[WEB4LIB] RE: of mouse balls and such

[Charles P. Hobbs]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Moderow, Kevin wrote:

> Long ago the command prompt was considered unforgiving.  Today the mouse is
> unintuitive.    One must ask: Just how much dumbing down is required?  I
> fear the day when being required to think is an assault on the individual's
> self worth.

Drat! And just when I was about to invent my "Mind-Reader" interface. It
would replace the keyboard, the mouse, the joystick and even speech
recognition. Just think about what you want the computer to do, and it
would do it. . .:-)

I work in a library where we quite often get people that have never
touched a computer in their rather long lives (50+), and after a few
minutes of hand-holding, they're mousing around the screen like a pro...

We've all heard these stories about people using the CD-ROM tray as a cup
holder, or the mouse as a foot pedal. But for most people, it's just not
that difficult to figure out.
  

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roy Tennant [mailto:rtennant at library.berkeley.edu]
> Sent: Monday, January 03, 2000 3:22 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: of mouse balls and such
> 
> 
> And to further drive home Tara's point, do you realize how unintuitive and
> downright odd it is to move an object on one plane that manipulates
> another object distant from it on a plane perpendicular to the first?
> *That's* the experience of using a mouse, and to expect anyone to
> get it immediately is asking a bit much, in my opinion.
> Roy