
I guess it's karma. A computer annoyed me (I can't even remember about what, there are so many things), so I thought I could annoy you folks, and I ended up annoying myself some more. Anyway, I hope this question offers some entertainment or annoyance or something.
There may be hope-- it's not quite a Do What I Mean situation, but it was reasonably easy to find out how to recover a file on a Windows 7 machine, and then do it. Who knows what wonders the future may bring?
I will probably outlive the need to reinstall the comments button for Facebook every time Firefox updates.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 07:00 am (UTC)I guess that's why I tend to relate more to people that grew up with computers younger than me than, say, my housemate who gets frustrated and shuts the lid every time his laptop does anything even slightly off, even if it's just reconnecting tot he flaky wireless network (he's 4 years older and got a computer at home as a teen, shared with his younger brother).
And yeah, stuff getting in the way has always annoyed me, ISPs that used to try to set your homepage as their annoying portal thing, any assumption I wanted their email account instead of the one I've had for ages, etc.
I watch my stepdaughter (8) pick up a new computing device and she just expects it to work-took me half an hour to figure out some features, by the time she'd had it for that long she was taking pictures and editing them on the fly. Impressive.