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THE_COMPARATIVE_RELIGION

                                             June 6, 2008
   Computer "user-interface"
   design of the late 70s
   and 80s was obsessed with            Could one argue that this was
   a certain conception of              itself a meta-metaphor, an
   "metaphor".                          attempt at relating UI design
                                        to art and literature.
   The idea was that you
   could write software
   that people would
   understand by creating
   constructs that behave
   something like familiar
   existing things...

   So people would talk about
   "the desktop metaphor"

   And yet, an actual desktop out
   there in the nominally real world
   does not normally have a bunch of
   windows piled up on top of it.
   And you don't choose which one to
   work on next by whacking it with
   a mouse.

      A Ted Nelson complaint (that I picked up
      from the "World Enough" lectures):               NELSON
      that the "clipboard" as implemented by
      Apple is in fact nothing like an actual
      clipboard: the Macintosh-style "clipboard"
      has a very tiny clip that holds only one
      piece of paper.  And when you slap another
      piece of paper down on top, the old one
      pops out of existence.


          Nelson makes the point that you can
          create things with computers that are
          genuinely new "virtualities"; you do
          not need to slavishly imitate
          something else that exists already.




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