From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200107121356.PAA24736@boris.cd.chalmers.se> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Cc: lac@cd.chalmers.se Subject: Re: [9fans] architectures In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 12 Jul 2001 09:42:22 BST." <20010712084649.299C9199C0@mail.cse.psu.edu> From: Laura Creighton Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:56:31 +0200 Topicbox-Message-UUID: c766468c-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 re: drawing tenuous likenesses to the real world. It is possible in the days before everybody knew what a computer was, and a computer program was, that there was some value in giving a user a metaphor with something else on the real world. These days it is a major problem because quite frequently the metaphor is lousier than what we could write if we focused on _how efficiently can we do what we want to do_ rather than _what is something, anything, that somebody is likely to have done before which is sort of like what we want to do_. My favourite example is the desktop metaphor. Now neat people can have the experience of a messed up and cluttered desk. You too can lose important work and documents because you can't find them! Laura