{"id":492,"date":"2007-02-27T18:22:04","date_gmt":"2007-02-27T23:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/?p=492"},"modified":"2007-02-27T18:38:13","modified_gmt":"2007-02-27T23:38:13","slug":"tech-support-for-customers-of-gutenberg-inc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/02\/27\/tech-support-for-customers-of-gutenberg-inc\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech support for customers of Gutenberg, Inc."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"350\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/aX0-nqRmtos\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><\/object><\/p>\n<p>This is absolutely hilarious, and spot on in its commentary.  It really makes it clear that computers are genuinely more complex than books.  The problems he&#8217;s having are funny in part because it&#8217;s just so ludicrous that his spatial skills would be <em>so<\/em> poor, since a child or a chimp would easily master the problems that are causing him to lock up.  I suspect, for example, that you could set a picture book down in front of nearly every human that&#8217;s ever lived, and they would be able to figure out the basic idea fairly quickly.  They might be amazed or annoyed by the photos or art or whatever, but the mechanics of the book itself would become fairly clear fairly quickly.  Hand them a laptop opened to something like a web browser, however, and I suspect they&#8217;d be fairly mystified.  And even if they managed to figure out how to click around, it would probably seem totally miraculous, and their mental model for what&#8217;s going on would almost certainly be severely broken.<\/p>\n<p>Would it be possible to build a computer that&#8217;s as intuitive as a book?  Probably not a general purpose computer, although it seems possible that one might be able to construct a computing <em>appliance<\/em> that&#8217;s pretty close in its limited domain.<\/p>\n<p>Big ups to KK for passing along a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/dogberrypatch.com\/archives\/help-desk-500-years-ago\/\">this pointer<\/a>.<\/p>\nNo tag for this post.\n\t<h4>Related posts<\/h4>\n\t<ul class=\"st-related-posts\">\n\t<li>No related posts.<\/li>\n\t<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is absolutely hilarious, and spot on in its commentary. It really makes it clear that computers are genuinely more complex than books. The problems he&#8217;s having are funny in part because it&#8217;s just so ludicrous that his spatial skills would be so poor, since a child or a chimp would easily master the problems &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/02\/27\/tech-support-for-customers-of-gutenberg-inc\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Tech support for customers of Gutenberg, Inc.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0},"categories":[8,4,14],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-7W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":686,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/11\/13\/a-genie-unlikely-to-ever-return-to-its-bottle\/","url_meta":{"origin":492,"position":0},"title":"A genie unlikely to ever return to its bottle","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"13 Nov 07","format":false,"excerpt":"I was pottering in the kitchen (probably making tea or some such) while WeatherGirl was listening to a comedy program on the radio in the sitting room. I'm half hearing the words as they gently waft my direction, when a woman on the program says \"shit\" quite clearly and plainly.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":407,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2006\/12\/14\/itssuper-nic\/","url_meta":{"origin":492,"position":1},"title":"It&#8217;s&#8230;Super Nic!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"14 Dec 06","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the years I've been blessed (?) with students feeling a bizarre urge to draw pictures of me and (perhaps more importantly) share them. This is one of the earliest of these gems, produced by Joe Sandin in my intro computing course about 10 8 years ago. Dan Flies (who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Education&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":220,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/08\/24\/woot-on-to-tco-round-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":492,"position":2},"title":"Woot!  On to TCO Round 3!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"24 Aug 05","format":false,"excerpt":"In a surprise bout of competence, mostly brought on by a fairly math-y set of problems and fairly good focus, I managed to be one of the 200 to advance to Round 3 of the Top Coder Open! Huzzah! I even placed third in my room, earning a whopping (but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":420,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/01\/02\/my-heart-rate-is-through-the-roof\/","url_meta":{"origin":492,"position":3},"title":"My heart rate is through the roof!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"2 Jan 07","format":false,"excerpt":"First, let me be real clear that I pretty much hate U.S. big money college athletics at a fairly visceral level. That's a long story, tied up in deep ways with growing up in Texas, and we won't go there. Suffice it to say that I have real problems with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Education&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":589,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/06\/25\/heres-hoping-they-have-second-thoughts\/","url_meta":{"origin":492,"position":4},"title":"Here&#8217;s hoping they have second thoughts","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"25 Jun 07","format":false,"excerpt":"This was one of the first things we saw when we flew to Alaska last July, and I must say that it was sad and depressing to see their airport named after Ted \"Internet = tubes but not trucks\" Stevens. Unfortunately clear and public demonstrations of gross ignorance of material\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":175,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/06\/05\/first-in-the-barimaeus-trilogy-was-pretty-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":492,"position":5},"title":"First in the Bartimaeus Trilogy was pretty good","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"5 Jun 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Since I went on yesterday about Not the end of the world, I thought I should mention briefly that the book that Sub-Evil Boy and I just finished (thereby opening up the option of reading Not the end of the world) was pretty good. The book in question was The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Books&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/writing\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}